Tag Archives: Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA)

Why Many Americans Don’t Trust Politicians

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On Monday, Breitbart posted the following headline:

SOURCES: McConnell Caves to Pelosi, Schumer, Allows JCPA Media Cartel Bailout Bill to Be Included in Defense Package

The laweconcenter points out some of the legal issues with the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. Please read the entire article for the details, but here is a summary of the problems:

1. JCPA MAY VIOLATE THE FIRST AMENDMENT

2. NEWS CARTELS HARM CONSUMERS

3. THE BILL CONFLICTS WITH COPYRIGHT LAW

4. THE JCPA SUPPRESSES COMPETITION

I can understand why the mainstream media would want to suppress competition–they are losing viewers and listeners at an alarming rate. I doubt the NPR would be on the air without government subsidies (another questionable spending priority by Congress).

Breitbart reports:

Over objections from House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, the likely next speaker of the House come January 3 of next year, other congressional leaders acquiesced to lobbyist pressure and agreed to include the JCPA in the base text of the NDAA. McCarthy was the only member of congressional leadership to fight back against the inclusion, but was overruled three to one after McConnell caved.

We obviously need new Republican leadership in the Senate.

In an article posted November 30th, Breitbart notes:

Even with the hastily-added Senate amendment aimed at addressing conservative concerns regarding collusion between the media industry and Big Tech on the censorship of competitors, the bill still contains plenty of ways for the cartel to sideline conservative media.

Provisions to ensure the cartel cannot discriminate on the basis of “viewpoint” are particularly unconvincing. The pretexts used by social media companies, “fact checkers,” and other arms of the corporate censorship apparatus are almost always viewpoint-neutral. No one is censored for being a conservative, say the censors: they are censored for “misinformation,” “hate speech,” “conspiracy theories,” and other purportedly viewpoint-neutral reasons.

Congress has no business meddling in the exercise of free speech or adding that meddling to a defense bill.

 

Legalizing Fact-Checkers

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On Tuesday, Breitbart posted an article about the new, revised version of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. If passed, this law would end even the pretense of objective news reporting.

The article reports:

A new version of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) is circulating that is worse than the original. It allows mainstream, legacy and left-wing media to form exclusionary media cartels and then empowers them with extraordinary collective-bargaining power to collude with Big Tech companies. The amendments serve only to spell out in greater specificity how to exclude conservative and anti-establishment media from any alleged benefits.

Specifically, the new JCPA contains a provision that allows “eligible” media companies forming a cartel to “create admission criteria for membership unrelated to the size of an eligible digital journalism provider or the views expressed by its content, including criteria to limit membership to only eligible publishers or only eligible broadcasters.”

That provision is significant especially for its specificity. These mainstream and left-wing media cartels may not exclude based on size or “views expressed by its content.” But that is not how the exclusion happens or will happen.

These self-appointed mainstream and left-wing media cartels ARE allowed to exclude based on the usual, totally subjective, factors they always do, such as: “trustworthiness,” “fake news, “extremism,” “misinformation,” “hate speech,” “conspiracy,” “correction policy,” “expertise,” “authoritativeness,” etc.

Why do I think that any news media questioning the election of any Democrat would be excluded based on fake news?

Fortunately some of the Republicans in Congress are speaking out against this bill.

The article notes:

The GOP leadership in the House of Representatives has condemned the bill, with GOP leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) calling it the “antithesis of conservatism,” and Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) warning it will be used to suppress competition.

“They [the media] will use it, in the end, to discriminate against people who don’t fit into their category, who aren’t defined as ‘the press’ — and who’s going to determine that definition?” said Jordan.

In the Senate, the bill has been condemned by a growing number of Republican senators, including Marsha Blackburn, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, and Mike Lee.

Republican FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington, and the legal scholar who worked on President Trump’s proposed Section 230 reforms have also warned of the dangers of the legislation.

This is a path America has already started on. Most millennials get their news from social media. Since social media is patrolled by fact-checkers to limit free speech, most millennials have a very warped view of current events (combined with the warped view of America they learned in history class). A free press is necessary in a representative republic (which is actually what America is–we are not a democracy). If that free press is no longer free to oppose those in power, we will very quickly move down the road to fascism–where opposing those in power will have legal consequences [like staying in jail for more than a year before being tried (January 6th defendants) or having your home raided by the FBI and your wife’s closet and your child’s room ransacked]. This is not a good path to be on.