Marsha Blackburn Slams Collusion Between Big Tech, Big News at Media Cartel Hearing

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) slammed collusion between Big Tech and Big Media to control the news that Americans see online, during a hearing on the controversial Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA).

“Big News and Big Tech team up and filter the news,” said Sen. Blackburn. “And really take control of what you hear and what you see when it comes to news. When I go to Tennessee I hear a lot about this from Tennesseans. And they don’t like it. They feel that their views are not being represented. And they’re very concerned about whether they can or cannot trust mainstream media.”

Mark Zuckerberg surrounded by guards ( Chip Somodevilla /Getty)

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) speaks during a hearing before Senate Judiciary Committee December 10, 2019 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The committee held a hearing on “Encryption and Lawful Access: Evaluating Benefits and Risks to Public Safety and Privacy.” (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The Tennessee senator went on to express concern that the JCPA would strengthen the relationship between Big Tech and Big Media, a point that one of the expert witnesses, Harvard lecturer and former FTC official Dr. Daniel Francis, agreed with.

The JCPA, which Breitbart News has covered extensively, would create an antitrust exemption for media companies, protecting widely distrusted media companies from competition by allowing them to form a legal cartel to collectively bargain with Silicon Valley.

If the bill passes, big media companies would be able to strike deals with Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other tech giants that would prioritize their content to the detriment of podcasters, YouTubers, Substack authors, and other forms of independent media.

A line in the bill allows members of the state-sanctioned cartel to exclude any company that is not “similarly situated” to them from the benefits of their negotiations with the tech giants.

It would also exclude any journalist who does not have “a dedicated professional editorial staff” that publishes news content on at “least a weekly basis,” effectively excluding independent journalists who run small or one-man operations on Substack, YouTube, and other platforms.

Directing a question to Dr. Francis, Blackburn said “do you think companies like Facebook, like Instagram, YouTube would stand to benefit from an antitrust exemption, and what bad behaviors could they get away with if they did get that exemption?”

Dr. Francis agreed that large media conglomerates known for their bias against conservatives would indeed benefit from the bill, and that the costs would be passed down the supply chain to consumers.

“In the event that this were created, two things would happen,” said Dr. Francis. “The first is that the most immediate beneficiaries would be the participating media companies, obviously including some very large conglomerates.”

“And certainly, the cartel overcharge that would emerge from agreements on prices would be paid in the first instance by Google, Facebook, and then transmitted most likely in the form of higher prices for advertising, down the chain to consumers.”

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.