A majority of Washington voters agree big tech companies should have to pay for news

A major­i­ty of vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton sup­port fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion to empow­er media out­lets to obtain fair and rea­son­able com­pen­sa­tion for their news con­tent from Alpha­bet’s Google and Meta’s Face­book, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s most recent sur­vey of the Ever­green State elec­torate has found.

55% of 773 like­ly gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton inter­viewed ear­li­er this month said they strong­ly or some­what agreed that big tech com­pa­nies like Google and Face­book should be oblig­at­ed to pay media pub­lish­ers for news con­tent. Only 17% some­what or strong­ly dis­agreed, and 27% were not sure.

Our ques­tion ref­er­enced the Jour­nal­ism Com­pe­ti­tion and Preser­va­tion Act, pro­posed by Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

This year’s JCPA, S.1094, has fif­teen cospon­sors, includ­ing Repub­li­can sen­a­tors like Lind­sey Gra­ham of South Car­oli­na and Cyn­thia Lum­mis of Wyoming.

The Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee vot­ed just last week to advance the bill, with four­teen sen­a­tors in favor and sev­en opposed, reviv­ing dis­cus­sion of it.

But even if it gets full con­sid­er­a­tion and a vote out of the Sen­ate, the House is like­ly to bury it. As Dead­line not­ed in its report­ing on the com­mit­tee vote, Kevin McCarthy is on record as staunch­ly opposed to the leg­is­la­tion.

Many pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions also con­sid­er it deeply flawed, and oppose it.

The stat­ed pur­pose of the JCPA is “to pro­vide a tem­po­rary safe har­bor for pub­lish­ers of online con­tent to col­lec­tive­ly nego­ti­ate with dom­i­nant online plat­forms regard­ing the terms on which con­tent may be dis­trib­uted.” Last year’s ver­sion, S.673, was sum­ma­rized as fol­lows (there’s no sum­ma­ry for S.1094 yet):

This bill sets out a process through which cer­tain broad­cast or dig­i­tal news providers may col­lec­tive­ly nego­ti­ate with cov­ered online plat­forms (e.g., social media com­pa­nies) regard­ing use of the news providers’ con­tent by the platforms.

Specif­i­cal­ly, the bill autho­rizes an eli­gi­ble provider (e.g., one with no more than 1,500 full-time employ­ees and non­net­work news broad­cast­ers that engage in spec­i­fied news prac­tices) to joint­ly form an enti­ty with oth­er eli­gi­ble providers to nego­ti­ate the pric­ing, terms, and con­di­tions by which cer­tain online plat­forms use the providers’ con­tent. A cov­ered plat­form is gen­er­al­ly one that (1) has at least 50 mil­lion month­ly domes­tic users, and (2) is owned or con­trolled by a per­son with either sales or a mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion that exceeds a spec­i­fied amount or at least one bil­lion month­ly users worldwide.

The bill estab­lish­es require­ments con­cern­ing the for­ma­tion, gov­er­nance, oper­a­tion, and ter­mi­na­tion of the joint nego­ti­a­tion enti­ty. It also exempts from antitrust laws cer­tain actions by a joint nego­ti­a­tion enti­ty (e.g., providers joint­ly deny­ing a plat­for­m’s access to the providers’ content).

The bill out­lines require­ments gov­ern­ing the con­duct of the nego­ti­a­tions by, for exam­ple, requir­ing the par­ties to nego­ti­ate in good faith. Addi­tion­al­ly, the bill pro­vides for pri­vate rights of action if the require­ments for a nego­ti­a­tion are not met and estab­lish­es require­ments for arbi­tra­tion in lim­it­ed circumstances.

The Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty Office must study the impact of the joint nego­ti­a­tions, includ­ing their effects on local and region­al news and the employ­ment of journalists.

In gen­er­al, the bil­l’s pro­vi­sions ter­mi­nate six years after its enactment.

We were curi­ous how vot­ers here in the heart of the Pacif­ic North­west, a major tech hub, feel about big tech com­pa­nies being oblig­at­ed to pay for news, with leg­is­la­tion like the JCPA help­ing facil­i­tate com­pen­sa­tion arrangements.

So we asked:

QUESTION: Media pub­lish­ers have long argued that they aren’t being fair­ly com­pen­sat­ed for arti­cles, opin­ion pieces, and oth­er con­tent that gen­er­ates adver­tis­ing rev­enue for big tech com­pa­nies like Google or Face­book. In Con­gress, law­mak­ers from both par­ties have spon­sored pro­pos­als like the Jour­nal­ism Com­pe­ti­tion and Preser­va­tion Act, which would give pub­lish­ers a safe har­bor to col­lec­tive­ly nego­ti­ate terms with the big tech com­pa­nies for dis­tri­b­u­tion of their con­tent and agree on fair com­pen­sa­tion. How­ev­er, none of the pro­pos­als have become law yet. The big tech com­pa­nies say they already help pub­lish­ers by deliv­er­ing traf­fic, and that requir­ing them to pay for news vio­lates the prin­ci­ples on which the inter­net was built, like the idea of sites being able to freely link to each oth­er. Do you strong­ly agree, some­what agree, some­what dis­agree, or strong­ly dis­agree that big tech com­pa­nies like Google and Face­book should be oblig­at­ed to pay media pub­lish­ers for news content?

ANSWERS:

• Agree: 55%
  • Strong­ly agree: 30%
  • Some­what agree: 25%
• Dis­agree: 17% 
  • Some­what dis­agree: 8%
  • Strong­ly dis­agree: 9%
• Not sure: 27%

Our sur­vey of 773 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Wednes­day, June 7th through Thurs­day, June 8th, 2023.

The poll uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (41%) and online answers from cell phone only respon­dents (59%).

It was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (PPP) for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.5% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

NPI and PPP have worked togeth­er for a decade and have a track record of excel­lence, as detailed in this 2022 elec­toral polling recap and this 2020 one.

Notably, the ratio of agree­ment ver­sus dis­agree­ment exceeds 3:1. More vot­ers strong­ly agree than dis­agree in total, with a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber not sure. There’s just not much oppo­si­tion to the idea of big tech com­pa­nies pay­ing for news. It’s some­thing that makes sense to a major­i­ty of peo­ple in Wash­ing­ton, the home of tech giants such as Microsoft and Ama­zon, and a place where Cal­i­for­ni­a’s tech giants, includ­ing Alpha­bet’s Google and Meta’s Face­book, also have presences.

Among those vot­ers who say they are employed by a large com­pa­ny with more than a thou­sand work­ers — which would include the afore­men­tioned tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies as well as oth­ers like Apple — 56% are in agree­ment and 16% are opposed, and 27% not sure. That’s about the same as our sam­ple as a whole, with both sup­port and oppo­si­tion just slight­ly softer.

We found sim­i­lar per­cent­ages for free­lancers and sole proprietors.

Among those vot­ers who work for, or own, a small busi­ness (exclud­ing free­lancers and sole pro­pri­etors, who were in their own cat­e­go­ry), agree­ment reached 60%, with 15% express­ing dis­agree­ment. 26% said they were not sure.

Among those vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton who iden­ti­fy as a mem­ber of a labor union or have a fam­i­ly mem­ber who is in a union, agree­ment reached 65%, with only 11% express­ing dis­agree­ment and 22% say­ing they were not sure.

Region­al­ly, majori­ties in every area west of the Cas­cades are in agree­ment, led by King Coun­ty and the Olympic Penin­su­la / South­west Wash­ing­ton, but a plu­ral­i­ty in East­ern and Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton are also in agree­ment. (More vot­ers east of the Cas­cades say they are not sure — 34%, com­pared to 27% in the whole sample).

The State of Cal­i­for­nia is also con­sid­er­ing leg­is­la­tion to help pub­lish­ers: the Cal­i­for­nia Jour­nal­ism Preser­va­tion Act. Unlike Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon, and Ida­ho, Cal­i­for­nia has a year-round leg­is­la­ture that does­n’t take extreme­ly long breaks in between con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-lim­it­ed win­ter and spring­time sessions.

Our friends at the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion (EFF) — which is not a front for any big tech com­pa­nies and is known for its inci­sive analy­sis of fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion con­cern­ing tech­nol­o­gy mat­ters — have crit­i­cized past incar­na­tions of the Jour­nal­ism Com­pe­ti­tion and Preser­va­tion Act, call­ing the bill “active­ly dangerous.”

“The way the JCPA is sup­posed to work is by giv­ing an antitrust exemp­tion to news sites, allow­ing them to nego­ti­ate as a bloc with sites like Google and Face­book, with the goal of get­ting paid every time those sites link to news arti­cles,” Katharine Tren­da­cos­ta and Mitch Stoltz wrote in a memo last year.

“There are a few major, fun­da­men­tal prob­lems with that premise.”

“For one, cre­at­ing a new car­tel to deal with exist­ing monop­o­lists is not com­pe­ti­tion, it’s the oppo­site. For anoth­er, cre­at­ing an implic­it right to con­trol link­ing in any con­text won’t pre­serve jour­nal­ism, it will let it rot away.”

“Final­ly, the focus on get­ting paid for links makes even less sense when the prob­lem, his­tor­i­cal­ly, has been the dom­i­na­tion of the dig­i­tal ad mar­ket by a few huge play­ers. The Com­pe­ti­tion and Trans­paren­cy in Dig­i­tal Adver­tis­ing Act actu­al­ly tar­gets that spe­cif­ic prob­lem much more effec­tive­ly than the JCPA.”

(For fur­ther analy­sis detail­ing prob­lems with the JCPA, see this let­ter, signed by the ACLU, EFF, Pub­lic Knowl­edge, Inter­net Archive, and oth­er groups.)

The Com­pe­ti­tion and Trans­paren­cy in Dig­i­tal Adver­tis­ing Act died when the last Con­gress dis­solved. How­ev­er, it has been revamped and rein­tro­duced as the Adver­tis­ing Mid­dle­men Endan­ger­ing Rig­or­ous Inter­net Com­pe­ti­tion Account­abil­i­ty (AMERICA) Act. It hap­pens to be prime spon­sored by a fierce oppo­nent of the JCPA: Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Mike Lee of Utah. Inter­est­ing­ly, one of its cospon­sors is Amy Klobuchar, show­ing that she is open to oth­er approach­es besides her own.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren — one of the lead­ing pro­gres­sive voic­es in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate — is also a cospon­sor of the AMERICA Act, along with extreme­ly right wing Repub­li­cans like Ted Cruz and Josh Haw­ley. It just goes to show that on many issues, there are areas of bipar­ti­san agreement.

Giv­en Repub­li­can con­trol of the House, the AMERICA Act prob­a­bly stands a bet­ter chance of becom­ing law this ses­sion than the JCPA, since it is sup­port­ed by right wing groups that have more clout with the Repub­li­can major­i­ty there, along with pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions like Pub­lic Knowl­edge that also oppose the JCPA.

Pas­sage of the AMERICA Act or anoth­er bill that responds to the rigged land­scape that pub­lish­ers con­tin­ue to face in this Con­gress would be an impor­tant break­through for the free press in Amer­i­ca — one we sore­ly need.

The bot­tom line from our research is that vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton are in agree­ment that big tech com­pa­nies ought to be finan­cial­ly sup­port­ing the jour­nal­ism that ben­e­fits their plat­forms. We urge our con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion, espe­cial­ly Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Mur­ray (who aren’t cospon­sors of either of the afore­men­tioned bills) to take note of this find­ing and work with their col­leagues in Con­gress to pass leg­is­la­tion to help the free press sur­vive and thrive.