[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




 
                     REVIVING COMPETITION, PART 2:
                   SAVING THE FREE AND DIVERSE PRESS

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

     SUBCOMMITTEE ON ANTITRUST, COMMERCIAL, AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW

                                 OF THE

                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                         FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 2021

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-11

                               __________

         Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
         
         
         
 [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]        
         


               Available via: http://judiciary.house.gov
               
               
               
               
                            ______

             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
47-320               WASHINGTON : 2022               
               
                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                    JERROLD NADLER, New York, Chair
                MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania, Vice-Chair

ZOE LOFGREN, California              JIM JORDAN, Ohio, Ranking Member 
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas            STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee               LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas
HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr,       DARREL ISSA, California
    Georgia                          KEN BUCK, Colorado
THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida          MATT GAETZ, Florida
KAREN BASS, California               MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana
HAKEEM S. JEFFRIES, New York         ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island     TOM McCLINTOCK, California
ERIC SWALWELL, California            W. GREGORY STEUBE, Florida
TED LIEU, California                 TOM TIFFANY, Wisconsin
JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland               THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky
PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington          CHIP ROY, Texas
VAL BUTLER DEMINGS, Florida          DAN BISHOP, North Carolina
J. LUIS CORREA, California           MICHELLE FISCHBACH, Minnesota
MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania,      VICTORIA SPARTZ, Indiana
SYLVIA R. GARCIA, Texas              SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin
JOE NEGUSE, Colorado                 CLIFF BENTZ, Oregon
LUCY McBATH, Georgia                 BURGESS OWENS, Utah
GREG STANTON, Arizona
VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
MONDAIRE JONES, New York
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina
CORI BUSH, Missouri

        PERRY APELBAUM, Majority Staff Director & Chief Counsel
               CHRISTOPHER HIXON, Minority Staff Director
                                 ------                                

                 SUBCOMMITTEE ON ANTITRUST, COMMERCIAL,
                         AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW

                DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island, Chair
                PRAMILIA JAYAPAL, Washington, Vice-Chair

JOE NEGUSE, Colorado                 KEN BUCK, Colorado, Ranking Member
ERIC SWALWELL, California            DARREL ISSA, California
MONDAIRE JONES, New York             MATT GAETZ, Florida
THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida          MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana
HAKEEM S. JEFFRIES, New York         W. GREGORY STEUBE, Florida
JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland               MICHELLE FISCHBACH, Minnesota
VAL BUTLER DEMINGS, Florida          VICTORIA SPARTZ, Indiana
MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania       SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin
LUCY McBATH, Georgia                 CLIFF BENTZ, Oregon
MADELINE DEAN, Pennsylvania          BURGESS OWENS, Utah
HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr., 
    Georgia

                       SLADE BOND, Chief Counsel
                      DOUG GEHO, Minority Counsel
                      
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                         Friday, March 12, 2021

                                                                   Page

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

The Honorable David Cicilline, Chair of the Subcommittee on 
  Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law from the State of 
  Rhode Island...................................................     1
The Honorable Ken Buck, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on 
  Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law from the State of 
  Colorado.......................................................     4
The Honorable Jim Jordan, Ranking Member of the Committee on the 
  Judiciary from the State of Ohio...............................     6

                               WITNESSES

David Chavern, President and CEO, News Media Alliance
  Oral Testimony.................................................    10
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    12
Brad Smith, President, Microsoft
  Oral Testimony.................................................    16
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    18
Jonathan Schleuss, President, NewsGuild Communications Workers of 
  America
  Oral Testimony.................................................    29
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    31
Emily Barr, President and CEO, Graham Media Group
  Oral Testimony.................................................    47
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    49
Glenn Greenwald, Journalist, Constitutional Lawyer
  Oral Testimony.................................................    58
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    60
Clay Travis, Founder of Outkick the Coverage, FOX Sports Radio
  Oral Testimony.................................................    66
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    68

          LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING

An article entitled, ``Congress Wants to Give the Establishment 
  Media a Massive Handout,'' Breitbart, submitted by the 
  Honorable Jim Jordan, Ranking Member of the Committee on the 
  Judiciary from the State of Ohio for the record................    92
Materials submitted by the Honorable David Cicilline, Chair of 
  the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative 
  Law from the State of Rhode Island for the record
  Statement from Jason Kint, CEO, Digital Content Next...........   116
  Statement from Jeff Jarvis, the Leonard Tow Professor of 
    Journalism Innovation at the City University of New York's 
    Craig Network Graduate School of Journalism..................   119
  Statement from Maribel Perez Wadsworth, President of News, 
    Gannett Media................................................   122
  Statement from Rod Sims, Chair, Australian Competition and 
    Consumer Commission..........................................   126
  Statement from Media Matters for America.......................   133
  Statement from the Honorable Susan Wild, a Member of Congress 
    from the State of Pennsylvania...............................   139
  Statement from the National Association of Black Owned 
    Broadcasters, Native American Journalists Association, and 
    Radio Television Digital News Association....................   140
  Statement from Free Press Action...............................   141
  Statement from Google..........................................   160
  An article entitled, ``Why the Future of News Won't Be Fixed 
    Through Antitrust Exemptions,'' Matthew Schruers, President 
    of Computer and Communications Industry Association..........   165

                  QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS FOR THE RECORD

Response from Brad Smith, President, Microsoft, to the Honorable 
  Eric Swalwell, a Member of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, 
  Commercial, and Administrative Law from the State of California 
  for the record.................................................   170


                     REVIVING COMPETITION, PART 2:

                   SAVING THE FREE AND DIVERSE PRESS

                         Friday, March 12, 2021

                        House of Representatives

                 Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial,

                         and Administrative Law

                       Committee on the Judiciary

                             Washington, DC

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in 
Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. David Cicilline 
[Chair of the Subcommittee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Cicilline, Neguse, Jones, Deutch, 
Jeffries, Raskin, Jayapal, Demings, Scanlon, McBath, Dean, 
Johnson of Georgia, Jordan, Buck, Issa, Gaetz, Steube, Bishop, 
Fischbach, Spartz, Fitzgerald, Bentz and Owens.
    Staff Present: Cierra Fontenot, Staff Assistant; John 
Williams, Parliamentarian; Amanda Lewis, Counsel; Joseph Van 
Wye, Professional Staff Member; Slade Bond, Chief Counsel; 
Phillip Berenbroick, Counsel; Douglas Geho, Minority Chief 
Counsel for Administrative Law; and Kiley Bidelman, Minority 
Clerk.
    Mr. Cicilline. The Subcommittee will come to order. Without 
objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess of the 
Committee at any time. Good morning, and welcome to today's 
hearing, the second in a series to develop legislation to 
promote competition online and modernize the antitrust laws.
    Before we begin, I would like remind Members that we have 
established an email address and distribution list dedicated to 
circulating exhibits, motions, or other written materials that 
Members might want to offer as part of our hearing today. If 
you would like to submit materials, please send them to the 
email address that has been previously provided to your offices 
and we will circulate the materials to Members and staff as 
quickly we can.
    I would also like to remind all Members and our Witnesses 
that guidance from the Office of Attending Physician states 
that face coverings are required for all meetings in an 
enclosed space. So, just like at Committee hearings, I expect 
all Members on both sides of the aisle to wear a mask for the 
duration of today's hearing. I now recognize myself for an 
opening statement.
    A free and diverse press is the backbone of a vibrant 
democracy. Indeed, our democracy is strongest when we have a 
free and diverse press that informs citizens, holds power to 
account, and exposes corruption and wrongdoing. In recent years 
the local news that is delivered through newspapers, online, 
and the local broadcast has been in a state of economic free-
fall. Over the past 15 years, one in five newspapers closed, 
and the number of journalists working for newspapers has been 
cut in half. In 2019, America reportedly lost over 2,100 
newspapers since 2004. Today, at least 200 counties have no 
local newspapers at all.
    The crisis in American journalism has become a real crisis 
in our democracy and civic life. Newsrooms across the country 
are laying off reporters and editorial staff or folding 
altogether, while the majority of counties in America are down 
to just a single publisher of local news, and many lack local 
news option altogether.
    In my home State of Rhode Island, circulation of our 
statewide newspaper has declined by 54 percent since 2004. This 
is happening to legacy news companies and digital publishers 
alike. Earlier this week in the wake of an acquisition, the 
Huffington Post, a digital publisher, laid off dozens of 
journalists due to declining advertising revenue.
    Unfortunately, they are not alone. Last year, digital 
publishers furloughed or laid off dozens of reporters and other 
newsroom staff. These layoffs occur at a time when more people 
are online than ever before, and online readership is at an 
all-time high.
    This decline has also accelerated in the wake of the 
pandemic at a time when local journalism is more important than 
ever. As Jonathan Schleuss will testify today, and I quote, 
``We are truly facing an extinction level event for local 
news,'' end quote.
    If this trend continues, we risk permanently compromising 
the news organizations that are essential to our communities, 
holding the government and powerful corporations accountable in 
sustaining our democracy. In response to these concerns, the 
Subcommittee examined the effect of the market power of the 
largest technology platforms on the survival of a free and 
diverse press as part of our bipartisan investigation last 
Congress. During our inquiry, we received evidence about the 
significant and growing asymmetry of power between several 
dominant online platforms and news publishers.
    In numerous interviews, submissions, and testimony before 
the Subcommittee, publishers and broadcasters with distinct 
business models and distribution strategies said they are 
increasingly beholden to Google and Facebook, which 
increasingly function as the gatekeepers for information 
online.
    For example, Digital Content Next, which represents digital 
news publishers and content companies, notes in a statement for 
the record for today's hearing that 64 percent of online 
referrals to its premium publishers came from services owned by 
Facebook or Google, underscoring the extraordinary role of 
these companies and how the public discovers, searches, and 
spreads information.
    According to the Pugh Research Center, nearly three-
quarters of Americans get their news online through either 
Facebook or Google. As news publishers have noted, this 
gatekeeper power gives Facebook and Google the ability to 
distort the flow of information online. This means that Google 
and Facebook can divert their billions of users away from 
trustworthy sources of news with a single change to algorithms 
or through other subtle but meaningful ways, such as 
manipulating ad auctions.
    A second related problem that we identified during the 
investigation is the market power of these firms over digital 
advertising. Facebook and Google control the majority of online 
advertising in the United States and have captured nearly all 
the growth in this market.
    Each year, advertisers pay billions of dollars to these two 
companies to serve highly targeted ads on Facebook and through 
Google's advertising network. Nearly a dozen Republican State 
attorneys general who are currently suing Google for 
monopolization describe Google's advertising network as the, 
and I quote, ``Largest electronic trading market in 
existence,'' end quote. These companies continue to enjoy 
persistently high profit margins, a telltale sign of their 
substantial and enduring market power. At the same time, news 
publishers have seen a steep decline in revenue and a reduced 
ability to monetize journalism, particularly when it comes to 
these sources online.
    Overall, the market power of Google and Facebook is 
reenforced by the unprecedented amount of data collected by 
these companies, along with other factors that have tipped 
digital markets in favor of these firms and blocked rivals and 
new entrants from challenging their dominance.
    The findings of some other antitrust investigations 
bolsters these conclusions. For example, the Australian 
Competition and Consumer Commission, which conducted its own 
extensive investigation into this matter, similarly noted in 
their exhaustive 2019 report that Facebook and Google have 
substantial market power over channels for accessing news 
online and digital advertising.
    In a statement for today's hearing, Rod Sims, the Chair of 
Australia's Competition Authority, notes that the platform's 
gatekeeper role was underscored by Facebook's decision to 
quote, ``block large slots of Australian content, including 
news during their negotiations with our government regarding 
Australia's bargaining code,'' end quote.
    Similarly, the United Kingdom's Competition in Markets 
Authority concluded after its own inquiry that insufficient 
competition in digital advertising undermines the ability of 
newspapers and others to produce valuable content to the 
detriment of broader society.
    Which, quote, ``can lead to wider social, political, and 
cultural harm through the decline of authoritative and reliable 
news media, the result in the spread of fake news, and the 
decline of the local press which is often a significant force 
in sustaining communities.'' end quote.
    With that in mind, today's hearing is an opportunity to 
examine solutions to this urgent problem. Earlier this week, I 
reintroduced the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act 
with Ranking Member Buck. Our legislation would give news 
publishers an even playing field to collectively negotiate with 
the dominant platforms to improve the quality, accuracy, 
attribution, and functioning of news online.
    As part of today's hearing, I look forward to discussing 
recommendations to strengthen and improve this legislation. In 
particular, I am eager for a discussion on ensuring that this 
framework will provide for good faith negotiations by all 
parties, and mechanisms to ensure that each and every 
hardworking journalist benefits from these negotiations.
    While I do not view this legislation as a substitute for 
more meaningful competition online, including structural 
remedies to address the underlying problems in the market, it 
is clear that we must do something in the short term to save 
trustworthy journalism before it is lost forever. This bill is 
a life-support measure, not the answer for ensuring long-term 
health of the news industry. We need an all-of-the-above 
approach to save journalism and to take on monopoly power. 
Doing nothing is not an option.
    In that vein, we are also here to hear other suggestions to 
rein in the power of these monopolies. In our last hearing, we 
heard bipartisan agreement from the Members of our Subcommittee 
on a number of issues, including structural separation, 
preventing self-preferencing and discrimination, and 
interoperability and data portability requirements.
    Congressional inaction and insufficient enforcement levels 
have led to waves of consolidation and layoffs by reporters of 
both digital and print publishers alike. In the absence of a 
competitive marketplace or congressional action, we will 
continue to see mass consolidation and widespread layoffs.
    As the events leading up to the violent mob's attack on the 
Capitol on January 6 have made clear, the stakes are high. Our 
country will not survive if we do not operate with a shared set 
of facts, if corruption is not exposed and rooted out at all 
levels of government, and if power is not held to account.
    As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in 1927, ``Those who want 
our independence believe that public discussion is a political 
duty, that the greatest threat to freedom is an uninformed 
citizenry, and that the freedom of thought and speech are 
indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.''
    This is the very reason the press is called the fourth 
estate. Whether it's an online publisher, a national newspaper, 
or a local broadcaster, we cannot have a democracy without a 
free and diverse press.
    In closing, I look forward to today's hearing and learning 
more from our very distinguished panel of Witnesses.
    I now recognize the distinguished gentleman from Colorado, 
the Ranking Member of this Subcommittee, Mr. Buck, for his 
opening statement.
    Mr. Buck. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to co-sponsor 
this important legislation with you, and I thank you for your 
collegiality and focus on bipartisanship.
    In the 1990s, 4 percent of the world's population used the 
internet. Today, that number is nearly 60 percent. The internet 
is a tool with incredible opportunities for expanding freedom 
and democracy in America and around the world. We need to 
confront the reality that multinational corporations are 
sabotaging Americans' access to information in advancing 
authoritarian regime's effort to manipulate the internet for 
oppression.
    When the internet was first developed, it's potential as a 
bastion of democracy was easily recognized. President Reagan, 
famously said, ``Technology will make it increasingly difficult 
for the State to control the information its people receive. 
The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the 
David of the microchip.''
    We are now seeing Big Tech making content-related decisions 
for people around the world, including here in the United 
States. What content is available to a free citizenry is driven 
and shaped by the political agendas of these tech corporations, 
not consumer preferences. We're not seeing a systemic problem 
with people shutting themselves out of the public discourse as 
critics feared, instead, the tech titans are censoring material 
they disagree with. They are able to do this because they have 
achieved monopoly status in the market. The monopoly has given 
them the power to police the marketplace of ideas and dictate 
what consumers can see.
    This problem is exacerbated by small and medium market news 
sources disappearing because monopolies are squeezing them out 
of the market. Companies like Google and Facebook have 
decimated small and media market news sources by cutting their 
ad revenues.
    In 2010, Google publicly disclosed how much of the ad 
revenue they shared with publishers. At the time, publishers 
were earning almost 70 percent of the revenue from content ads, 
which are the ads you see on a publisher's website. In 2020, 
the Association of National Advertisers estimated that 
publishers are now only taking home between 30-40 percent of 
the ad revenue. That's a huge decrease, and we have seen the 
adverse effects of that change.
    Since 2004, the United States has lost approximately 2,100 
newspapers, which accounts for a quarter of the Nation's total. 
In 2004, there were almost 9,000 newspapers. By the end of 
2019, that number dropped to 6,700. More than 200 of the 
Nation's 3,143 counties and parishes no longer have a local 
paper. The newsrooms that are closing are mostly in small, 
rural communities.
    Similarly, local radio and TV stations are also 
disappearing at an alarming rate. Study after study shows that 
Americans are more trusting of local news outlets and local 
reporters, and with good reason. There is more diversity of 
viewpoint in the small and medium market outlets. That 
diversity allows space for more voices, and it benefits our 
democracy.
    My concerns about the decline in local news outlets are not 
based on some nostalgia for a former era. The robust exchange 
of ideas has always been important in this country, but it is 
now essential as conservatives seek to battle cancel culture 
and maintain a voice in the public square.
    Many of my colleagues advocate doing nothing in this area 
because we should just let the market work. From this 
perspective, newspapers and local TV and radio stations dying 
is just a result of competition in a healthy marketplace. They 
lean on the idea of creative destruction and Darwinian 
competition. I value the market, economic freedom, and 
capitalism, but I also value freedom of speech and freedom of 
the press. I want to see these bedrock American values 
preserved for future generations.
    We are seeing the failures of antitrust policy at work with 
Big Tech. Big Tech not only controls the news market because it 
controls the digital advertising market, but it also exercises 
gatekeeper control over speech. All Americans should be 
concerned. We are just starting to see the results of tech-
tightened control over the news and how it does not bode well 
for future generations.
    Congress sat idly by as these platforms became monopolies. 
We cannot sit by and let them become the public square, too. We 
cannot let them become the arbiters of truth and the wielders 
of government-like power. These companies track and seek to run 
our lives through their technologies and algorithms. Big Tech 
companies have become digital kings, and they represent 
precisely the kind of political power the antitrust laws are 
designed to tackle.
    This bill is a step in the right direction to dethroning 
those digital kings. It will give publishers and broadcasters a 
4-year exemption from the antitrust laws so they can more 
effectively bargain with Google and Facebook. It is not a 
subsidy for outlets, but rather a leveling of the playing field 
in favor of democracy and free expression.
    Mr. Chair, I also want to make sure that through this 
legislation we are not creating unattended consequences that 
will end up harming those we seek to help. For example, we want 
to make sure that news outlets involved in negotiations are not 
incentivized to harm the interests of competitor news groups 
not at the table. Likewise, we want to ensure that Google is 
not harming those it hasn't negotiated with by burying them 
several pages back in search results.
    I am pleased that this bill gives small-town outlets like 
the Greeley Tribune and the Fort Morgan Times, and conservative 
outlets, like Breitbart and The Federalist, a chance to 
negotiate together and claw back some of their hard-earned 
advertising dollars from Google and Facebook. Advertising 
dollars are the lifeblood of these outlets earned through hard 
work and dedicated reporting.
    Mr. Chair, I appreciate the opportunity to work together, 
and I yield back.
    Mr. Cicilline. I thank the gentleman for yielding back.
    I now recognize the Ranking Member of the Full Committee, 
the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Jordan, for his opening statement.
    Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank our 
Witnesses for being here today. I am going to do something I 
don't think I have ever done before in an opening statement. I 
am going to read from a couple of the individuals--Mr. Travis 
and Mr. Greenwald, I have read their full statements last 
night. Very compelling testimony. I am going to read from part 
of those, because I think they capture what the situation truly 
is.
    Let me start with Mr. Travis' written testimony. He says 
this, ``Algorithms are designed by humans, and the results are 
monitored. Facebook can make any site sore in popularity or 
crush their traffic, and they can do it in an instant. This is 
the power of Big Tech writ large. We are living in a new gilded 
age where tech billionaires, maybe soon to be trillionaires 
have more power than any elected official in the land.
    Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter's Jack Dorsey, Apple's 
Tim Cook, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, and Amazon's Jeff Bezos 
have more power today than Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, John 
D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford ever did in the earliest days of 
the 20th century. These modern-day tech monopolists can pick 
Presidential election winners, control our national debate, 
decide whose voice is heard, whose voice is not heard. The 
Supreme Court no longer decides what the law of the First 
amendment is in this great country. These tech executives do in 
practice. Big Tech controls the country, and they control the 
country by deciding what we see.''
    Well said, Mr. Travis. I mean, if this doesn't underscore 
why we need to remove the liability of protection in section 
230, I don't know what does.
    Mr. Greenwald makes the same points in his written 
testimony. Then he says this about the specific question at 
hand at this Committee hearing today. He says, ``How Congress 
sets out to address Silicon Valley's immense and un-Democratic 
power is a complicated question.'' Well, it is, posing complex 
challenges. ``The proposal to vest media companies with an 
antitrust exemption in order to allow them to negotiate as a 
consortium or cartel seeks to rectify a real and serious 
problem.'' Very true. ``But,'' and this is important, ``but 
empowering large media companies could easily end up creating 
more problems than it solves.''
    It goes on to say this, ``Further empowering this already 
powerful media industry, which is demonstrated we use its force 
to silence competitors under the guise of quote `quality 
control' runs the real risk of transferring abusive monopoly 
power from Silicon Valley to corporate media companies.'' This 
last clause it important, ``or even worse encouraging some sort 
of de facto merger in which these two industries pool their 
power to the mutual benefit of each.''
    We already saw that happen. We saw it in last fall's 
election. Both Mr. Travis and Mr. Greenwald cite this in their 
written testimony. Last fall when Big Media teamed up with Big 
Tech to make sure the American people didn't hear about the 
Hunter Biden story in the weeks leading up to a Presidential 
election.
    So, we have already seen them team up against We the 
People, and now we have legislation that's going to give Big 
Media this consortium and cartel power. At the same time, we 
are looking to use antitrust law to deal with Big Tech, we are 
going to give an antitrust exemption to Big Media. Maybe that's 
the right course, but I got real questions about that whether 
we should move in that direction.
    So, I look forward to hearing from our Witnesses. I want to 
thank them again for coming, particularly Mr. Travis who 
traveled here in person. I appreciate his good work. We look 
forward to a chance to hear from each of our Witnesses.
    Mr. Chair, and with that. I yield back.
    Mr. Cicilline. The gentleman yields back.
    It's now my pleasure to introduce today's Witnesses.
    Our first is David Chavern, the President and CEO of the 
News Media Alliance where he has served since 2015. Mr. Chavern 
spent 10 years at the United States Chamber of Commerce in a 
number of executive roles, including Executive Vice-President, 
Chief Operating Officer, and Chief of Staff.
    He is a member of the Board of Directors of Transamerica 
Insurance and serves on the Board of Trustees at the University 
of Pittsburgh. Mr. Chavern received his bachelor of arts degree 
from the University of Pittsburgh, his MBA from Georgetown 
University, and his J.D. from Villanova University School of 
Law.
    I would now like to recognize my distinguished colleague 
and the Vice-Chair of this Subcommittee, Ms. Jayapal, to 
introduce our second Witness. I know she does so with 
incredible pride.
    Ms. Jayapal, you are recognized.
    Ms. Jayapal. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Thank 
you for this opportunity to welcome Mr. Brad Smith, the 
President of Microsoft and a Fellow Washingtonian who has done 
a tremendous amount for our region, our state, and indeed our 
country. Mr. Smith is one of the leading global figures in the 
technology industry today, and he has testified several times 
before the United States Congress and other governments on 
policy issues.
    He joined Microsoft in 1993, spending 3 years leading the 
legal and corporate affairs team in Europe. In 2002, he was 
named Microsoft's general counsel and led the company's work to 
resolve antitrust controversies with governments around the 
world and companies across the tech sector. I believe that's 
given him a very unique and valuable perspective on the issues 
of tech and antitrust and the responsibility of the tech 
industry to work with government on smart regulation that 
protects competition, innovation, and democracy.
    Mr. Chair, I actually believe that that experience is very 
much part of the reason that Microsoft played such a productive 
role in Australia, most recently. I know we're going to hear 
about that more today.
    Before joining Microsoft, Mr. Smith worked as an Associate 
and then partner at the law firm of Covington & Burling. He 
earned his BA from Princeton University, his J.D. from Colombia 
University Law School and studied international law and 
economics at the graduate institute in Geneva, Switzerland.
    Mr. Smith, I thank you for testifying before us, but also 
for the tremendous work you do in our state and in our country. 
I look forward to your testimony today.
    Mr. Cicilline. I thank the gentlelady, and I also want to 
thank Mr. Smith for his assistance during the course of our 
investigation. He provided a very valuable briefing to Members 
of the Subcommittee during the course of our 16-month 
investigation, and I again thank you for that.
    Our third Witness is Jonathan Schleuss who is the President 
of the NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America, a union 
that represents more than 20,000 journalists and media workers 
across the United States and Canada.
    Before being elected as President of CWA, Mr. Schleuss was 
a graphics and data journalist at the Los Angeles Times where 
he led their unionization efforts in 2018. This marked the 
first time in the paper's 135-year history that the newsroom 
had been organized.
    Mr. Schleuss has also served as the online editor at the 
Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, and as a weekend host for 
KUAF, a national public radio affiliate based in Fayetteville, 
Arkansas. He is also an adjunct professor at the USC Annenberg 
School of Communications and Journalism. Mr. Schleuss received 
his bachelor's degree from the University of Arkansas.
    Our fourth Witness, Emily Barr, is President and CEO of 
Graham Media Group. As CEO Ms. Barr has overseen seven local 
media hubs, all top-70 markets since 2012. Under her 
leadership, Graham Media Group was named the 2016 station group 
of the year by Broadcasting and Cable Magazine. Ms. Barr has 
spent more than four decades leading and working in broadcast 
newsrooms.
    Before joining GMG, Ms. Barr served as President and 
General Manager at ABC 7 Chicago from 1997-2012, and WTVD TV, 
an ABC-owned station in Raleigh from 1994-1997.
    Currently, she serves on the boards of both the Associated 
Press and the Television Bureau of Advertising and is the Chair 
for television for the National Association of Broadcasters.
    Ms. Barr was most recently named 2020's Broadcaster of the 
Year by Broadcast and Cable. Ms. Barr received her BA from 
Carleton College and her master's degree from George Washington 
University.
    Our fifth Witness, Glenn Greenwald, is a journalist and 
constitutional lawyer. In 2014, Mr. Greenwald co-founded First 
Look Media's The Intercept, an online publication where he 
served as an editor. He left the publication in 2020 and 
currently operates a popular substack newsletter.
    Prior to joining the Intercept, Mr. Greenwald's work was 
featured by both The Guardian and Salon. He has received a 
number of awards for his reporting, including the Park Center 
I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2018, and the 
2010 Online Journalism Award for his coverage of the abusive 
detention conditions of Chelsea Manning. The NSA reporting he 
led for The Guardian was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for 
public service. He has written four New York Times Best 
Sellers, including, ``No Place to Hide, Edward Snowden, the 
NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State.''
    Prior to his writing career, Mr. Greenwald was an active 
litigator specializing in civil rights and First Amendment 
cases. Mr. Greenwald received his bachelor's degree from George 
Washington University and his J.D. from New York University 
School of Law.
    Today's last Witness, Clay Travis, is the founder of 
Outkick the Coverage, a popular sports and entertainment 
website. He is also the host of Outkick the Coverage on FOX 
Sports Radio, the Outkick the Show Livestream, and Wins and 
Losses podcast on iHeart Radio. Mr. Travis has also written a 
number of books including, ``On Rocky Top: A Front-Row Seat to 
the End of an Era,'' and ``Republicans Buy Sneakers Too: How 
the Left is Ruining Sports with Politics.''
    Before his media career, Mr. Travis was a lawyer working in 
the U.S. Virgin Islands and Tennessee with a popular personal 
blog. He ended his legal career in 2006 to focus full-time on 
writing and entertainment. He has also served as a writer and 
editor at Deadspin, as well as a national columnist at 
Vanhouse.
    Mr. Travis received his bachelor's degree from George 
Washington University and his J.D. from Vanderbilt Law School.
    We welcome all our distinguished Witnesses, and we thank 
you for your participation in today's hearing. I will begin by 
swearing in our Witnesses.
    I ask our Witnesses testifying in person to rise, and I ask 
our Witnesses testifying remotely to turn on their audio and 
make sure that we can see your face and your raised right hand 
while I administer the oath.
    Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the 
testimony you are about to give is true and correct to the best 
of your knowledge, information, and belief, so help you God.
    Let the record show the Witnesses have answered in the 
affirmative. Thank you. You may be seated.
    Please note again to all the Witnesses that your written 
statements will be entered into the record in their entirety. 
Accordingly, I ask that you summarize your testimony in 5 
minutes.
    To help you stay within that timeframe, there is a timing 
light in WebEx. When the light switches from green to yellow, 
you have 1 minute to conclude. When the light turns red, it 
signals that your 5 minutes have expired.
    I begin now by recognizing Mr. Chavern for 5 minutes.

                   TESTIMONY OF DAVID CHAVERN

    Mr. Chavern. Thank you, Chair Cicilline, Ranking Member 
Buck, and the Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for 
inviting me to participate in today's hearing.
    My name is David Chavern, and I am the President and CEO of 
the News Media Alliance, a nonprofit trade association 
representing over 2,000 news organizations across the United 
States. Our Members change from small, local newspapers to some 
of the largest news organizations in the world.
    The news media is and always has been an essential part of 
our democracy. We are, after all, the only business mentioned 
in the First Amendment. The core function of news media is to 
provide robust coverage of global, national, and local issues 
from COVID-19 pandemic to corruption by State officials. Their 
ability to fulfill that role, however, is under threat, and 
Congress' help is needed to combat that threat.
    Though journalist commitment to public interest has 
remained the same, the way that readers consume news content 
and advertisers communicate with those consumers has changed 
dramatically over the years. As the world has moved online, so 
has our industry. Our innovations have allowed news media to 
provide real-time updates on rapidly unfolding stories, such as 
catastrophic weather events and public health crisis.
    Local journalism has also acted as a clear antidote to the 
scourge of misinformation impacting communities across the 
country. Fundamentally, our leadership is at its highest levels 
ever.
    While news organizations continue to invest heavily in 
generating critically valuable reporting, a few dominant 
companies in the digital ecosystem ensure that little value is 
returned to publishers. The government cannot regulate the news 
business under the First Amendment, but there are now two 
companies, in particular, Google and Facebook, that clearly do 
regulate us. Their algorithms determine when and if news is 
seen in search results and search feeds; they determine how 
news is presented to readers; they collect and control data 
about our news audiences; and they control the systems and 
markets around digital advertising. These challenges are born 
of dominance, and they impact news publishers of every type no 
matter the form of ownership or ideological balance of their 
editorial pages.
    In thinking about the future of news, too often we get 
pulled back into debates about past business models. I am here 
to ask a question about the future. Do we want professional 
local journalism to continue to be available to the public, or 
don't we? Because if we maintain our current path, we will see 
the ultimate destruction of quality, local news for most of the 
public without any rational expectation of alternatives or a 
new entrance. Hope is not a strategy, nor is it the basis for 
sustainable market for news. We need solutions now.
    So, what do we need from Congress? First and foremost, 
local news publishers need the ability to collectively 
negotiate with the major platforms as contemplated by the 
Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. In the face of 
dominant intermediaries, it is unconscionable to prevent 
publishers from working together to fight for their own future. 
The publishers most in need of collective action are local and 
community publishers who have no individual capacity to assert 
their value against the major platforms.
    Experience from around the world has now taught us that 
this might not be enough. As we have seen in Europe and 
Australia when pressed, Google and Facebook will refuse to 
negotiate, threaten, in some cases actually cut off access to 
news content, and offer limited compensation to selected 
publishers in an attempt to forestall legislation. We should 
all understand that these actions are, in and of themselves, 
fundamental expressions of market dominance.
    We would suggest that the Congress consider expansions of 
the JCPA that would include an oversight mechanism to ensure 
good faith negotiations by the platforms, that would result in 
equitable treatment for local and community publishers, and 
that any compensation model will reward investments made by 
publishers in journalists and journalism.
    Such a system could be structured in a variety of different 
ways, but fundamentally, it would be a limited and focused 
response to the challenge of ensuring a future for local 
journalism. All we're really asking for is a fair chance to 
fight for ourselves and our futures. Thank you again very much, 
and I look forward to your questions.
    [The statement of Mr. Chavern follows:]
    
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    Mr. Cicilline. I thank the gentleman for his testimony.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. Smith for 5 minutes for his 
opening statement.

                    TESTIMONY OF BRAD SMITH

    Mr. Smith. Thank you, Chair Cicilline, Ranking Member Buck, 
other Members of the Committee, it's a pleasure for me to be 
here. Let me say, as well, thank you Representative Jayapal for 
that kind introduction from a neighboring Washingtonian.
    Let me first say the obvious, Microsoft is a tech company, 
and like every business, we have business interests. There are 
some steps this Subcommittee could take that will make us more 
challenged in our business. It may make it more costly to do 
business. There are other steps this Subcommittee could take 
that will help us in our business. Yet, I have to say what is 
also obvious is that the issues before this Committee are not 
about our business or any single business. They are about an 
issue far bigger than that. They're about the future of 
journalism in this country.
    If one thing is clear, it's this: for almost 250 years, 
journalism has been a lifeblood of democracy. This is 
especially true at the local level. Local news plays critical 
roles in telling people about what their school board is 
considering or exposing corruption in public office. It does a 
lot more than that too. It tells an entire community about 
what's going to happen at the county fair or about the high 
school band or about a church retreat.
    I think it's really interesting that Alexis de Tocqueville 
was one of the first tourists, if you will, to visit America--
this was in 1835. After visiting community after community, he 
talked about the role that newspapers played in preserving 
freedom. Then he said this, ``To suppose that they serve only 
to protect freedom is to diminish their importance. They 
maintain civilization.'' That is true. The news maintains 
American civilization.
    As you noted, Chair Cicilline, the news in America today is 
not alive and well. Almost every American knows from an early 
age that we are a country of 50 States. We're also a Nation of 
3,142 counties. It is at the county level and in cities and 
towns that communities and people live their lives.
    Yet, after the decline, the collapse of more than 2,000 
newspapers, we now live in a Nation where almost half of our 
counties are down to one newspaper at best, 1,540 of those 
counties, 200 of which have no newspaper at all. Of everything 
I have read about the State of journalism in America and its 
impact, nothing is more impactful to me than the statement of a 
citizen in Florida who talked about what had happened after 
they had lost their local newspaper. He said, ``After several 
years without a strong local voice, our community does not know 
itself.'' How do we maintain civilization? How do we protect 
democracy if our communities no longer know themselves? That is 
the issue to be addressed.
    We all know how this has happened. It's because of 
technology. Technology that in so many ways, including for my 
own company we believe has done so many good things for the 
country and the world. Yet, it's also perfectly clear that what 
was previously advertising revenue for newspapers has instead 
moved to advertising revenue for tech companies.
    In fact, what we have seen is the decline in advertising 
revenue for newspapers fall from $48 billion to 14. That is a 
deep hole that no one has been able to make up. So, what do we 
do? That is the question of the day, and I will offer three 
thoughts.
    First, I think that you all are on the right path. That's 
why Microsoft is endorsing the Journalism Competition and 
Protection Act, the JCPA, to give news organizations the 
ability to negotiate collectively, including with Microsoft. 
Because as presently drafted, we will be subject to its terms.
    Second, I think it's good to consider additional ideas, 
including ideas that we have worked with recently firsthand in 
Australia. Ideas that would impose on tech companies an 
obligation to bargain in good faith, to avoid retaliation, to 
be transparent about their practices. These are worthy of 
competition and consideration by the Antitrust Subcommittee.
    Finally, I hope that the Subcommittee will continue its 
work to think more broadly about the fundamental lack of 
competition, especially in search and digital advertising that 
are at the heart of not just the decline in journalism but the 
decline and challenge in many sectors of the economy. That too 
is worthy of consideration when it comes to potential new 
legislation.
    In short, the issues are big, the needs are urgent, the 
time is now, and we welcome the opportunity to be part of this. 
Thank you.
    [The statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
    
    
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    Mr. Cicilline. Thank you, Mr. Smith, and we are really 
grateful for your testimony.
    I now recognize Mr. Schleuss for 5 minutes.

                 TESTIMONY OF JONATHAN SCHLEUSS

    Mr. Schleuss. Chair Cicilline, Ranking Member Buck, and the 
Members of the Subcommittee, thank you so much for having me. 
My name is John Schleuss, and I am President of the NewsGuild- 
CWA, and I am here to tell you about the extinction level event 
workers are facing in the news industry.
    We are the largest union of journalists in the United 
States with thousands of news workers among our Membership at 
large publications like the Washington Post and The New York 
Times, but also the small ones, like the Billings Gazette in 
Montana, and the Jacksonville, Florida-Times Union. We are part 
of the larger union, the communications workers of America.
    I grew up in rural South Arkansas, and I remember as a kid, 
my grandmother got two newspapers every day. In the morning, 
she got the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and in the afternoon, 
she got the Camden News. Fast forward to my first full-time job 
in the industry which ended up being at the Arkansas Democrat-
Gazette as their online editor and a background both in 
computer programming and in journalism, and I fused my fields 
to help us transition from printed newspapers to better news 
online.
    Two months into my job, the head of the company pulled 
everyone into a room and told us that we were merging with our 
competing newspaper. Within a couple of months, hundreds of 
people lost their jobs. I remember seeing reporters, mothers 
and fathers crying in offices not knowing what their futures 
were going to look like. That was a quick introduction into the 
radical shift in the news industry.
    That's been my life, and that's been the life of so many 
journalists across our country. Cuts, consolidation, and local 
news sources getting bought out and gutted. At that time, I was 
told that for every dollar that that newspaper brought in, 90 
cents of it came from advertising, print advertising.
    Today's things are radically different. In the last 16 
years, 2,100 newsrooms across the country have shut down, and 
there are half as many newspaper journalists working today as 
there were a decade ago. That's 36,000 journalists no longer 
working in cities and towns across the United States--not 
covering city council meetings, not covering school boards, not 
providing communities a voice.
    The pandemic and widespread economic pain across the 
country has sped up the revenue losses in newsrooms. The 90 
cents that newspapers used to earn, that's gone too, as 
revenue--print revenue is dried up, and digital advertising is 
raked in by almost, just two companies, Google and Facebook. 
That revenue loss resulting from the platforms dominant market 
position has left many newsrooms in a weakened financial 
condition. That has left them vulnerable to take over by 
predatory financial actors who don't care about local news, 
they only care about cash extraction, and they accomplish that 
by strip-mining local news outlets and cutting local staff.
    What's left are ghost newspapers or no news coverage at 
all. These hedge funds like Alden Global Capital are gutting 
people off from knowing what's happening in their communities 
and eroding our democracy. Alden's gobbled up local newspapers 
and gutted them. Quick institutions like The Denver Post and 
the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and the Orange County Register, at 
12 publications where we have data, Alden cut staff by more 
than 75 percent since 2012, faster than the already devastating 
industry decline.
    The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act accurately 
identifies the problem of excessive market power of Facebook 
and Google, and we appreciate the bill's focus on rectifying 
the core power imbalance between those platforms and the news 
companies. Google and Facebook benefit from the stories 
produced by journalists, and they use that traffic to sell ads, 
capturing a majority of the digital ad revenue.
    The companies should pay their fair share when benefiting 
from sharing of news stories. However, because many news 
companies put shareholder profits above our communities, we 
need specific enforceable requirements to make sure that 
additional revenue is tied to local news jobs.
    We recommend that at least 60 percent of any added revenue 
generated through collective industry bargaining be dedicated 
to new jobs. Further, we were experiencing a wave of 
unionization these past 3 years with thousands of workers 
organizing to protect their jobs and their publications.
    Any organization receiving additional revenue must be 
required to bargain in good faith and remain neutral when 
workers want to organize a union. We also want to ensure that 
medium and smaller publications benefit, because the industry 
is so consolidated. Even just in the past 2 years, five 
companies, several of them controlled by hedge funds, owned \1/
3\ of America's daily newspapers and \1/2\ of all newspaper 
circulation.
    In addition to taking on the tech platform's predatory 
behavior, we must also address the attacks on local news by 
vultures like Alden by passing the Stop Wall Street Looting 
Act.
    The crisis in local news is a crisis of democracy. Congress 
needs to use its power to respond to the crisis for the good of 
our country. Thank you.
    [The statement of Mr. Schleuss follows:]
    
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    Mr. Cicilline. Thank you, Mr. Schleuss, and I apologize for 
the mispronunciation. I won't get that wrong again.
    I now recognize Ms. Barr for 5 minutes.

                    TESTIMONY OF EMILY BARR

    Ms. Barr. Good morning, Chair Cicilline, Ranking Member 
Buck, and the Members of the Subcommittee. My name is Emily 
Barr, and I am the President and CEO of Graham Media Group, 
owner of seven local television stations. I appreciate the 
opportunity to testify on behalf of the National Association of 
Broadcasters and its nearly 7,200 free and local television and 
radio station Members in your hometowns.
    Broadcasters represent one of the last bastions of truly 
local, unbiased journalism--information that is still respected 
by all Americans. Your constituents turn to their local 
reporters and anchors for voices they trust. Legislative 
action, including swift passage of the Journalism Competition 
and Preservation Act, is needed to preserve this essential 
cornerstone of our democracy.
    This past year challenged us in myriad ways, but among the 
most painful for many Americans was the isolation they 
experienced--detachment from their families, neighbors, and 
communities. When it was needed most, local television and 
radio stations provided the civic bond for the communities we 
serve, doing incredible work in the face of our own enormous 
challenges.
    We continue to be the primary source of the community-
focused information on which your constituents have relied 
during this pandemic. How do I keep my family safe? When and 
where can I get vaccinated? When can I visit my grandparents? 
When can my children safely go back to school? These are the 
questions that we help our viewers and listeners navigate every 
day.
    This past year has also tested our democracy and the very 
pillars upon which it stands, including a free and diverse 
press. Due in large part to the misinformation circulating 
unchecked in the digital ecosystem, more and more Americans 
have lost faith in the information reaching their eyes and 
ears. Fortunately, local broadcasters remain a touchstone for 
the truth and are the most trusted source of information in the 
country.
    I am proud that Graham Media stations exemplify this 
commitment to community and truth. For example, Floridians who 
were recently shut out by the State's failed unemployment 
system did what Americans do when there's no one else to turn 
to: They called upon their local broadcaster. WKMG in Orlando 
answered that call, shining a light on that crisis and creating 
the publicity and pressure needed to put nearly a million 
dollars in unpaid benefits back into the hands of Floridians 
entitled to them.
    I've spent over four decades in local broadcast television, 
working in virtually every capacity, from the newsroom to the 
boardroom, and I understand the significant cost of producing 
quality journalism. Quality journalism, delivered through our 
uniquely free service, has only been made possible over many 
decades through advertising revenues. As you all are aware, 
these revenues have experienced a freefall in recent years due 
almost exclusively to the rapid, often anticompetitive 
expansion of the dominant online platforms.
    The market power of the tech platforms undermines the 
online advertising model for local broadcast journalism in two 
important ways. First, the tech platforms' role as content 
gatekeepers stifles our ability to generate user traffic. 
Second, anticompetitive terms of service and a take-it-or-
leave-it approaches leave local broadcasters with a below-
market sliver of those ad revenues.
    For local broadcasters and our viewers and listeners, this 
is a catch-22. To attract online user traffic, we must be 
accessible through the major platforms, yet the terms of access 
dictated by the platforms devalue our products.
    Even more concerning is the degree to which certain 
platforms commoditize news content with little regard for the 
quality and veracity of the story. This puts fact-based 
reporting like ours on par with unsubstantiated clickbait as we 
fight for user eyeballs in both platform newsfeeds and 
traditional search. The result is a dangerous focus on catchy 
headlines and viral stories over quality journalism.
    This market transformation has been exacerbated by 
deliberate decisions on the part of the tech platforms to put 
technological and systemic roadblocks in the way of 
broadcasters trying to gain access to these platforms.
    The barriers to entry erected by the major platforms take 
on many forms. For example, decisions about which content will 
be prioritized by algorithms often favor sensationalism and 
misinformation over hard journalism. Platforms decide 
unilaterally which content can be monetized and how much 
revenue they will share. As a result, the dominant online 
platforms have flourished, siphoning off huge amounts of 
advertising revenues that are the lifeblood of free local 
journalism.
    One significant step toward curing these harms would be the 
passage of the JCPA. NAB strongly supports this targeted, 
commonsense proposal which would give broadcasters and other 
news publishers the ability to level the playing field in 
negotiations with the tech giants.
    In addition to the JCPA, NAB looks forward to working with 
Congress to explore additional policy remedies to ensure that 
journalists and news organizations are fairly compensated for 
the reporting and content they create, recognizing the inherent 
value of this original content.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you 
today, and I look forward to your questions.
    [The statement of Ms. Barr follows:]
    
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    Mr. Cicilline. Thank you so much, Ms. Barr, for your 
testimony.
    I now recognize Mr. Greenwald for 5 minutes.

                  TESTIMONY OF GLENN GREENWALD

    Mr. Greenwald. Good morning, Chair Cicilline, Ranking 
Member Buck, and the Members of the Committee. Thank you so 
much for the opportunity to participate in these hearings.
    My name's Glenn Greenwald, and the work I have been doing 
for the last 25 years, first for a decade or so as a 
constitutional lawyer and then for the last 15 years as a 
journalist, as somebody who has done much investigative 
reporting that has provoked the ire of many governments around 
the world, who has co-founded a media outlet in 2013 and helped 
to grow it through 2020 in this very difficult climate, and as 
a co-founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, devoted to 
defending the right of journalists to be free of government 
retaliation, I have a really passionate and deep and 
longstanding interest in the issues before this Committee.
    I think, as well, that this Subcommittee has done some of 
the most important work, particularly with the October report, 
in documenting the serious menace that Silicon Valley monopoly 
power has, not just for our political life but for the flow of 
information and, increasingly, other sectors of our life.
    I certainly agree with everyone who has spoken before me 
about the serious problem of, particularly, local news outlets 
failing as a result of their inability to find a financial 
model to sustain themselves in this climate. I nonetheless do 
have concerns about the proposed solution pending before the 
Subcommittee.
    If you look at the last 5-6 months, I believe strongly that 
the problem of Silicon Valley [inaudible] of their monopoly 
power interfering [inaudible] has worsened quite severely. 
Three incidents in particular that I define and describe in my 
opening statement, one being what Congressman Jordan referred 
to as the censorship of what turned out to be completely 
accurate reporting based on authentic and genuine documents 
broken by the New York Post, the Nation's oldest newspaper, 
about the front-running Presidential candidate in the weeks 
leading up to the election by Twitter simply banning any 
discussion of that story and locking that newspaper out of its 
account unless they agreed to delete all references to their 
own reporting. Facebook algorithmically suppressing the ability 
for that story to spread was an extremely disturbing example of 
the ability of tech giants to interfere in our elections.
    The same took place with the removal of the sitting 
President of the United States, which, although supported by 
many in the United States, was condemned by world leaders, 
including many who had a very adversarial relationship with 
President Trump--Chancellor Merkel in Germany, the President of 
Mexico, French and E.U. officials--on the grounds that tech 
giants are posing a threat not just to American democracy but 
to world democracy.
    The concern that I have is that, often, we talk about the 
relationship between journalists and the media industry on the 
one hand and tech giants on the other as a predator-prey 
relationship where the tech giants are the predators and the 
news industry is the prey, but oftentimes that's not the case. 
If you look at the most serious and disturbing instances of 
tech censorship over the past 6-12 months, one would expect, 
based on the traditional model of news media to uphold the 
values that Chair Cicilline referred to as a free and diverse 
press, to condemn and oppose that kind of censorship, and yet 
the opposite happened. Oftentimes, the journalists were not 
only supporters of it after the fact but leading proponents of 
it beforehand, pressuring these tech companies to censor and to 
silence ideologies with which they disagree or competitors to 
these organizations.
    I am concerned, in particular, that by empowering a news 
media that believes not necessarily any longer in a free and 
diverse press but in ideological homogeneity that they can use 
this new power to impose these values of censorship, of 
silencing news outlets with which they disagree in the name of 
quality control.
    I am particularly worried that we have a news media that is 
becoming, itself, increasingly concentrated, where The New York 
Times is essentially becoming like the Amazon of journalism. 
This Subcommittee issued a report filled with extremely 
promising and important solutions to the problem of 
monopolistic power. I'm concerned that if the Subcommittee 
instead starts taking a piecemeal approach to appease and 
aggrandize the most powerful industries, like journalists, it 
could forestall the opportunity to get to the root of the 
problem that is concerning people across the ideological 
spectrum, which is the need to apply antitrust laws to these 
growing monopolies not on a case-by-case basis but overall. So, 
I hope the Committee stays focused on its outstanding report 
that it issued.
    Thanks again for the opportunity.
    [The statement of Mr. Greenwald follows:]
    
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    Mr. Cicilline. The gentleman yields back.
    I now recognize Mr. Travis for 5 minutes.

                    TESTIMONY OF CLAY TRAVIS

    Mr. Travis. Chair Cicilline, the Members of the 
Subcommittee, I appreciate you having us all here today to talk 
about an incredibly important subject that impacts all of us, 
Democrats, Republicans, independents alike.
    Nearly 10 years ago, I started my own company, having no 
idea what direction media was going to move. That company, 
OutKick.com, is now one of the largest sports and opinion 
independent websites in the country. We've had a great deal of 
success.
    I also host a daily sports talk radio show from 6:00-9:00 
a.m. eastern, all 50 States, 300-plus AM/FM stations. On August 
the 11th, the President of the United States came on my radio 
program. He came on because he wanted to talk about the need 
for college football and college sports to be played this fall. 
Not a particularly partisan issue. We talked about the NBA. We 
talked about the NFL. We talked about sports as the Nation 
experiences sports.
    The day after the President came on my radio show--we 
covered that day, August the 11th, the stories that came out of 
that interview aggressively, as anyone would who had the 
President of the United States on their radio show. The day 
after that interview, Facebook tanked our traffic.
    The data in the appendices that we attached for you show 
that the next day and over the next week Facebook removed 68 
percent of our audience, 76 percent of our new users. That cost 
my company hundreds of thousands of dollars.
    To me, it was clear content-based speech discrimination. 
Facebook didn't like that we had the President of the United 
States on our radio program, and they also didn't like that the 
majority of the coverage of that interview was positive--which, 
as a sports fan, it's hard to be negative when the favor of the 
President is aligned with games actually being played.
    That, to me, is an interesting anecdote into the 
overwhelming power that we have given to the Big Tech companies 
in this country.
    It doesn't stop there either. There's an interesting thing 
that happened to us just in the last couple of weeks. Some of 
you may have read an editorial in The Wall Street Journal by a 
man named Dr. Makary, who is a Johns Hopkins doctor--highly 
qualified. His opinion, written on the editorial page of The 
Wall Street Journal newspaper, his opinion was that, based on 
the current rate of vaccination as well as the people who had 
already been exposed to COVID, it was likely by the end of 
April that herd immunity would be reached in this country. 
Certainly, some scientists and doctors agree with that; 
certainly, some scientists and doctors disagree with that 
opinion.
    We wrote about that editorial opinion on our website. The 
article was not in any way complicated or difficult. In fact, 
our headline was straightforward: ``Johns Hopkins Medical 
Professional: Herd Immunity Will Be Here By April.''
    We published that on Facebook. Within a matter of days, we 
received a notification from Facebook with the downright 
Orwellian subject, ``Important Notification: Misinformation 
Violation.''
    Facebook told us that we were not allowed to share the 
opinion of a doctor on our website because they said it was a 
fact-check inaccuracy. It was, Members of the Subcommittee, an 
opinion of a reasoned and well-learned doctor. That is what the 
scientific method is. We argue about what the truth is in this 
country, with an idea that we reach a better conclusion.
    Facebook's own fact-checkers labeled our article about an 
opinion to be factually inaccurate, which is an impossibility. 
Who checks the fact-checkers?
    Our traffic declined by 80 percent, as you can see, as soon 
as Facebook found this violation.
    We would all be rightly concerned if the Government of the 
United States was making these kinds of decisions. My concern 
is all the Big Tech companies now have the same power that 
China has to regulate the internet in its country. Instead of 
the government doing it, we have allowed Big Tech to do it.
    I thank you and look forward to your questions.
    [The statement of Mr. Travis follows:]
    
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    Mr. Cicilline. I thank the gentleman for his testimony.
    Now, we will proceed under the 5-minute rule. I will begin 
by recognizing Mr. Neguse from Colorado for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Neguse. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can you hear me?
    Mr. Cicilline. Yes, we can.
    Mr. Neguse. Okay. Great.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair and Chair Nadler for holding this 
timely hearing to examine legislative proposals to help local 
journalism and small publishers compete in the digital 
marketplace. I want to thank Chair Cicilline, you, in 
particular, for your leadership in this area.
    Colorado, which is the State that I represent in Congress, 
is all too familiar with the decline and closure of local 
newspapers outlets. The Rocky Mountain News closed a little 
over 12 years ago. The Rocky, as locals affectionately called 
it, was a newspaper before Colorado was admitted into the 
Union. Since then, we witnessed The Denver Post become acquired 
by a hedge fund, which led to layoffs and cost-cutting 
measures. In the last 10 years, we've gone from having 2 legacy 
newspapers with upwards of 500 journalists covering local and 
national issues to having 1 legacy newspaper with roughly 70 
journalists on staff.
    The reason why these trends are concerning is obvious. We 
have heard the compelling case from many of the Witnesses 
today. It's because local journalism and democracy go hand-in-
hand, and, simply put, the American experiment cannot work if 
the voters are not informed on their communities and their 
leaders.
    So, with that, I want to thank each of the Witnesses for 
being here and want to thank them for their thoughtful 
testimony.
    I want to start with a question that is relevant to my 
State. As I mentioned, in Colorado, The Denver Post went 
through with massive layoffs and budget cuts once their parent 
company was acquired by a hedge fund, Alden Global Capital. One 
Post reporter mentioned that the Post had, quote, ``70 people 
covering a metro area of about 3 million people.''
    Mr. Schleuss, is this situation unique to The Denver Post? 
Can you provide the Committee with more context on how the 
aggressive squeeze on ad revenues by tech giants really spurs 
predatory behavior that we've seen from some of these hedge 
funds to essentially gut local news?
    Mr. Schleuss. Absolutely.
    So, we have seen, as the shift from revenue for a lot of 
local newspapers has shifted away from getting a majority of 
the revenue from print advertising and less and less, as 
digital platforms like Google and Facebook take that up, it's 
allowed large private equity groups, like Alden Global Capital, 
to swoop in.
    So, it's not just The Denver Post but, other places where 
we represent Members--the East Bay Times in California, the San 
Jose Mercury News in California, the Monterey Herald, and the 
St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota.
    The goal for a lot of these hedge funds is to get profit 
margins up to a point that's not sustainable, get them up above 
16 percent, get them up to 20 percent, by getting rid of any 
assets, selling off the real estate to other companies in their 
control, cutting staff as much as possible.
    Right now they're in the process of trying to acquire 
another large publisher, Tribune Publishing, which has about a 
dozen newspapers from Chicago to Allentown, Pennsylvania, to 
Hartford, and to Orlando, Florida. They just want to get 
profits up as high as possible and will do that by cutting 
staff and cutting local news coverage.
    Mr. Neguse. Thank you, Mr. Schleuss.
    I guess a follow-up question, the logical extension, would 
be: What legislative proposals do you think this Committee 
ought to consider helping mitigate against some of these 
predatory practices by these companies?
    Mr. Schleuss. So, I think looking at just even the idea of 
these takeovers and mergers, right, we're at the point where 
the industry is super-consolidated and under extreme financial 
pressure by just a handful of actors. So, looking at any 
potential mergers and finding ways to create legislation that 
would incorporate the idea of, how will this affect local news 
coverage if this merger were to take place? What would it do to 
the local jobs and the economy?
    Because when we lose local news outlets across the country, 
no matter whether they're in blue districts or red districts, 
taxes go up, corruption goes up, and partisanship goes up as 
people have fewer and fewer outlets for facts.
    So, that would be one effort. Another thing is providing 
incentives. Let's get hedge funds out by providing incentives 
to get them to donate to foundations or nonprofits so that we 
can have sustainable, community-accountable local news.
    Mr. Neguse. Thank you, Mr. Schleuss.
    With that, again, I would say thank you to the Chair and 
also to the Ranking Member for their leadership on this 
important issue, and I look forward to partnering with both of 
them on this front. With that, I would yield back the balance 
of my time.
    Mr. Cicilline. The gentleman yields back.
    I now recognize the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, Mr. 
Buck.
    Mr. Buck. I thank the Chair for recognizing me. I'd ask the 
Chair to recognize Mr. Gaetz, and I will ask questions at the 
end, if that's okay.
    Mr. Cicilline. Of course.
    Mr. Gaetz is now recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Gaetz. Thank you, Mr. Chair. As usual, your approach to 
the way our Americans interact with these monopolistic 
platforms continues to be bipartisan and thoughtful, and I 
thank you for that.
    I'm a cosponsor of the JCPA, but after hearing some of the 
testimony, I'm wondering whether I should be. Not every failure 
of every local news entity is a failure of democracy. Sometimes 
it's just bad news. Sometimes the people who work in local 
journalism are the ones creating what Ms. Graham described as 
unsubstantiated clickbait. So, we cannot view it that way.
    Mr. Greenwald, I have some questions for you. I will 
confess at the beginning, though you once said I have, quote, 
``the worst ideology in Congress,'' I am a ravenous consumer of 
your content. I find it very thought-provoking, and I read you 
on Substack frequently.
    I want to ask--I want to go into one of the elements of 
your testimony where you talked about the potential for the 
JCPA to create a stratification within media where you create 
more distance between the large media conglomerates, Gannett or 
News Corp, and then maybe those smaller, more independent sites 
that are also creating good news.
    Are you worried that, by trying to remedy the monopolies in 
Big Tech, we create greater challenges in the monopolies of Big 
Media and make it even harder for independent, gritty 
journalism to survive?
    Mr. Greenwald. I do worry about that quite a bit, 
Congressman Gaetz.
    We've listened to many people speak quite accurately about 
the State of news industry today, and what we're hearing is not 
an idealized or romanticized picture that we might like to 
think about of having a diverse and dispersed power throughout 
the industry where lots of different voices can be heard, but, 
instead, a very concentrated industry, very similar, in fact, 
to Silicon Valley, maybe a few steps behind it, such that, if 
you empower this industry without including enormous numbers of 
big, clear, and concrete safeguards to prevent it, you could 
very well be essentially accelerating some of the worst 
industry trends, ensuring that, say, hedge funds who control 
the industries or media giants that exert overwhelming power, 
like The New York Times or digital outlets, can further 
entrench their power through this negotiating force that 
becomes an antitrust exemption in a way that I am concerned 
will both exacerbate the problems the Subcommittee is correctly 
identifying as a problem but also forestall the longer-term 
solutions of dealing with Silicon Valley monopolistic power 
that is at the root of all these problems.
    Mr. Gaetz. In that regard, you seem to agree with the 
fundamental premise laid out by Chair Cicilline and Ranking 
Member Buck.
    I mean, you are one of the founders of The Intercept. As a 
result of The Intercept not liking some of your criticism of 
the political left, you had to leave the entity you cofounded; 
you go to Substack to write. Now, even at Substack, there are 
efforts underway to cancel and censor journalists who are 
critical of other journalists.
    So, if the remedy that Mr. Cicilline and Mr. Buck have 
proposed is not the right one, what insight would you offer to 
get at the core problem?
    Mr. Greenwald. The concern I have is that the discussion 
and the legislation seem grounded in a premise that the only, 
or the primary, problem, both local and national journalism, is 
that Google and Facebook are vacuuming up advertising revenue 
and that, if you simply fix that problem, the problem of media 
failure will be rectified as well. I don't think that's true.
    There's reasons why consumers have turned away from 
journalism. I'm concerned that legislation like this can 
prevent the self-examination of why journalism has failed so 
many people, why people no longer trust it and put their faith 
in it.
    I do absolutely believe that the problem of Silicon Valley 
monopolistic power and its ability to interfere in our politics 
and to impede a free press is a very serious one, but, 
oftentimes, it's the media itself, it's journalists themselves 
who are demanding that power be exercised in a censorious way 
that undermines a free and diverse press.
    That's why I think that until the problem that this 
Subcommittee identified in that report is addressed head-on, 
which is breaking up the monopoly powers of this industry, none 
of these problems will really be fixed, and oftentimes these 
piecemeal solutions can make them much worse by empowering an 
industry that's causing many of them in the first place.
    Mr. Gaetz. Thank you for that thoughtful feedback.
    Thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Chair. I'll submit my 
additional questions for the Witnesses for the record, and I 
yield back.
    Mr. Cicilline. Thank you, Mr. Gaetz.
    I just want to make a quick point here if it's okay? I do 
think that people should understand that consumers have not 
turned away from journalism. They're consuming it at a higher 
rate than ever before.
    The bill that Mr. Buck and I have put forth, as well as a 
number of colleagues on this Subcommittee, provides a temporary 
fix for a 48-month period. In fact, anything these larger media 
companies would negotiate would be available to the smallest 
rural newspaper in any city and town in America, which I think 
protects against some of the concerns that Mr. Greenwald 
mentioned. So, we've thought about that, and I think the bill 
responds to that.
    Finally, I'd just say that, with respect to the larger 
challenges of antitrust and monopolization, the Committee 
intends to be very active on all the solutions contained in our 
report. We're not going to do either/or; we're going to do 
both. So, I just wanted to reassure the Witnesses of that.
    With that, I recognize the distinguished gentleman from the 
State of New York, Mr. Jones, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and also the Ranking 
Member for your bipartisan leadership on this issue.
    Of course, thanks to all our Witnesses for your testimony 
this morning. I'm glad we have a bill before us, as I alluded 
to, with such strong bipartisan support.
    Since today's hearing is about saving a free and diverse 
press, I want to center a topic we haven't heard enough about 
thus far, and that is the importance of journalism by and for 
communities of color. As the advertising market consolidates, 
we need to stand up for the media serving communities of color.
    In my district, that means publications like Black 
Westchester. AJ Woodson founded Black Westchester with a 
mission, and that mission is providing a platform for 
Westchester County's communities of color. That's especially 
important in Westchester County, which has a long history of 
housing discrimination and remains under a Federal consent 
decree to desegregate its neighborhoods.
    In Westchester, the mortality rate for the county's Black 
infants is four times higher than for White infants, and police 
arrest 15 times more Black people for cannabis possession than 
White people, even though Black people and White people use the 
drug [inaudible].
    All too often, Westchester official [inaudible] media 
organizations weren't reaching communities of color or 
listening to them. Today, Black Westchester helps bridge that 
gap.
    That's why Black Westchester has always been available 
online for free. If they put up a pay wall, they'd exclude the 
very people they're working to serve. So, to fulfill their 
mission, they depend on advertising.
    Lately, that ad revenue is harder and harder to come by. 
The challenging financial conditions Black Westchester is 
confronting are typical of the conditions that similar 
publications are confronting throughout the country.
    Now, this Committee's 2020 majority staff report is clear, 
Facebook and Google wield monopoly power over digital 
advertising and, as a result, over the freedom and diversity of 
the press and the future of our democracy.
    Two Big Tech companies shouldn't have the power to decide 
whether and how Black voices or the voices of any other 
marginalized communities are heard. That power should belong to 
us. Mr. Woodson put the problem perfectly: Quote, 
``Independent, free, and diverse press like us, how do we 
survive?''
    So, Mr. Schleuss, since you mentioned this issue in written 
testimony, let me ask you, how would the Journalism Competition 
and Preservation Act help local publications by and for people 
of color and other marginalized communities?
    Mr. Schleuss. So, the recommendation that I put forward 
that we actually make sure that we're targeting as much as we 
can to jobs would help go in that direction.
    I mean, this is a huge problem that we have and one of the 
major issues that folks organize unions around, because their 
newsrooms actually don't even look like the communities that 
they serve, right? The demographics are way out of whack.
    So, too, one of the things that Congress needs to focus on 
is making sure that there are ways for nonprofit or foundation 
support for communities of color, to make sure that we actually 
cover and support those voices.
    Because it goes back to, whether you have a publication in 
a big city or not, in a small town, it's a question of making 
sure that there's accountability there, that it looks like the 
community, and that it's actually giving that community a 
voice, regardless of race or ethnicity.
    Mr. Jones. Thanks.
    Mr. Chavern, finally, if the fundamental problem of 
Facebook and Google are their monopoly power, shouldn't all 
options be on the table, including breaking them up?
    Mr. Chavern. Oh, certainly. We have been supportive of 
certainly the Committee's work on antitrust and the judicial 
actions on antitrust.
    But a couple things: Those antitrust actions take a very 
long time, right? Many of these antitrust trials won't start 
for years. We have an immediate problem. To your earlier 
question, the ones most in need of collective action are small 
and community publishers, including, most particularly, 
publishers of color, who are suffering deeply in this broken 
marketplace for real, quality journalism.
    This is a product that is critically important to 
communities. It is more popular than ever. The system itself 
isn't rewarding it. That's not just a question of where the ad 
dollars go; that's a question of dominance from the two tech 
companies.
    So, if we want diverse voices of every perspective, we need 
a market for news content that works and that sustains new 
entrants and diverse voices, and we don't have that now. This 
is most particularly a problem for small and community 
publishers of every type.
    Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chavern.
    Mr. Chair, I yield back.
    Mr. Cicilline. The gentleman yields back.
    I now recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. Issa, 
for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Issa. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for holding this 
hearing. I think it gives us an opportunity to look at what is 
clearly a pervasive problem.
    I have not signed on to this particular solution, and I 
have a lot of questions. Probably the most notable question is, 
why is this not a joint hearing with the Intellectual Property 
and Courts Subcommittee, since clearly what we're talking about 
is negotiating over one organization's statutory intellectual 
property and finding a solution.
    Nevertheless, I'd like to talk primarily to the two 
Witnesses who are here in person.
    Mr. Greenwald, I'm going to try to make this rapid.
    Mr. Travis. Mr. Travis.
    Mr. Issa. Oh, Mr. Travis, I'm sorry. Mr. Travis--
    Mr. Travis. I've been confused for worse, trust me.
    Mr. Issa. Yeah. Yeah. Mr. Travis, thank you.
    Have you ever read ``Atlas Shrugged'' or ``Fountainhead''?
    Mr. Travis. A long time ago. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Issa. Mr. Smith, I assume you have too.
    Mr. Smith. Parts of it, a long time ago, yeah.
    Mr. Issa. Okay. Well, when I was listening to the 
Witnesses, I heard, quite frankly, exactly that. Rather than 
the courts deciding an antitrust problem and solution, I heard 
government saying--and in the case of both Graham Media and the 
NewsGuild, what they were saying was that we need to take an 
industry that is losing and we need to give them money from an 
industry that is winning to preserve that industry that is 
going away.
    Notwithstanding, whether that's right or wrong, did anyone 
hear anything differently here?
    Mr. Smith. Well, what I would say is, while there may be an 
element of that, I think there are two dimensions that change 
the normal situation:

    (1) LWe're talking about an industry that is suffering 
because of changes in competition that rightly can and should 
be addressed through antitrust law.
    (2) LWe're not talking about just any industry under the 
sun--

    Mr. Issa. No, Mr. Smith, I appreciate that. One of my 
challenges is, in fact, that, all the way back with Ayn Rand, 
we were taught a lesson, which is that when government starts 
to pick winners and losers, there's no end in sight. That's one 
of my concerns here, is, are we picking winners and losers? I 
think we clearly are.
    Now, there's no question at all that these companies own 
their intellectual property. In fact, we may want to give them 
additional rights to protect that property.
    Mr. Smith, I'll pose a question to you. Currently, if 
Google searches your copyrights and makes that available, do 
you have any objection? Do you need to monetize all of your 
copyrighted material that they go through and create searches 
for? I'm talking about Microsoft's own copyrighted material.
    Mr. Smith. We may not have objections with respect to the 
monetization or lack thereof for our content, but we're not in 
the news business. So, I don't think that what is true for us 
actually is all that relevant--
    Mr. Issa. Well--and let's go through the news for a moment. 
We'll stick to news for a moment.
    In 1982--and I'll go to Mr. Greenwald. In 1982, the 
Cleveland Press went out of business, and Cleveland went from 
two daily newspapers to one. Was that because of the internet, 
as far as you know?
    Mr. Travis. No. The internet did not exist in 1982.
    Mr. Issa. In fact, were newspapers diminishing and 
consolidating throughout the '60s--'90s, rather than expanding, 
particularly the classic daily citywide newspaper?
    Mr. Travis. I think to a large extent that is true.
    When you look--and the broader question that you're asking 
is a good one--can you create and fix antitrust violations, 
which I think are existing from Big Tech companies now, by 
creating an antitrust exemption for others, this is such a 
complex issue that seems to me to be a really--I understand the 
intent, and I think the intent is a good one. The challenge of 
correcting antitrust power by creating antitrust exemptions 
seems to me to be an inherent difficulty.
    Mr. Issa. I very much agree. I'm not trying to disagree 
with the problem, just question some of the solution.
    Let me just ask a question for anyone that wants to with 
the remaining few minutes. The New York Times, the L.A. Times, 
The Washington Post, have any of those organizations ever put 
things out in print that were untrue or chose not to print 
things which were true?
    Mr. Travis. Yes.
    Mr. Issa. Okay. So, if they do it, then we're really not 
talking about a difference in the case of Facebook or Google or 
any of the others. What we're talking about is who did it in 
the 18th and 19th century with impunity and who may be doing it 
today because of its market power. Is that true?
    Mr. Cicilline. The gentleman--the time of the gentleman has 
expired, but if the Witness wants to answer quickly, you may do 
so, if you understand the question.
    Mr. Smith. Well, we're not talking about when or who did 
it. We're talking about what laws apply to it. That's what I 
would say this is about.
    Mr. Cicilline. Thank you.
    The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. Deutch of Florida for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Deutch. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Chair, toward the end of his life, legendary journalist 
and America's most trusted name in news, Walter Cronkite, said, 
``I think it is absolutely essential in a democracy to have 
competition in the media, a lot of competition, and we seem to 
be moving away from that.''
    Over a decade since his death, we can agree that his 
warning was an extreme understatement. The harm of the 
anticompetitive practices of technology platforms like Facebook 
and Google sometimes feels very abstract, but the value of a 
free and diverse press, especially local news media, has a very 
tangible impact on our lives and on our communities. Local 
investigative journalism can root out corruption, bring 
attention to issues that matter in our communities but that 
don't and will never attract national attention.
    In the 3 years since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman 
Douglas High School, we saw the story fade from national 
headlines, but local outlets like the South Florida SunSentinel 
were exhaustively investigating the failures that contributed 
to that awful day--important work that was recognized with a 
Pulitzer Prize.
    Our community has worked, in our shared grief, to keep 
alive the memory of the 17 we lost that day--their hobbies, 
passions, and character. It's the work of the SunSentinel and 
The Palm Beach Post, the Miami Herald, the local broadcasters, 
other local news media, that's been an important part of 
telling these stories and demanding accountability.
    On the other hand, Facebook, Google, and other technology 
platforms played an instrumental role in spreading 
misinformation and conspiracy theories about the tragic event 
that day and many others. I've asked Google and Facebook and 
Twitter in hearings before the Judiciary Committee why they 
keep giving not just a platform but a megaphone to people who 
spread lies about the shooting in my district, the people who 
target children, the survivors, and their families.
    We need more responsible, high-quality journalism, and 
fewer monetized megaphones that some use to attempt to destroy 
lives.
    Mr. Chavern, how do we rebalance the scale? What are the 
main components of making online platforms take more 
responsibility for the content they carry and then leveling the 
playing field between these publishers and online platforms so 
that high-quality content gets elevated over conspiracies and 
misinformation?
    Mr. Chavern. Great. Thank you very much, Congressman.
    Two things. I agree with you, by the way; we want 
competition in the news media, but we currently have a market 
that suppresses it. It makes it impossible to develop new 
entrants and competitive voices, new diverse voices. If you 
were going to build a new entrant in local news, you're facing 
a marketplace dominated by two companies that suppresses the 
value of that content, makes it impossible to have new 
entrants.
    Secondly, specifically to your point, I have talked in 
other contexts about the role that section 230 plays in the 
ecosystem and, in particular, the platform's role in amplifying 
content, the choices the platforms make to decide what gets 
seen and what doesn't get seen.
    Too often, the discussion is about whether a particular 
piece of content should be labeled or moderated or taken down, 
and that avoids the question about what the platforms do, the 
choices they make, and the responsibilities they should have 
about the choices they make.
    So, I would say two things. One, we need a fairer capacity 
for news publishers to improve the market for quality news 
content, and we have to look at the responsibilities that the 
platforms should have for their decisions about amplifying 
content.
    Mr. Deutch. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Chavern.
    Ms. Barr, I mentioned the harm to communities and the harm 
to individuals who are the targets of lies. Your testimony 
raised a good point about the damage posed to responsible news 
outlets with the placement of responsible journalism alongside 
these kinds of lies.
    Can you just elaborate on the challenges that it poses to 
your business?
    Ms. Barr. Yes. Thank you very much, Congressman.
    Look, what happens is, we put our stories online, and I can 
tell you that roughly 60-70 percent of what we put out there is 
referred to us either by Google or Facebook. So, when those 
stories sit online adjacent to stories that might be 
misinformation or outright lies, clickbait, whatever you might 
want to call it, it literally diminishes our reputation and 
makes people distrust or causes some distrust.
    So, we then spend a lot of time trying to ensure that our 
viewers and users understand that we've researched, we have 
trained journalists, we know what it is we're trying to say. We 
have to also then go back and look at the stories that are 
incorrect and make sure they understand that those aren't 
believable. It's really difficult because, as we all know, a 
lie goes around the world very quickly.
    Mr. Deutch. Thanks, Ms. Barr.
    Mr. Chair, thank you for holding this important hearing.
    Thanks to all the Witnesses. The testimony of every one of 
you is really helpful and instructive.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Cicilline. Thank you.
    The gentleman yields back.
    I now recognize the gentleman from Oregon, Mr. Bentz.
    Mr. Bentz. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for this most 
interesting meeting.
    This first question is for Mr. Greenwald.
    It's been said about the Newspaper Preservation Act, passed 
back in 1970, that it was removing those so protected from the 
judgment of the marketplace. It's also been said that it failed 
to prevent abusive tactics, failed to help the smaller papers, 
did little to improve the quality of the opinions and writings 
of newspapers.
    Can you share with me the difference between that act, the 
Newspaper Preservation Act, and the bill that we're discussing 
today?
    Mr. Greenwald. Well, I think that this goes to the comment 
that Chair Cicilline made after the last time I spoke about how 
more and more people are consuming news than ever before, and I 
think that, if you ask people inside the news industry, 
virtually everybody will acknowledge that the reason for that 
is because of what was essentially a sugar high of the last 4 
years being one of the most polarized eras in American history 
because of the person who was occupying the Oval Office being 
so controversial and that, prior to that, there was a 
significant decline in the number of people who were trusting 
and consuming news content. Ratings were collapsing, local 
papers were losing subscriptions, people were talking about The 
New York Times going out of business, and there was a kind of 
temporary event that intervened to save the news industry, and 
that sugar high is now gone.
    If you look at data, there's no question that more and more 
people, more than ever before, distrust the media precisely 
because so much of the disinformation, conspiracy theories, and 
falsehoods come not from newly created sites online but from 
the very industry that this bill would essentially empower by 
enabling them to Act as a consortium.
    Mr. Bentz. Thank you. I'm not sure I heard an answer to my 
question there, but I'm going to go to Mr. Smith.
    Mr. Smith, it's been reported in the press that you were 
personally involved in the discussions with the officials in 
Australia, including the Prime Minister. What were your 
takeaways from your involvement that you think might be most 
relevant to the issues we're discussing today?
    Mr. Smith. Well, thank you. I actually think that there are 
some important takeaways from Australia that are very relevant 
to the conversation taking place.
    I'd actually go back to what Mr. Issa asked, is this about 
picking winners and losers, and I would say, no, it is not.
    Basically, Australia was addressing an issue similar to the 
United States. The reason that publishers cannot negotiate 
collectively is because of laws passed by Congress, the Clayton 
Act and the Fair Trade Commission Act. So, what Australia did 
was give publishers the ability to negotiate collectively.
    So, that's what this Congress would do. It would, Mr. Issa, 
going back to your point, by passing the JCPA, not pick 
somebody new but address the unintended consequences of what 
Congress did in the past when it crafted antitrust laws that 
got in the way of these collective negotiations.
    Now, the other thing that I think is very interesting and 
relevant from Australia is this. What we're funding is that the 
big publishers are not interested in negotiating collectively. 
The three largest news organizations in Australia are all 
negotiating separately. It is the small publishers that are 
negotiating collectively. I basically believe that if this 
Congress passed the JCPA you'd have 4 years to test the 
situation but in all probability that's what you would find 
here as well.
    Mr. Bentz. Thank you.
    Mr. Chair, I yield the balance of my time to Mr. Issa.
    Mr. Issa. Thank you.
    I'd like to follow up on exactly what you said. Let's 
presume for a moment that we like this bill, and we were going 
to pass it. Is there any reason that you wouldn't limit the 
collectives to companies that would be under a certain amount 
of size--in other words, limit it to those who inherently have 
limited market power? Because, here, The Wall Street Journal, 
The Washington Post, and others probably would turn away and 
say, no, we've got that handled.
    Mr. Smith. If that is an issue that concerns you, I think 
that there are two alternatives to address that. One is to pass 
the bill as drafted and you have 4 years and then it expires, 
or you renew it. The other is to craft some exception so that 
it only applies to, say, a publication below a certain revenue 
threshold.
    Either way, I think you are accomplishing what I believe is 
your fundamental goal, which is to enable the small 
publications of the country to be able to negotiate 
collectively.
    Mr. Issa. Well, you know, there's no smaller business, in 
most cases, than a recording artist. So let me ask one quick 
question--
    Mr. Cicilline. The time of the gentleman has expired.
    Mr. Issa. I would love to have, but--
    Mr. Cicilline. Maybe someone else can yield their time, 
but--
    Mr. Issa. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Cicilline. --the time of the gentleman has expired.
    I now recognize the gentleman from New York, Mr. Jeffries, 
for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Jeffries. I thank the distinguished Chair for yielding 
as well as for your leadership on this issue, along with the 
distinguished gentleman from Colorado, the Ranking Member.
    Justice Brandeis once observed that, in America, we can 
have democracy, or we can have wealth concentrated in the hands 
of the very few but we can't have both. I think it would be 
fair to say that it also seems to me to be the case that, in 
America, we can have democracy, or we can have the emasculation 
of the free and fair press, particularly at the local level, 
but we can't have both.
    As the Framers crafted this Republic--clearly, it is not a 
perfect Union; we're on the march toward a more perfect Union. 
They never promised a perfect country. They were imperfect 
themselves. They clearly understood the connectivity between 
the free and fair press, our democracy, liberty, and the 
Republic that they were building. There's a reason why the 
freedom of the press is in the First Amendment, not the 5th, 
10th, 15th, 20th, and thereafter.
    So, I appreciate this hearing and the importance of it to 
our democracy. It seems to me to be an existential question.
    Ms. Barr, you testified that the market power of the tech 
platforms undermines the online advertising model for local 
broadcast journalism. Can you elaborate on that particular 
point?
    Because I think what's being said is not that technology 
has changed and you no longer can receive revenue from the 
traditional print publications; it's that, even in the context 
of shifting to the digital platform, the current construct 
undermines your ability to secure advertising revenue. Can you 
elaborate on that?
    Ms. Barr. Yes. Thank you, Congressman Jeffries.
    So, what I meant by that is, in the current situation, a 
lot of our viewership, which used to be on television, on 
linear television, has shifted to usership, if you will, 
online, and, in so doing, we've seen our ratings on TV go down. 
While we do have more people accessing us online, the value of 
the advertising that we receive back online is a fraction of 
what we've lost on the television side.
    So, we're spending considerably more money to produce and 
support what goes online. It's not just taking the 6 o'clock 
news and putting it online. We're literally creating new 
content for online. We're doing it at great cost, without being 
able to return the same kind of revenues. So, as a result, 
we're just spending more to get less.
    Mr. Jeffries. Thank you.
    Mr. Smith, I appreciate your testimony and the support of 
Microsoft for this legislation. As I understand it, this could 
in some ways impact your business model, perhaps in a somewhat 
adverse fashion.
    So, I'm interested, Mr. Smith, in your assessment as to why 
the company has taken this position and why you think 
ultimately, it's a good thing for the country, democracy, and 
perhaps even the free and fair flow of commerce.
    Mr. Smith. Well, it's clear under the definitions in the 
legislation as drafted that news organizations would have the 
right to negotiate collectively with Microsoft because we would 
be an online content distributor. We meet the threshold of 
having more than a billion users per month for all our online 
services and websites put together. We do business with news 
publishers today. As I mentioned in my written testimony, we 
have an app, we have a service. We do business with hundreds of 
publishers. We serve that to millions and millions of people, 
and we share revenue. If this bill is passed, that means that 
these news organizations would be able to negotiate 
collectively with us. I assume that they will negotiate 
effectively with us.
    The reality is--and I said it at the end of my written 
testimony--what we're talking about here--and I thought your 
reference to the First amendment captured it perfectly--is far 
bigger than us. It is far bigger than technology. It is more 
important than any of the products that any of us produce 
today. Let's hope that, if a century from now people are not 
using iPhones or laptops or anything that we have today, 
journalism itself is still alive and well. Because our 
democracy depends on it.
    Mr. Jeffries. Thank you, Mr. Smith.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Cicilline. The gentleman yields back.
    I now recognize the Ranking Member of the Full Judiciary 
Committee, Mr. Jordan from Ohio, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    I would slightly disagree with the statement of Mr. Smith. 
What our democracy depends on is the First Amendment, not 
necessarily--journalism is fine and it's all part of it, as 
long as they're actually adhering to the First Amendment.
    Mr. Travis, at the end of your statement, you said, ``I'm a 
First amendment absolutist, and I believe cancel culture 
intertwined with identity politics is the greatest threat to 
our country.'' I could not agree more.
    Do you have a functioning First amendment when only one 
side is allowed to talk? Do you have free speech when Big Tech, 
Big Media, and Big Government decides what can be said and what 
can be seen?
    Mr. Travis. No, you don't.
    Mr. Jordan. Not at all.
    Mr. Travis. Not at all. I think that is the major issue 
that our country is facing today.
    Mr. Jordan. Yeah. More important that this broad concept of 
journalism, which I'm all for, it's the First Amendment, the 
right to speak and to speak in a political nature and not be 
censored for speaking out in a political fashion. Is that 
right?
    Mr. Travis. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Jordan. Mr. Chavern said in his opening statement that 
this bill would have high-quality, professional journalism 
would be able to form in this consortium and cartel.
    Is OutKick high-quality journalism?
    Mr. Travis. I would like to think so. Some would disagree.
    Mr. Jordan. Who gets to decide? Who defines what's high-
quality journalism?
    Mr. Travis. Well, I think that's one of the big challenges, 
is determining what is and what is not high-quality journalism. 
Some of the most high-quality journalism that we have seen over 
the years that has been praised has ended up not being true.
    That is why we need such a robust First amendment in 
general, so that our battles--the marketplace of ideas is now 
being artificially constrained, which is what I believe is 
happening now.
    Mr. Jordan. The market's supposed to decide and define what 
is high-quality journalism. The First amendment decides that, 
not government. Is that right?
    Mr. Travis. I think that's correct. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Jordan. You said something earlier too. You said, who 
fact-checks the fact-checkers? Who's supposed to do that?
    Mr. Travis. It's fascinating. In my example, Facebook has 
flagged two different stories at OutKick as disinformation and 
destroyed our traffic as a result.
    The first one was linking to the CDC website. We appealed 
and said, how can you make this determination? The second one, 
as I said, was pretty straightforward. We linked to a Wall 
Street Journal editorial from a high-end medical scientist 
analyzing COVID.
    Both of those were flagged. We lost hundreds of thousands 
of dollars in revenue because of Facebook's fact-checking 
decision. There was no appeals process. They don't even bother 
responding to us.
    Mr. Jordan. In a general sense, Mr. Travis, isn't it 
supposed to be the First amendment that also fact-checks the--
    Mr. Travis. The--
    Mr. Jordan. It's more speech, right? I mean--
    Mr. Travis. Yes.
    Mr. Jordan. --a number of Democrats have quoted Justice 
Brandeis. Justice Brandeis said, if there's, quote, 
``misinformation or disinformation out there, the answer is not 
to squelch that and stop that; the answer is to allow more 
speech to happen''--i.e., the First Amendment, correct?
    Mr. Travis. That is the entire theory of Justice Brandeis's 
view of the First amendment and the entire basis of the 
marketplace of ideas.
    Mr. Jordan. Mr. Chavern, do you think The London Times 
thought Thomas Paine was a high-quality journalist?
    Mr. Chavern. I'm not sure I could answer that. I'm not sure 
how to respond to that, Mr. Jordan.
    What I can say is that I represent a vast array of points 
of view in my Membership, and--
    Mr. Jordan. Okay.
    Mr. Chavern. --every one of them has a problem with the 
marketplace for their content that they invest in greatly. It's 
not working for any--
    Mr. Jordan. I'm not saying there's not a problem. I'm all 
for using antitrust to go after the Big Tech companies. I'm all 
for doing 230, something we could do right now. We could repeal 
230, take away the liability protection. We could do that right 
now if Democrats wanted to do that. We certainly do. We've 
introduced that legislation. I'm all for doing that.
    What I'm nervous about is this alliance between Big 
Government and Big Tech that Mr. Greenwald talked about.
    I also wanted to go to Mr. Greenwald and talk about this 
other alliance which I think is just as frightening, and that's 
the alliance between Big Tech and Big Government--Big Tech and 
Big Government.
    In your statement, Mr. Greenwald, near the end of it, you 
said: ``A mere 2 months after Parler ascended to the top of the 
charts, Members of Congress demanded that Apple and Google 
remove Parler from their stores and ban any further downloading 
of the app.''
    We've seen maybe a better example. Just a couple weeks ago, 
Mr. Greenwald, we saw two Democrats send a letter to AT&T 
telling them to take certain networks off their--not be a 
carrier for certain networks.
    I just want to read something and get your reaction to 
this. Because Mr. Travis said earlier, Mr. Greenwald--Mr. 
Travis said, we would all be rightly concerned if government 
was censoring speech and not Big Tech, but, frankly, it's both. 
Big Government is censoring speech, too.
    Because we had two Members, Democrat Members of Congress 
write to AT&T, and they said, ``we want a specific answer to 
this question: How many of your subscribers tuned in to FOX 
News, Newsmax, One America News on U-verse, DIRECTV, AT&T TV 
for each of the 4 weeks preceding the November 3, 2020, 
election? Please specify the number of subscribers that tuned 
in to each channel. So, basically, tell us who your customers 
are, how many you have, and what they were watching.''
    Mr. Greenwald, do you find that a little creepy and 
frightening like I do?
    Mr. Cicilline. The time of the gentleman has expired, but 
the Witness may answer the question briefly.
    Mr. Greenwald. Very briefly, it goes to the heart of the 
concern that I have, which is, I think there's a huge mismatch 
between the rhetoric that is being offered to justify this bill 
and what the bill does. If the concern is the failure of local 
newspapers, then give them the power to negotiate collectively, 
but not Big Media, which is so often embedded in the same 
problems that this Committee is discussing.
    Mr. Cicilline. The time of the gentleman has expired. He 
yields back.
    I now recognize the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Raskin, 
for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Raskin. Mr. Cicilline, thank you, Mr. Buck, thank you 
for your leadership on this legislation.
    Mr. Chavern, in the district that I represent, we've lost a 
ton of local newspapers in Montgomery County, Frederick County, 
and Carroll County. I remember, when I got to Annapolis as a 
State Senator, there were, I think, four reporters from The 
Washington Post. One covered the State House, one covered the 
State Senate, one covered the executive, and one covered the 
State courts. Today, they've got one reporter trying to cover 
all State government. That creates a serious problem in terms 
of transparency and integrity and corruption.
    So, this goes right to the heart of why we have a First 
amendment in democracy. It's all about self-government and 
making sure that people understand what government is doing.
    If we pass this legislation, is there actually hope of 
reviving local papers, or are we just trying to arrest the 
erosion in the numbers of journalistic entities that exist 
right now?
    Mr. Chavern. Oh, absolutely revive.
    I mean, what you're seeing is, the audience for that 
product is bigger than ever. The engagement with audiences is 
intense. Again, you're looking at an industry that has many, 
many more readers than it ever did in whatever the golden print 
era was.
    The finances are much, much worse. So, the reason why that 
is: The digital intermediaries, Google and Facebook, in 
particular, that stand between us, and our audience take most 
of that value. That has to be addressed.
    Mr. Raskin. Mr. Chavern, some of our colleagues have been 
railing about what they call ``cancel culture.'' I just made a 
quick list off the top of my head of some people that right-
wing conservatives have tried to censor or cancel, privately or 
publicly, or defund or boycott.
    Here are some of them: Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who they 
tried to kick off of her Chairship of the House Republican 
Conference; Senator Bill Cassidy from Louisiana; Senator 
Richard Burr; any of the 17 Republican Members of Congress who 
voted to impeach and convict Donald Trump for inciting violent 
insurrection against the Union; ABC; ACORN; TV host Samantha 
Bee; Campbell's Soup; the Dixie Chicks; The New York Times 
reporter Sopan Deb; comedian Kathy Griffin; Guinness; Hallmark; 
CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill; Nike; Pepsi; The New York 
Times; the words ``climate change'' and ``science-based'' in 
numerous government agencies and documents; Starbucks; Target; 
and on and on and on.
    So, do you find that the cancel culture is limited to one 
side of the political spectrum, or do you think there's a lot 
of right-wing cancel culture out there which really got this 
whole--all the engines of censorship revved up?
    Mr. Chavern. Congressman, I come at this, again, 
representing the people creating quality journalism. The best 
answers for all this is to have the most amount of good 
information, good journalism out there possible.
    We currently have a system that devalues that content and 
constrains our capacity to deliver good information. And the 
best answer is a diversity of journalism in the system.
    Mr. Raskin. Thank you.
    Finally, Mr. Smith, it's fascinating that you are here 
advancing the position you have.
    First, can you tell us how your quasi-monopoly power today 
to negotiate with isolated, nonorganized media publishers gives 
you a bargaining advantage?
    Then, if we do pass this legislation, do you think this is 
a transitory and transitional problem, or do you think it's 
systemic and structural and we're going to need to keep 
something like this going forward indefinitely?
    Mr. Smith. Well, I would focus on two things.
    First, I would focus, frankly, more on the needs of the 
smaller publishers. If you're a small news organization, if 
you're one of these 1,500 local county-based publications, I 
just think it's a lot easier to have somebody negotiate 
collectively on your behalf, it's a lot easier to have legal 
counsel work out the terms and conditions. Yeah, I just think 
you're going to enable them to pursue the kinds of agreements, 
whether it's with us or others, more easily and effectively.
    Will the--
    Mr. Raskin. It is--there's a provision in the legislation 
which says that it's got to benefit the entire industry, rather 
than a few publishers, and it's got to be nondiscriminatory 
with respect to other publishers.
    Isn't that right? Doesn't that take care of some of the 
problems that some of our colleagues have been raising about 
how this might entrench a new media establishment?
    Mr. Smith. I think that is helpful, and I think it's 
important and it's good for you to point it out.
    I would also just add, in response to your earlier 
question, I don't think that anybody really thinks that this 
one thing is a panacea. There are more steps that are going to 
be needed. I agree with Mr. Greenwald that there are other 
issues that need to be considered by Congress.
    Let's face it: This is not a problem that government alone 
can solve. Journalism will have to continue to evolve. Tech 
companies, like my own, are going to have to find new, creative 
ways so that journalism and technology can find some way to 
flourish together in a way that's not happening yet.
    Mr. Cicilline. The time of the gentleman has expired.
    Mr. Raskin. I yield back.
    Mr. Jordan. Mr. Chair?
    Mr. Cicilline. I now recognize Mr. Steube for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Jordan. --unanimous consent?
    Mr. Cicilline. Oh, sure. The gentleman is recognized for a 
unanimous consent--
    Mr. Jordan. Thank you. I ask unanimous consent to enter 
into the record an article from last night from Breitbart, 
``Congress Wants to Give the Establishment Media a Massive 
Handout.''
    Mr. Cicilline. Without objection.
    [The information follows:]



      

                       MR. JORDAN FOR THE RECORD
                       
                       
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[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    Mr. Jordan. Thank you.
    Mr. Cicilline. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Steube for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Steube. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    After years of allowing false information about President 
Trump and the false Russia collusion information that we saw 
perpetrating across the American sphere, social media platforms 
then decided to ban legitimate content about Hunter Biden.
    This is disturbing because it's a reflection of the role 
these companies wish to play in dominating civic life and 
public discourse, when, at the same time, The Washington Post 
and The New York Times haven't been the best fact-checkers. A 
concern of mine is that, in addressing social media's dominance 
over the news, we will just end up allowing a different set of 
actors to do the same thing.
    My questions are for Mr. Travis and for Mr. Greenwald. How 
can we tackle this issue to create a fair playing field that 
promotes free speech and does not suppress ideas that are out 
of favor with elites in this country?
    Mr. Travis. I think it's one of the most fundamental issues 
of American society today. How do you determine what stories 
are able to be shared and what stories are able not to be 
shared?
    Frankly, I don't consider it partisan at all that, when the 
New York Post has its Twitter account absolutely shut down 
because of the news story that they are putting out and all Big 
Tech corresponds in conjunction together, that's the very 
definition, to me, of antitrust action.
    I wrote in my testimony, and I wanted to just hit it, I 
mean, think about how crazy it is that all the tech companies, 
in concert, whether you agree or disagree--and I come to this 
from a completely nonpartisan issue. Whether you agree or 
disagree with what the President of the United States at the 
time, Donald Trump, was doing on social media, everyone out 
there should be terrified of how quickly everyone shut him 
down.
    Listen to this. In January of this year, Facebook, Twitter, 
Google, Spotify, Snapchat, Instagram, Shopify, Reddit, Twitch, 
YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest all either banned or restricted 
the democratically elected President of the United States from 
speaking to the country on their platforms.
    Right now, Donald Trump may be the focus, but Big Tech has 
set the precedent that, if they want to shut anyone down, even 
the most powerful person in all democracy can be shut down.
    So, how do you regulate the power that Big Tech has 
grabbed? I think the question that you're asking is probably 
the most central and important question that confronts our 
country today, because Trump will not be the last figure to 
have this happen to him. That's my concern.
    Mr. Steube. That's a great point you bring out.
    Mr. Greenwald, do you want to add anything to that?
    Mr. Greenwald. Just briefly, that there are representatives 
of my industry and my profession here with me testifying, and 
often what we hear is, well, we're professional journalists, 
we're here to combat disinformation and ensure free and diverse 
viewpoints that are aired. So, often the reverse is true.
    If you look, for example, at what happened in that Hunter 
Biden banning by Twitter and Facebook, the argument that was 
advanced by those companies to justify it was that the 
materials reported by the New York Post were, quote, ``Russian 
disinfor-
mation.'' That came from news media outlets saying that, and 
everyone now knows that that is untrue. Even the FBI 
acknowledges Russia played no role in that and that the 
documents were genuine.
    So, often, the most damaging conspiracy theories and 
disinfor-
mation come from the most prestigious news outlets--obviously, 
the most destructive case being the claims that were made that 
led the country to invade Iraq.
    So, I think that the concern I have is that, if we adopt 
this narrative that the reason media outlets are failing is 
only because of Google and Facebook, we allow this industry 
that needs so much self-examination to essentially be off the 
hook.
    If you allow the biggest players--The New York Times, Jeff 
Bezos's Washington Post--to be at that table and give them an 
antitrust exemption, you're essentially creating now two 
consortiums instead of eliminating the one that's at the root 
of all the problems.
    Mr. Steube. Well--and I personally believe that, until we 
address section 230 reforms and liability protection reforms 
that these companies have, that we're never going to see a 
change in the behavior. Because if we simply just split up the 
companies, they're still going to Act and behave in the manner 
in which they're acting, because they have liability protection 
to do that.
    I would encourage any of my Democratic colleagues on this 
Committee or on the Full Committee, if you want to work 
together on that issue, I have a bill. Would love to sit down 
with you and talk to you about it.
    My time has almost expired. I yield back, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Issa. Would the gentleman yield?
    Mr. Cicilline. The gentleman's time has expired. Oh, I'm 
sorry, he has 6 seconds.
    Mr. Issa. Okay. If I could have back the 9 of when I said 
it, I'd be thrilled.
    Mr. Cicilline. Well, he hasn't yielded yet, so the time has 
now expired.
    Mr. Issa. I thank the gentleman.
    Mr. Cicilline. I mean, if you have a quick point you want 
to make, Mr.--you've had two opportunities to speak. I'm trying 
to be fair.
    Mr. Issa. I just wanted to add on to his question very 
briefly for Mr. Greenwald. If we have collective negotiations 
for small--
    Mr. Cicilline. No, no. Mr. Issa, I'm sorry, I'm not going 
to let you ask another question at 18 seconds beyond the time, 
so--
    Mr. Issa. Mr. Chair, I was just going to ask--
    Mr. Cicilline. Maybe someone will have an opportunity to 
yield to you.
    I now recognize the gentlelady from Washington, Ms. 
Jayapal.
    Mr. Issa. Chair, if I could inquire from the Chair?
    Mr. Cicilline. Yes.
    Mr. Issa. Within your legislation, would bloggers and other 
people who view themselves as journalists--
    Mr. Cicilline. Mr. Issa, I'm happy to have a conversation 
with you offline. We have Ms. Jayapal. It's her time. She's 
recognized for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Jayapal. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    This is such an important hearing on the consequences of 
failing to protect the backbone of our democracy, our free and 
independent press.
    In Seattle, we're very fortunate. Even though we've lost 
many of our newspapers, we do have one of the few remaining 
family-owned newspapers in the country, and they've taken the 
leadership in the creation of a new national initiative called 
Save the Free Press.
    Even for a larger newspaper like The Seattle Times, the 
struggle to compete against Big Tech is serious, from the loss 
of ad revenue, the forced provisions that tech platforms impose 
on them, and the coopting of locally produced news content with 
little to no compensation by Big Tech news aggregators.
    Mr. Smith, you've departed from some of your tech-leader 
colleagues in not only saying that government must play a role 
in regulating Big Tech but then actually holding to that. In 
fact, I remember during our hearing with the four CEOs last 
year, several of them said that they welcomed government 
regulation.
    Let's talk about what just happened in Australia when the 
government passed a law to require Big Tech platforms to 
negotiate with and compensate news platforms for the content 
they produce. Google decided to play hardball and shut down its 
operations in Australia. They argued that Australia's news 
media bargaining code would undermine the open internet.
    Microsoft, however, supported Australia's news media 
bargaining code. Can you tell me why and, quickly, what 
happened when you voiced your support?
    Mr. Smith. Well, yeah, one of the reasons I suppose I'm 
here is because we got drawn into the same issue in Australia. 
We weren't really part of it until Google told the Nation of 
Australia that, if its legislators passed a law that is not 
entirely dissimilar from this one, it would boycott the entire 
country.
    We looked at the law, and we read it, and we thought, well, 
it seems pretty reasonable to us. So, Satya Nadella, our CEO, 
and I called the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and we said, 
look, if Google wants to leave Australia, we'll stay, and we'll 
increase our investment, and we'll abide by the law, we'll 
share revenue with journalists, we're happy to run a search 
business at a lower margin than Google, and we think that 
there's some room for all of us to succeed together. Within 24 
hours of my going on Australian television to endorse the law, 
Google called up and said they would reverse course and stay 
instead.
    Look, to be honest, I think that is a challenge we have to 
look at head-on. When companies start threatening countries and 
saying that if their legislators pass laws, they don't like 
they'll pull up and leave, then something seems a little out of 
whack.
    I think, trying to restore what has always been the case, 
which is namely that no one should be above the law--no person, 
no government, no company, or no technology--that's in part 
where this started, I think that's in part where this needs to 
go, and, along the way, let's please ensure that journalism can 
do what it needs to serve all of us.
    Ms. Jayapal. Thank you, Mr. Smith.
    Mr. Chavern, Google argued that the Australian media 
bargaining code imposes essentially what's been referred to by 
some as a link tax. What do you think about that argument?
    Mr. Chavern. It was just wrong. There's no link tax in the 
legislation. Particularly, all the rhetoric around breaking the 
Internet was just flat wrong. The fact of the matter is, what 
it really asked for was a fair deal between news publishers and 
Google across the whole range of Google products.
    Really, the test is now in terms of how Google is going to 
address the massive, small publishers in Australia and really 
use the code. We're looking forward to seeing that outcome. No, 
it wasn't a link tax, and we have nothing here about a link tax 
at all.
    Ms. Jayapal. Thank you.
    Mr. Schleuss, in your testimony, you emphasize that mergers 
between major media companies have eroded news feeds across the 
country, and the power of Big Tech mirrors a broader crisis of 
consolidation across news industries, and, indeed, our entire 
economy.
    In addition to scrutinizing these mergers, what are other 
solutions that the Committee should consider, and are there 
other funding models that we should actively be promoting as 
well?
    Mr. Schleuss. Yeah, I think so. One of the major things, 
right, is making sure that whatever we do is tying into actual 
jobs in local journalism, because we have seen that whether 
companies are just going to be making a bunch of money by 
pushing profit margins as high as possible or if they get a 
blank check from platforms, we don't necessarily have any 
accountability or transparency to make sure that they go to 
jobs.
    I think more regulations to try to limit hedge funds in the 
space would be really key, because as folks have said before, 
one of the ways that we can save the solution and solve it is 
by providing more competition in the market by providing more 
and more local news jobs. I also think that like finding ways 
to support nonprofit and sustainable organizations is a way 
about that as well.
    Ms. Jayapal. Excellent. Thank you so much for those 
important comments.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair, I yield back.
    Mr. Cicilline. The gentlelady yields back.
    I now recognize the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. 
Bishop for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Smith, I see an irony in your testimony in that you are 
here as a representative of the tech industry that has been 
through anticompetitive structuring practices is damaging a 
free press. You embrace the idea of granting a countervailing 
license to engage in anticompetitive activity to the media to 
address that.
    Isn't the answer to correct the failure of antitrust law 
vis-a-vis Big Tech rather than to inculcate anticompetitive 
behavior in yet another industry?
    Mr. Smith. Well, I would say two things. First, I don't 
think that thinking about one thing is meant to suggest that 
one should exclude other things. Most problems require more 
than one solution, and I don't think this is an exception.
    I would just go back to basics. Why did Congress pass the 
Clayton Act and the FTC Act in the first place? To encourage 
competition, to protect competition. There are times, 
especially when laws or decades or a century or older that they 
have unintended consequences. There is an unintended 
consequence, and now you can redress this in a very--
    Mr. Bishop. Well, thank you, Mr. Smith. That's exactly what 
I'm concerned about. So, let me go to Mr. Greenwald and ask 
you, the Chair said in response to your comments, Mr. 
Greenwald, that we're going to both attack the anticompetitive 
practices of Big Tech and give an antitrust exemption to media 
content producers. Wouldn't it be preferable only to do that 
which will improve the competitive environment and forbear from 
regulation that might have unintended consequences that would 
concentrate power or permit any competitive activity by 
particularly big media outlets?
    Mr. Greenwald. I think that's exactly correct. One of the 
reasons why I was so excited about the report issued by the 
Subcommittee in October was because it was designed to finally 
address the problem that is a serious menace for the health of 
our democracy, which is anticompetitive behavior on the part of 
one industry. So, to have the solution be to empower another 
industry that has immense problems of its own and that often 
works hand in hand with that tech industry, be able to 
replicate those problems, makes little sense to me. Especially 
because the Chair said, and he is right in theory, that while 
if we do this it doesn't preclude us from then doing this 
broader agenda.
    The political reality is that if you start giving the 
powerful industries like the media a reason to stop caring 
about Big Tech monopoly--because now they have what they want 
which is licensed to do the same thing--you are going to be 
diluting local support for these broader solutions.
    Mr. Bishop. Thank you, sir.
    Mr. Chavern, quickly, if small and diverse outlets are 
those that are most in need of protection, why grant an 
antitrust exemption to The New York Times, Washington Post, 
MSNBC, CNN, and FOX News.
    Mr. Chavern. Well, fundamentally, though, the larger 
outlets have the--already have the capacity and some degree of 
leverage to get their own deals and arrangements. Again, we saw 
with News Corp, by the way. People talk about News Corp a lot. 
News Corp currently has a global deal with Google. This bill is 
not about News Corp, first and foremost.
    The whole industry itself, from the largest to the 
smallest, but particularly the smallest are in the subservient, 
a deeply subservient relationship to two companies that have 
been allowed to grow and dominate those spaces with completely 
hands-off approach from the government for too long. We need an 
answer now.
    Mr. Bishop. Yeah, I get your point. I think picking up the 
right answer is the right--is what we need to be doing.
    Mr. Travis, finally to you, Mr. Raskin in his question 
suggested that sort of criticism and condemnation is the same 
as cancel culture. I value robust and unlimited criticism like 
North Carolina Republican Party censure of Senator Burr for his 
impeachment vote, for the revolt of Kathy Griffin's holding 
aloft the apparently severed and bloody head of a sitting 
President. Isn't cancellation something different where you 
destroy somebody's career, position, or livelihood in 
retaliation for a particular view?
    Mr. Travis. Yes, I think it's a well-put question. To me 
cancel culture is the difference between, ``I disagree with you 
because'' and ``I disagree with you, and you don't have the 
right to make a living because of your opinion.''
    Cancel culture takes it beyond the debate and goes to 
actually trying to cut someone out of the debate completely. 
Argue about ideas, argue about decisions don't, in my opinion, 
take the next step and say, ``And your position invalidates you 
from being able to be involved in the conversation at all.''
    Mr. Bishop. Thank you, Mr. Travis.
    I yield to Mr. Issa.
    Mr. Issa. I thank the gentleman, but I don't think it will 
be sufficient for the Chair. I appreciate it, and I yield back.
    Mr. Bishop. Thank you, sir. I yield my time.
    Mr. Cicilline. The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from 
Florida, Ms. Demings, for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Demings. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and to the 
Ranking Member as well for this very important, I think, 
hearing during such a critical time as we discuss these issues. 
I also want to thank our Witnesses for being so thorough and 
informative this morning.
    I think we're all in agreement that the way we consume news 
has changed tremendously through the years. Mr. Jeffries 
touched on this a little bit with Ms. Barr, but I want to ask 
this question to Mr. Chevron in a somewhat different way. We 
know that the majority of Americans now get their news, 
basically, through online platforms. Many of the newspapers 
have made that shift. They have more and more online 
readership. Could you please talk a little bit about why they 
still continue to struggle?
    Mr. Chavern. Certainly, and thank you for the question. 
Most of our Members from the smallest to the largest are 
primarily digital businesses, and they certainly see their 
future as delivering news contents online to, by the way, 
bigger audiences than ever. The trouble is they're delivering 
into an ecosystem that is dominated by two companies.
    I call Google and Facebook our regulators because they 
regulate everything about our interaction with our consumers. 
They suppress the value of our content, and they make it 
incredibly hard for there to be, not only existing publishers--
but if you want to be a new entrant or have a different point 
of view or represent a different community perspective, it's 
basically an impossible market in which to build a business, 
and that has to change.
    Ms. Demings. Thank you. You have also talked about, or we 
have heard that collective bargaining efforts really only 
benefit the largest of countries--or companies and kind of 
leave the smaller guys out, if you will. Could you talk about 
how collective bargaining, how can we ensure that collective 
bargaining efforts would also benefit the independent and 
smaller organizations?
    Mr. Chavern. Yeah, absolutely. I mentioned this in my 
written testimony for the Committee. The collective action 
primarily benefits those who don't have another way to assert 
their value. Right? It is a primary benefit for small and local 
publishers to be able to fight for themselves.
    As we saw in Australia, by the way, what happened is as Mr. 
Smith noted, the larger publishers had some capacity to get 
their own individual deals. How the code itself--the code is 
primarily impacting smaller community publishers who were able 
to band together and have a voice. Because without that, they 
have really no hope.
    Ms. Demings. Thank you so very much.
    Mr. Schleuss, I think it's interesting that we are having 
this conversation today. As I am reading the Kerner Report, 
again, trying to understand some of the challenges that we face 
in our country. I know that NewsGuild has been critical of 
consolidation. Could you please explain a little bit how 
consolidation actually impacts diversity in newsrooms?
    Mr. Schleuss. Absolutely. So, we represent in your 
district, folks at the Orlando Sentinel, and along with them 16 
other newsrooms across the country, just in that one group. 
Consolidation, when big companies gobble up these smaller local 
news outlets, whether they're online or in print, what they do 
is they'll pull out copy desks, they'll pull out design work, 
and they'll sift that to these like hubs. Those hubs are 
usually filled with people who don't know the local names of 
streets or politicians and can't actually do the editing and 
the design work.
    So, it reduces the local jobs in the communities by 
shifting them to these hubs, but it also reduces the local 
accountability because it removes those kind of voices and 
those who know their communities.
    Ms. Demings. Mr. Schleuss, if you could, I know you 
mentioned earlier those 2,100 newsrooms across the country have 
shut down; 36,000 journalists are not working. So, as we end on 
this discussion about diversity, could you also just talk about 
the impact, who those people are, and why it makes a difference 
that diversity is considered, but also the impact on the true 
and balanced and unbiased journalists that people desperately 
need in this country.
    Mr. Schleuss. Right. I mean one of the kinds of really 
alarming statistics that I think is that there's--with the 
consolidation, there's also more consolidation of journalist on 
the coast right? So, 1 in 5 working journalists in this country 
lived in one of three cities: New York, Washington, or Los 
Angeles. Those communities only represent 13 percent of all 
America's workforce. So, we're losing those local voices, and 
we're losing them at an alarming pace that needs to change.
    Ms. Demings. Thank you so much.
    Mr. Chair, I yield back.
    Mr. Cicilline. The gentlelady yields back.
    I now recognize, Ms. Spartz, the gentlelady from Indiana 
for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Spartz. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think Alexis de 
Tocqueville was brought up at the beginning of this meeting, 
and I wanted to tell you that as someone who is a big fan of 
him, and, actually, his books should be recommended really in 
American schools, recommended reading in certain schools back 
in Ukraine is probably one of the big reasons why I am in 
Congress today.
    I wanted to quote him, he said, ``The American republic 
will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can't buy 
the public with the public's money,'' and gives a very valid 
statement.
    To go back to the discussion today, I actually add my name 
onto this bill because I believe I would like to have a 
bipartisan discussion on the issue, and I believe we still have 
to work to do. I appreciate Congressman Cicilline and Buck 
working on this. I think this is--we had some discussion what 
this potential issue could be? Could we actually give more 
power for collusion from some larger stakeholders in this 
industry, or we can have also, more dictatorship of opinion and 
excuses why some of the people--I know I told media is not 
really represented on this big search engine.
    So, my question is what are the ideas and thoughts you 
have? I know maybe we should go further. When I work on reform 
and healthcare, we had a lot of issues with employment, 
noncompete provision between hospitals and doctors, and some of 
the reporters brought up similar issues in media industry.
    So, we also need to look at that proper due process for 
appeal to see what will happen with parlance and some other 
conservative applications, or even some other applications and 
try to get on this platform.
    So, my question is for Mr. Travis, Greenwald, and Smith, if 
you can quickly just say what other things we really should 
look to make sure that we do not have this piecemeal approach 
and can create some unintended consequences.
    Mr. Travis. It's a really broad question, and I think it's 
a really important question as well. To me what we need to 
have, first and foremost, is regulation of the Big Tech 
companies. I think Mr. Smith has done a really good job of 
elucidating that this is not a one-size-fits-all policy. There 
isn't one thing you can do that solves the larger issues in our 
democracy as it pertains to the power of Big Tech.
    What I see, and I can speak to specifically for myself and 
the company that I run, is there are lots of companies like 
mine. That the difference between making money and losing money 
is what the algorithm that Facebook chooses to put into play on 
any given day is.
    The consistency of the rules that are being applied in a 
content-neutral fashion does not exist. The power there, we 
have effectively given over--I truly believe this--the right to 
determine what a First amendment violation is, out of our 
courts, and we have given them to the Big Tech companies 
instead. That represents a chilling effect.
    Because I will tell you this right now, the business side 
of my company, they said, ``Hey, I don't know necessarily that 
we want to share internal data and upset Facebook and other 
tech companies.'' Because they have the ability to vice grip 
control in many ways businesses. There are tons of them that 
are going to watch this clip, and they are going to see the 
data that we shared, and they're going to say, ``Hey, that 
happened to us too. We didn't say anything because we hoped it 
was just going to go away.''
    So, I think it's not a fair fight right now, and the fight 
needs to be more fair. To me, ultimately, that's what 
government's job should be, create the standards and fair play 
to allow a fight to be fair in this industry.
    Ms. Spartz. Thank you. If you can--Mr. Greenwald and Mr. 
Smith answer quickly because I want to yield some time to 
Congressman Issa, too.
    Mr. Greenwald. Can I just say--Oh, go ahead. Sorry.
    Mr. Smith. Well, I would just say very quickly in terms of 
additional ideas:

    (1) LConsider the additional measures that should be put 
into the JCPA, borrowing from parts of the Australian law.
    (2) LFocus on the lack of competition in the digital 
advertising market itself because that's where most of the 
advertising revenue and profits are being trapped.
    (3) LThink about the conversation before about the needs of 
communities of color. I think there are a lot of ideas that 
could be pursued there.
    (4) LThere is this big issue. It's sort of called 
modernized section 230. If we're ever going to get everybody 
together in thinking about this, we probably have to think 
through that piece, too.

    Ms. Spartz. Thank you.
    Mr. Greenwald. Let me just quickly say that I first would 
encourage the minority Members of the Committee to really look 
at that report from October because they think there are a lot 
of solutions in it that address the primary concerns that are 
being expressed.
    Very quickly, until short of that of breaking up these 
companies, I think you could apply First amendment law or other 
requirements of content-neutral moderation, along with an 
appeals process based on the reality of these companies are 
monopolies, and people rely on them for their livelihood and 
for their expression.
    Mr. Cicilline. I thank the gentlelady.
    Ms. Spartz. Thank, you.
    Mr. Cicilline. The gentlelady's time is expired.
    Ms. Spartz. I yield back. I don't see my time.
    Mr. Cicilline. Yes, I'm sorry. Your time expired. Yes, you 
actually went over 20 seconds, but happy to accommodate you.
    I now recognize the gentlelady from Georgia, Ms. McBath, 
for 5 minutes.
    Ms. McBath. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to 
each and every one of you for being here today. I want to start 
by echoing the comments of so many of my colleagues about the 
importance of local news. Whether it's print or radio, TV, or 
online, it's essential that we journalists--that we have 
journalists, reporters that are focused on what's happening in 
each of our own very unique communities.
    National media is not enough to keep us informed about 
what's really happening locally, and that's been especially 
true within the last year. We need to know about the State of 
the pandemic in our communities, and we need to know who in our 
community is eligible to take a vaccine and how they can get 
one. We need to know when it's safe for us to go back to work 
or safe for us to go to our local gathering places.
    So, throughout 2020, we needed trustworthy accurate 
information about how our election systems were changing so 
that people could exercise their right to vote safely. Here in 
Georgia, I represent Georgia where we have run-off elections, 
and it was critical to have reporters and news sources who 
continue to focus on getting accurate information to voters 
well beyond November.
    Ms. Barr, your testimony really focuses on the importance 
of local news, and the investigations that you shared are great 
examples of the power of local journalism. I just want to start 
by giving you a brief opportunity to respond if there is 
anything you feel that you didn't get to fully address.
    Ms. Barr. Thank you very much. I would start by saying the 
foundation all journalism starts in local communities. The 
stories that tend to bubble up into the national papers often 
have at their root in what happens locally.
    So, to give you a very current example, in Houston and San 
Antonio where we own television stations, as you all know, we 
recently dealt with a horrific power grid failure that resulted 
in people dying, resulted in homes having frozen pipes, people 
losing lots of money on trying to repair things. It was quite 
terrible.
    It was the role of the local broadcasters in that situation 
that really helped keep people informed and keep them 
ultimately safe. Because in Texas, it's not common to have a 
freeze like that. So, it was very, very important that we were 
there. We were there both on television and, obviously, online 
when the power failed and they couldn't reach us otherwise.
    Ms. McBath. Okay. Thank you so much for that answer.
    Mr. Chavern, many newspapers have recently switched to a 
subscription-based model to compensate for ad revenues. While 
many people are willing to pay for reliable local news, I am 
concerned that a subscription might be considered a luxury in 
households already making tough financial decisions due to 
COVID. This in turn could mean that those households get lower 
quality information as they turn to social media for answers to 
important questions about the pandemic or exercising their 
right to vote.
    How can we make sure that everyone, regardless of their 
financial situation, has access to reliable quality news?
    Mr. Chavern. Great. Thank you for that question. 
Subscriptions are essentially important to the industry and 
will continue to be even more important. There is this 
component of if you can pay, you get, and if you can't pay, you 
don't get. That we need a digital ecosystem in social media and 
other delivery systems that sustainably provide critical 
information to communities.
    Because what we have now is we have that ecosystem sucking 
out that information for free, and that's just not sustainable. 
Subscriptions are going to be important for my industry, yes. 
We also need to have value coming back from the digital 
distribution so that we can keep making critical information 
broadly and widely available.
    Ms. McBath. Thank you for that. Mr. Chavern, is there a 
risk that collective bargaining between media companies and the 
dominant platforms might only help large national media 
companies and not local ones? Why or why not? How can we make 
sure that local newsrooms benefit?
    Mr. Chavern. So, two things, first, again, I think the 
smallest local publishers are the ones most in need of 
collective action. I also have to say, and there's been a lot 
of discussion about this today, even of my Members who are 
considered big companies, even collectively compared to the 
massive market power of these digital platforms have incredibly 
unequal bargaining power.
    This industry itself is critically important to civic 
society, and it needs the ability to collectively respond to 
the dominance that's been allowed to build up in the digital 
ecosystem.
    So, I think there's tremendous particular benefits for 
small and local publishers, but the whole industry itself needs 
some capacity to speak for itself.
    Ms. McBath. Well, thank you so much.
    I yield back the balance of my time.
    Mr. Cicilline. The gentlelady yields back.
    I now recognize the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. 
Fitzgerald, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Fitzgerald. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, it's been 
fascinating this morning. I did work in both industries. I 
owned and actually published a weekly newspaper, along with a 
couple of monthly periodicals. I worked in radio, too, in a 
very small station in Hartford, Wisconsin. So, I watched both 
the industries change dramatically.
    I just wanted to talk about that because if someone would 
want to comment before the revolution of digital, there was the 
revolution of desktop publishing. I went through that when we 
had old serigraph machines, and they were doing typesetting. 
Within, it seemed like a year, there were MACs on everyone's 
table, and the industry had changed overnight.
    We also, had dark rooms and photographers that it was very 
labor-intensive to get a photo on the front page of the 
newspaper. It was a big deal. Then all the sudden that was 
gone, and everything was digital.
    Shoppers. Let me talk about shoppers for a minute. It was a 
weekly publication loaded with advertising, a huge supplement 
for weekly newspapers, and suddenly they either had newspaper 
content, news content which changed the dynamic of the 
industry, or they simply kind of went away. I know that was 
another big source of income for them.
    On the radio side, it's been so diverse now between 
somebody having the choice between XM Sirius, iTunes, so you 
can pick up any radio station in the entire Nation, which you 
couldn't do before. You were limited to the two or three that 
broadcasted to your area.
    Certainly, there is other things that happened in 
broadcast, and the big one is the explosion of cable news. When 
I was kid you had four stations. If you weren't on one of the 
networks, that's where you got your news.
    My whole problem with this is that the message has been 
developed into this niche where you find your audience, you 
target that audience by delivering the content that you think 
they want to hear--and the reason for that is because you can 
generate the revenue then.
    So, it's really had a direct effect on straight news. I 
think that's one of our bigger issues right now which is why 
there's all of these ancillary issues related to what 
journalists are reporting is because it's not making any money.
    I go back to 230 again, I think that one of the most 
important college classes I ever had, was called Law of the 
Press. In that class they talked libel, libel, libel. In any 
newsroom that I have ever been in and any editor who's 
responsible for the content but always has, it's going to be 
the general manager at the radio station, or it's going to be 
certainly, the publisher of the paper, or the chain of papers 
always looking over that editor's shoulder, making sure that 
they don't put them in jeopardy when it come to the law.
    What we have developed--and maybe it was a blunder by 
Congress, I am not sure, but when 230 was put in place, that 
allowed those entities that could benefit from that exemption 
to flourish beyond what anybody could have possibly damaged at 
that time.
    So, even though I know that JCPA has probably got some 
traction right now, I still think if you just do JCPA and not 
do 230, you are going to find yourself back in the same place. 
I know that one of the set of testimony today kind of alluded 
to that.
    I'm just going to the last thing I wanted to ask maybe Mr. 
Greenwald because I think maybe you are probably in the best 
position to answer this. What's your demographic? Who are you 
trying to get to? Who do you think is most interested in your 
content?
    I have three sons, and two of them are in their 30s, and 
one is 28 years old. I've never seen a newspaper in their hand, 
but I also never seen them without their phone in their hand. 
So, that's a big part of what this discussion has become is who 
are these groups, who are we reaching out to, and does the 
media feel a responsibility to tailor their content to these 
individuals?
    Mr. Greenwald. Yeah, that's a great question. It goes back 
to what I and several other people were alluding to earlier 
about the collapse in trust in media. I think what you said is 
exactly right is that as media outlets have confronted an 
increasingly difficult climate in which to not just profit but 
sustain themselves financially, the model to which they turned 
is one which feeds partisan audiences not what they should hear 
but what they want to hear, which in turn erodes trust in 
journalism even further.
    I think that until that problem is addressed in terms of 
what is journalism and the media industry doing that's causing 
a loss of trust even if people are still consuming it, these 
problems are going to continue to linger, and this legislation 
might actually make that worse.
    Mr. Cicilline. The time of the gentleman has expired.
    Mr. Fitzgerald. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Cicilline. I now recognize the gentleman from Georgia, 
Mr. Johnson, the Chair of the Intellectual Property 
Subcommittee for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Johnson. I thank the gentleman for holding this 
hearing. Very important. I thank the Witnesses for being here 
today.
    The vitality of a broad, diverse journalism field is 
imperative to the success of our republic. Any threat to the 
independent functioning of the fourth estate necessitates both 
intense scrutiny and decisive action from this body.
    This is why earlier today I asked to join Chair Cicilline 
as a co-sponsor of his legislation, the Journalism Competition 
and Preservation Act of 2021.
    We should recognize that a free and vibrant press is 
essential to the workings of our democracy, not just bringing 
national and international news to the public, but also 
bringing local news to consumers who need to know what's going 
on in their local communities. There's a danger in all news 
becoming nationalized, and I am afraid that is where we are 
headed today given the fact that local news-gathering 
organizations can't afford to stay in business because their ad 
revenues have dwindled, and they have lost control over the 
publication of their content.
    Unfair and anticompetitive practices by online platform 
giants are literally killing the ability of consumers to 
receive robust and probing local news coverage.
    Local broadcasters and local print media are trusted 
sources of news and information for 330 million Americans. In 
the Atlanta media market, I'm kept informed about what's going 
on throughout my district and beyond. They cover news about the 
civil rights demonstrations in Atlanta last summer and the long 
lines at the polls last June and again in November.
    They continue to provide much needed local air time on the 
impact that the pandemic has had on schools, businesses, 
minority communities, and healthcare in local communities in 
the Atlanta market. They're keeping us up on what our 
legislature is trying to do to curtail and limit our right to 
vote.
    Today, I stand up for local news-gathering organizations. 
The value of local journalism and the diversity of voices it 
amplifies is more important now than ever as the public has 
moved to the online marketplace as the platform through which 
they receive news coverage.
    Ad revenue is the mother's milk for all news-gathering 
organizations, and unfortunately for them, that same ad revenue 
is being siphoned off by the digital platforms that use their 
content to attract those same ad dollars.
    This Committee's digital market report released last 
Congress found that two companies have a duopoly over the 
digital advertising market, Google and Facebook. In particular, 
the Committee found that these two major companies Act as 
gatekeepers, and their decisions on how to display content and 
any changes to their algorithms can significantly affect the 
traffic to a news publisher's website.
    Mr. Chavern, how does Facebook and Google's ability to Act 
as gatekeepers to news content on their platforms directly 
affect the viability of news publishers?
    Mr. Chavern. All right. Thank you very much.
    One of the things we know about news content is it's highly 
engaging. People go to Google and Facebook products to find out 
about what's happening in the world to get updates, and they do 
it again the next and the next day after that. So, it draws a 
lot of audience. That content acts as an antidote for the 
platform's misinformation problem. So, it benefits the 
platforms tremendously, and very little of the value though is 
returned to publishers.
    So, at the same time that our content is more important and 
more valued than ever, there is very little return to actually 
sustain the creation of it. That's essentially what we need to 
fix if we want a future for local news.
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Barr--or I am sorry, Ms. Barr, 
if Congress is unable to level the playing field, what does the 
future look like for local news-gathering organizations?
    Ms. Barr. Thank you very much for that question.
    We would probably find ourselves increasingly unable to 
maintain the level of coverage that we have in our local 
markets. So, when a major event occurs or even a minor event, 
we might have fewer people to cover a school board hearing, a 
government agency that's being critiqued, or we might have 
trouble with covering a major hurricane. It would just make it 
more and more difficult for us to cover the markets in which we 
live and work.
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
    Mr. Chavern, how has the enforcement of--
    Mr. Cicilline. I am sorry. The time of the gentleman has 
expired.
    Mr. Johnson. I thank the Chair.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Cicilline. The gentleman yields back.
    I now recognize the gentleman from Utah, Mr. Owens, for 5 
minutes.
    He was on the screen. There he is.
    Mr. Owens. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and the Ranking 
Member. Thank you for holding this hearing today. To the 
Witnesses, I really do appreciate you sharing experiences.
    We've heard a lot today about the cancel culture invading 
our society, but I need to say something a little bit more on 
that. There's a reason why I am passionately fighting this 
current cancel culture. Because what I have seen with canceling 
a culture truly looks like, with my upbringing, canceling a 
culture looks like intimidation of young Black students 
entering University of Alabama to break the barrier of 
segregation in 1973. Canceling a culture looks like police and 
attack dogs waiting at the end of a Selma bridge in 1965.
    Today, canceling a culture has taken the form of press or 
censorship of Big Tech silencing American voices and stealing 
our freedom of speech.
    As it was in 1960 civil rights day, it will take the same 
old school Americanism to defeat this curse. It's called 
courage, backbone, and patriotic bipartisanship, which I am 
seeing today, in an effort to prioritize our culture of freedom 
over gold, global profit, and power.
    The enemies of our American culture can be summarized in 
two words, the same words used in the interviews of the 1963 
Freedom Fighters, bullies, and cowards.
    To go back to what Thomas Jefferson and one of our Founders 
said, obviously, several years ago--at the beginning, 
``ignorant and free can never be has never been more true than 
it is today.''
    There's been a lot of good questions asked today, and I 
don't want to duplicate those. So, I am just going to ask Mr. 
Travis and Mr. Greenwald, this is one of I think of a long 
series of steps we can deal with this process been happening to 
us for quite a while in this cancel culture, cancelling a 
culture, our American culture.
    How do you see us finally get to that end where we have 
gotten trouble--and obviously this is one of the many steps to 
getting control to where we can have that freedom of speech 
again where we expect this as a country that this should be a 
natural process, we can speak freely without feeling or being 
attacked, how do you see that coming to where we can end this 
process here in America?
    Let's start with Mr. Travis and Mr. Greenwald.
    Mr. Travis. It's a great question, Congressman. To me, 
every single American out there is terrified on some level 
every time they pick up Twitter, every time they pick up 
Instagram, every time they pick up Facebook, and they sit there 
for a moment and think about whatever opinion they're about to 
share, and they have to think to themselves, ``Is this worth my 
life fundamentally changing?''
    To me, the marketplace of ideas, Congressman, requires that 
people not be afraid to say what they really think. What we 
have created is such a stifled environment today that people 
are terrified to say what they think. They're also terrified 
that their kids might have a TikTok video out where they're 
singing along to a rap song, and suddenly they can't get a 
college scholarship anymore. That's happening every single day 
across this country.
    Big Tech has helped to create a censorious universe where, 
again, I said cancel culture to me is the difference between 
``I disagree with you. And I disagree with you, and you're not 
even allowed to be involved in this conversation, and you 
shouldn't be allowed to have a job either.''
    What we have to do if we want to have a full flourishment 
of democracy is start to fight back against that culture of 
censorship. One of the ways that we do it, I believe, is by 
restricting the antitrust power that, I believe, the Big Tech 
companies have come to take over in the ensuing decade.
    I am sure Glenn can talk about that a lot better even than 
I can, but that's the essence as of the question you're asking.
    Mr. Owens. Yeah, thank you.
    Mr. Greenwald. The one point I'd like to emphasize, 
Congressman, about all that is Big Media, the largest media 
corporations in the United States are not opposed to the 
censorious behavior of Big Tech. Quite the contrary, they're 
the ones who have agitated for it most aggressively.
    If you ask people in Silicon Valley, they will tell you, 
they would all other things being equal prefer to be out of the 
business of content moderation and have been pressured by Big 
Media companies, both for ideological and competitive reasons 
to silence others who might compete with these large outlets in 
the name of diversity.
    This is why I would really urge the Committee to strongly 
consider this. What I think everyone is saying is very valid in 
this concern for the viability of local media outlets. So, if 
that's the case, the focus ought to be on empowering these 
local media outlets to sustain themselves and to grow and 
flourish and not empower the actors who are causing so many of 
the problems that we're all talking about which are Big Media 
outlets, either acting in concert with Big Tech or in many 
cases co-opting in the power that they wield.
    Mr. Cicilline. The time of the gentleman has expired.
    I now recognize myself for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Greenwald. Thank you.
    Mr. Cicilline. Mr. Greenwald, that's exactly the purpose of 
the legislation to empower those small publishers and small 
newspapers.
    Mr. Chavern, I want to start with you. A few years ago, 
Facebook's head of new partnerships, Campbell Brown told 
publishers that if they don't work with Facebook, they will end 
up quote, ``in hospice.'' She reportedly said, and I quote, 
``We will help you revitalize journalism, but in a few years, 
the reverse looks like I will be holding your hands with your 
dying business like in hospice,'' which is pretty powerful 
language.
    Our investigation found that Google or Facebook can change 
their algorithm and in doing so can have a devastating impact 
on traffic to a news publisher's website. One publisher 
explained an incident where Google made a change to its search 
algorithm that slashed traffic to the publisher's website by 50 
percent.
    So, my question for you is how do those types of incidents 
affect a news publisher's advertising revenue? Have news 
publishers raised their concerns directly with Google and 
Facebook, and if so, what was their response?
    Mr. Chavern. Thank you very much. Yeah, the fascinating 
quote. The sad fact is so many publishers did and have tried to 
do what Facebook has asked almost always to their detriment. By 
the way, interesting example about the role of algorithms in 
all this. There has been some really good reporting about the 
last Presidential election, Facebook made the decision to 
increase the amount of news from reliable professional news 
sources. Then they decided to turn it down again.
    So, they actively manage the amount of quality journalism 
that the public is exposed to. Essentially, that determines 
whether we live or die. These two companies are our regulators. 
They determine whether we're seen, how we're--
    Mr. Cicilline. Thank you. I don't know if he froze or--
    Mr. Chavern. So, with that, I just say we have tried to 
work with them, and it hasn't worked out very well.
    Mr. Cicilline. You add to that a business model that incen-
tivizes the most provocative and exploitative communications 
that are shared most widely to increased ad revenue. So, 
there's no incentive for that kind of proper curation of their 
sites.
    Mr. Smith--thank you again for your testimony. You 
mentioned in your written testimony transparency requirements, 
obligations, negotiating in good faith, and a duty to avoid 
retaliation, as well as some oversight and monitoring by an 
agency like the FTC.
    I am just wondering if you can share a little about what 
your thoughts are and how we might improve the Journalism 
Competition and Preservation Act in light of the Australian 
experience.
    Mr. Smith. Sure. I might start with the aspects that are 
most closely related to the negotiation process itself. So, I 
do think that a duty to negotiate in good faith, and especially 
an obligation to avoid retaliation are very important. I think 
that responsibility usually is subject to an agency review. In 
an FTC or similar agency review to uphold those 
responsibilities is not just appropriate but pretty customary.
    I do think the transparency issue gets back to what you 
were just talking about. I think that's going to require some 
more thought, it's going to require some more discussion. I 
think in Australia it became apparent that it was important. It 
was also a challenging topic. There's a lot of views on both 
sides that, frankly, need to be considered. This is a topic 
that is of great importance, frankly, around the world.
    Mr. Cicilline. Thank you so much.
    Mr. Schleuss, you raised some concerns about additional 
revenue that may be provided to news organizations that are 
able to negotiate under the JCPA might not be reinvested in 
producing high-quality news, but rather be used for share 
buybacks or to further enrich wealthy investors. I think those 
are really important concerns.
    So, what safeguards should we be considering adding to this 
bill to address these concerns.
    Mr. Schleuss. Well, I am hearing a lot of terms that I hear 
in my day job. Right? I am hearing about the balance, imbalance 
of power, and the need to negotiate in good faith in a 
collective way. In the past 3 years, we have added 3,500 media 
workers to our union which is unprecedented growth.
    So, what we need to do is we need to make sure that the 
workers are part of the solution; that any additional revenue 
would be built in to support new jobs at local newsrooms; and 
we also need to make sure there's neutrality. The union besting 
effort by a lot of these companies whether it's Gannett, 
Tribune Publishing, or even Block Communications Incorporated, 
ceased and stopped. Because these journalists, they just want 
to do their jobs. They look at their jobs as a public service 
to their communities, and they don't want to have to also fight 
the companies to just get the basic respect that they deserve.
    Mr. Cicilline. Thank you. I will just note with my couple 
of seconds left, that you know, we all recognize that this is a 
temporary solution to an urgent problem that we believe we must 
respond to. If we don't, we will just not have local journalism 
anymore.
    So, this is not something we're doing alone. We have a very 
robust antitrust agenda with many, many excellent 
recommendations that we intend to move forward on. I don't want 
anyone to be concerned that this is the only thing we're going 
to do. This is one part of a very discrete problem, it's a very 
temporary fix, we have a lot more work ahead of us that relate 
to all the recommendations in the report.
    With that I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the Ranking 
Member of the Subcommittee, the distinguished gentleman from 
Colorado, Mr. Buck.
    Mr. Buck. Before my time begins, Mr. Chair, may I ask a 
quick question?
    Mr. Cicilline. Of course.
    Mr. Buck. I think part of the discussion today is about the 
bill and whether it intends to cover startup organizations and 
various others. I just want to mention a few of them, if I may, 
Daily Caller, Daily Wire, Washington Examiner, Washington 
Times, Spectator Blaze, National Review Online, Breitbart, 
Federalist, and Mr. Greenwald's former employer, The Intercept. 
Are those all intended to be covered by the definition that we 
have in here, news content creator?
    Mr. Cicilline. Yeah. They are not only intended to be 
covered, but they are also covered because it's content-neutral 
and all the organizations you described are produced as--
    Mr. Buck. When Mr. Breitbart started, Breitbart in his 
garage, would that be covered by this?
    Mr. Cicilline. Absolutely.
    Mr. Buck. If there was some doubt about that, would the 
Chair be willing to entertain an amendment to the bill to 
clarify that when we get to markup?
    Mr. Cicilline. I am always willing to work with you, Mr. 
Buck. You have always acted in good faith. To the extent there 
are improvements or clarifications to the bill that will be 
useful, I am happy to work with you on those.
    Mr. Buck. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Travis, I am just an old jock, so I am more comfortable 
talking to you than anyone else around here, and I appreciate 
you being here today.
    I have to tell you, and you may have been in this situation 
also, but I have been in disagreements with a spouse, a child, 
a neighbor, a co-worker, and after about 5 minutes of the 
disagreement, I realize we're saying the same thing. There's 
something happening today where I feel like we're saying the 
same thing, and not just Witnesses, but the Members also.
    What happened to you is disgraceful in this country. It's 
something we expect in China or Russia. It's not something we 
expect in the United States of America. So, I absolutely 
believe the solution to what you talked about is having 5 
Googles, 10 Facebooks, 12--and I think Mr. Smith would agree 
with me, he would love to have, being in Google with equal 
market share competing against each other in a way that would 
make sure that if one discriminated against you, the other 
would pick up that revenue and run with it.
    This is something different, what we're talking about with 
this particular bill. What we're talking about with this bill 
is to make sure that these news organizations that are going 
out of business have the chance to compete with these Big Tech 
giants for ad revenue. Right now, they don't.
    Right now, what we're seeing--and by the way, Big Tech 
doesn't have a bunch of reporters out there covering news 
stories or opinion writers writing the news stories. All they 
do is they take someone else's product, and they use that 
product for more and more profit for them and less and less 
profit--or revenue for the other side.
    So, what I am wondering is what is the solution that you 
would--not to the world in general, we agree, especially on 
this side of the aisle that we need to do something about 
section 230, and we need to do something about censorship.
    In terms of this specific issue, revenue for small, local, 
news organizations, what do we do?
    Mr. Travis. There's not an easy solution. Right? There is a 
multifaceted solution that I think is going to have to be built 
for things like this to work. I think section 230 needs to be 
modified in many ways.
    I also think to use the specific example that I was talking 
about, in courts, we have created a system where if a bad judge 
decision occurs at the district court, you can appeal it to the 
appeals court, or all the way to the Supreme Court.
    When I look at Facebook which is a monopoly, let's not 
pretend that they're anything other than a monopoly, it's 
almost impossible for news organizations to make budgets 
without working with Facebook, as Chair, you just said in the 
example you use. What I think they need to have is a fair and 
transparent system when they get things wrong to allow them to 
be remedied.
    Because, ultimately, I'm going to be fine. If our company 
doesn't make the revenue that we should on the content that 
we're producing, that means that I hire less people. That means 
that all these companies that are here talking to you today 
trying to increase their revenue hire less people as well.
    To the extent that I believe in the marketplace of ideas, 
which I do, we need as many voices as possible all speaking. 
The way that the system is structured right now, we are not 
having that occur.
    Mr. Buck. Mr. Smith, I want to ask you a quick question. I 
recognize the concern that at some point there will be this 
smokey room, and a few of the tech giants and a few of the news 
giants will get together and say, ``Hey, we could make even 
more money if we just decided to screw all these other people, 
the smaller tech companies and the smaller news 
organizations.''
    So, the idea that these two giants are going to collude and 
create something with the exemption that we're talking about in 
this bill may be real.
    I want to ask you, in your experience with Australia, did 
Google say to the world, ``Hey, let's just get together with 
three or four of these news organizations, the Australian 
people will be happy, and that's the way to go.'' Did they Act 
like they were willing to collude with just a few, or are they 
concerned with the welfare of the people of Australia?
    Mr. Smith. Well, it's a great question. Interestingly, as 
things played out in Australia, I think it's fair to say that 
there was initially a principal concern that, frankly, the only 
news organizations that would benefit would be the big ones, 
and, specifically, News Corp and two others.
    The whole assurance that the law contained to ensure that 
everyone was reached was exactly what is in the JCPA. The 
ability for everyone to negotiate collectively. I actually 
think that if you don't create a basis for small publishers to 
negotiate collectively, you really don't create much of a basis 
for them to negotiate effectively.
    Mr. Buck. I appreciate the time, Mr. Chair, and I yield 
back.
    Mr. Cicilline. The gentleman yields back.
    I now would like to add the following items for the 
record:A letter from Jason Kint, the CEO of Digital Content 
Next;a statement for the record from Jeff Jarvis, the Leonard 
Tow Professor of Journalism Innovation at the New York Craig 
Network Graduate School of Journalism;a statement for the 
record from Maribel Perez Wadsworth, President of News, Gannett 
Media; a statement for the record from Rod Sims, Chair of the 
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission;a statement for 
the record from Media Matters for America;a statement for the 
record from our colleague, Congresswoman Susan Wild, who in her 
statement acknowledges, and I quote, ``These challenges are 
real. And those of us in positions of power must take them 
seriously,'' and recounts her mother's own experience as a 
journalist;a joint statement for the record from the National 
Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, Native American 
Journalist Association, and Radio Television Digital News 
Association;a statement for the record from the Free Press 
Action;a statement for the record from Google;and a statement 
for the record from Matthew Schruers, President of Computer and 
Communications Industry Association.
    [The information follows:]



                      MR. CICILLINE FOR THE RECORD

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    Mr. Cicilline. With that, I would like to really thank our 
extraordinary panel of Witnesses for your testimony today. I 
think this was a very productive hearing and raised very 
important issues about this urgent challenge we face.
    Next Thursday, we will be holding our third hearing as part 
of a series to develop legislation to address the rise and 
abuse of market power online. At that hearing, our Witnesses 
will discuss proposals to modernize and strengthen the 
antitrust laws that apply in monopoly power and anticompetitive 
mergers.
    Again, with deep gratitude to our Witnesses and without 
objection, all Members will have 5 legislative days to submit 
additional written questions for the Witnesses or additional 
materials for the record. This hearing is now adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:50 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]



      

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