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Why it matters: Monopolistic power of Google and Facebook has led to an uneven playing field in the news business.

The Founding Fathers contemplated a robust marketplace of ideas when they established freedom of the press as the 1st Amendment to the Constitution, but today’s media landscape dominated by Big Tech threatens to cripple that marketplace and limit the voices.

That’s why we wholeheartedly support the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act authored by Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, which is gaining bipartisan support and recently passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 14-7 vote. The law would give news organizations with less than 1,500 employees the ability to join forces with other news organizations and collectively bargain with Big Tech so the tech giants would have to begin paying for the content they now take without cost.

Similar legislation has been approved in Australia and after Facebook (Meta) threatened to pull its newsfeeds from Facebook pages in the country, it soon relented realizing the value of the news content. Facebook in now paying Australian publishers.

Meta has now threatened to do the same in Canada, as that country recently passed a law that would require the companies to pay news publishers for the content they use on their sites.

The U.S. legislation has bipartisan support from high profile progressive and conservative senators such as Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., as well as moderates like Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

The bill would require the likes of Google and Facebook to negotiate with publishers in good faith and be subject to binding arbitration if an agreement cannot be reached.

The bill would also temporarily protect news publishers from anti-trust laws if it collectively withheld its content from the Big Tech platforms. The joint news organization and Big Tech companies could also not discriminate against other digital platforms based on their size or points of view published on their sites, also providing rights of action for violations.

It would also prohibit retaliation by a Big Tech platform against the news organizations and provide a legal means of acting against such violations. In one case, a publisher testified it tried to negotiate with Google for top search placement for its advertising but the company had no interest because it controls its search hierarchy.

News and information has become a valuable commodity in today’s politically divisive world and the journalism competition act would protect that value and expand the places news can be created and consumed. It would preserve that robust free marketplace of ideas the Founders established and protected as the law of the land.

We encourage the entire Minnesota congressional delegation to support the journalism competition act. Capitalism doesn’t work without competition, and a marketplace of ideas shouldn’t be a monopoly.

— Mankato Free Press, June 23