tonight on c-span. a hearing on big tech companies such as google and how they use to pay for content. then, gloria asked if i'd -- e stefan testifies on artist compensation. later a subcommittee hears about autonomous vehicles. ♪ announcer: c-span's "washington journal," every day taking your calls live on the air on the news of the day and discussing policy issues that impact you. coming up sunday morning michael o'hanlon talks about tensions between russia -- tensions between russia and ukraine and russia' whispering partnership with china, and a ceo discusses at the national debt getting the $30 trillion mark and the

foundation's role in promoting deficit reduction. our guest will discuss rising primates -- rising crime rate and his group's effort to reduce violence. watch c-span's "washington journal" live at 7:00 eastern. and be sure to join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, text messages, and tweets. ♪ announcer: our u.s. intelligence agencies prepared for espionage threats facing united states from china, russia, iran, and north korea? we examine that question sunday on q&a with hoover institution senior fellow amy segar. she is the other of spies, lies, and algorithms. >> i think we are living in a moment of reckoning where the intelligence community has to undergo a radical transformation at we ratcheting to deal with the threats driven by new

technology. i think about these threats in terms of five wars that they create for the intelligence committee. threats that could work across vast distances in cyberspace, more speed, threats are moving at a faster pace is were before, more data intelligence analysts have to confront in the world, more customers that do not have security clearances that need intelligence, people like voters who need to understand election interference and more competitors, and that is probably the most challenging work on u.s. intelligence agencies do not dominate the collection and analysis of information like they did in the cold war. announcer: abc guard -- amy segard with her book on qa day. you can listen to qa day -- q

and a -- i like announcer: local news executives talked about how they are affected by much to companies using their content. this subcommittee hearing was chaired by -- this is just under two hours. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> thank you, everyone. i called order this hearing of the subcommittee on competition policy, antitrust and consumer rights entitled "breaking the news - journalism, competition, and the effects of market power on a free press." i want to welcome our witnesses. we have boats going on right now so senator leahy and i will be going back and forth as will some of the other senators during this time. but i want to thank him and his staff for working with us to put together this hearing as well as my own staff, mark and avery and kagan for the work they do everyday. so some of you may know my dad was a newspaperman, as a reporter and a columnist in the twin cities. he covered it all in an estimated 8400 columns, and

about 12 million words in which he interviewed everyone from ronald reagan, senator lee, to ginger rogers, to chicago bears coach mike ditka. i won't say which interview was his favorite. he was proud to be a newspaperman, and as you can imagine, in my house growing up it was impossible to forget the importance of a free press. and that is what we are here to talk about today, to talk about the critical work news outlets around the country are doing and explore solutions to some of the existential challenges facing journalism. it is truly local news, the reports on issues that people face in their everyday lives. i think about the forum in my home state actually of minnesota next to north dakota that includes moorehead minnesota when the floods catastrophic

floods hit the area. that newspaper and the local broadcasters were the ones covering it, morning people, giving them news updates all the time. i think about investigative journalism at the local level with everything from city council scandals, not that those ever exist, to all kinds of things that would not be covered. i think of the sports games for high schools and the pride that people have in the local community events. all of this brings the community together in different ways. they find stuff out. they have common information that they can look at, in addition to what they see nationally which sometimes can see the very existence and larger-than-life. what our local news does is oftentimes tells a story about my dad called ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

and as i said this work not only connects communities, , it also helps policymakers better understand how issues are impacting their constituents and helps them to figure out what needs to be done. that's why it's critical that we ensure that local news cannot only survive but thrive, particularly as outlets face off with some of the biggest companies in the world is ever known. local news is facing a crisis in the u.s. since 2005 about five about 2200 local newspapers across america have closed and many of the ones that remain are on life support. between 2008-2019, newsroom employment fell by 51%. with much smaller newsrooms, surviving outlets are often mere shells of the unsold rustic about that really troubling photo from "the denver post" where the journalist they show a picture of everyone happily

smiling and then a few years later they show the hollowed out images of silhouettes of the journalist who are no longer there, less than half of them left. as you know local newspapers aren't closing or drastically reducing their coverage because of a lack of talent or passion for the work. and yes, many of them have online presence and have tried their best to do that. but, in fact, the real problem is a lack of revenue. ad revenue for use newspapers plummeted from over 37 billion in 2008, less than 9 billion in 2020. 2020. 37 billion in 2008, to less than 9 billion in 2020. what else happened during that time? well, if you see the ad revenues for the world's biggest companies you will see the exact opposite story being told. facebook and google, worth over

$2.6 trillion combined as i speak, became digital advertising titans during that same time. just yesterday google reported 61 in advertising revenue in a single three-month period, a 33% jump. i say to my colleagues, a 33% jump on the same three just last year. look at those numbers. 61 billion in just three months for one company. 61 billion, and and you have u.s. newspaper revenue from '08-2020 going from 37 billion to 9 billion. as one of my colleagues said during the presidential race, do the math. it's not that hard to figure it out. do the math. the big tech companies are not friends to journalism. they are raking in ad dollars while taking his content. feeding into the users and refusing to offer fair

compensation. and they're making money on consumers backs by using the content produced by news outlets to suck up as much a data about each reader as they can. so it's kind of a double whammy. they are the big guys bringing in the content. they are not compensating for it as they should, and at the same time they are getting the revenue off the consumers that read the content that then don't go to the ones that are producing the content. so then the data really exacerbates what is already a huge divide in where the revenue goes. and how much do these companies care about retaining this power over the news and reader data? they care a lot. enough to even hold entire countries, industrialized nations, hostage as we saw happen last year in australia. when google was told by the government that they would have to pay for the news content that they wanted to use, this is the

australian government, the company essentially said we are out of here, and threatened to pull google search out of an entire country. that's what monopolies do. that's what you do when you can do it because you over 90% of the search market. google didn't follow through on its threat in part because there was so much international pressure to stop them from doing it. but facebook actually switched off all news on its platform to protest the law. only reversing course after a few days under immense outside pressure. and what does big tech's dominance over the news mean for americans? as i've already noted less revenue for local news, fewer journalists to do in-depth high quality reporting, more exposure to misinformation, and fewer reliable sources. well, the rise of these platforms is sometimes met a larger audience for some news

outlets. that hasn't translated to increased ad revenue. for years i have heard concerns about things like the platforms did not provide adequate branding for news outlets original content on the platform. that they forage for themselves all of the data on the use that access the news content produced by news providers to their platform. that they publish large snippets of newspapers content to attract users to the platform without any compensation at all to that news outlet. and repeated complaints to google and facebook from newspapers and broadcasters are simply ignored because that's what a monopolist does. they can ignore things. they can use their market dominance to elbow others out and retain their control. that's why we need to step in to level the playing field as so many of the countries are doing. we are here today to talk about how we will give these news

outlets a fighting chance. i teamed up with my colleague senator kennedy to lead the bipartisan journalism competition and preservation act. our bill gives local news outlets the ability to collectively negotiate for fair compensation with companies like google and facebook so they can continue to invest in a kind of quality reporting that keeps us all informed. and we are working with our bipartisan partners in the house of representatives on improvements to the bill. we are ready to take all ideas and address all challenges raised by our colleagues because we believe there's a way to do this fairly to make sure that all news outlets are included to better help correct -- better the bargaining power between newspapers and big tech. we are looking at this, a a cr framework for good faith negotiations between news

organizations and big tech. mechanisms to help make those negotiations will smoothly, protections to prevent discrimination against news outlets based on the political views that they express, and provisions to better ensure that the interest of small independent news outlets are paramount in any joint negotiation. i also introduced the future of local news act to help local outlets chart the passport as a recover from the pandemic and them working with my colleagues to pass the local journalism sustainability act to all americans safer newspaper subscriptions. so all this said, if we were living in a perfect world where we didn't have monopoly search engines and monopoly platforms with some cases over 90% of the market and we were able to pass some of the bills that i have, my colleagues have on a bipartisan basis, senator grassley, to even the playing field, maybe we wouldn't be where we are but we are here

because we have a crisis going on when we have lost over 2000 news outlets and that is why we have come upon this targeted approach to protect the first amendment, to protect the news organizations that we believe are so critical to making sure that the first amendment stay strong. we need to recognize that what separates the news from the vast majority of our other industries is a crucial role in our democratic system of government. that's what our founders enshrined freedom of the press in the first amendment. so when the exercise of monopoly power result in a market failure and/or news industry, it's critically important for our democracy that we act. local journalism is important to local communities and their economies. the closures of local newspapers can lead to higher municipal borrowing costs and increase government inefficiency. this means less money for schools, hospitals and roads.

thomas jefferson said that our first objective should be to leave open quote, all avenues to truth, end quote. and that's the best we doing that is through quote, the freedom of the press, end quote. that rings especially true today. as elected leaders we may not always like what what we rr in the news. i think all of us can relate to that but i think we can all agree that ensuring the future of a vibrant and independent free press is essential to the fabric of our democracy and the american way of life. thank you. i now turn it over to my colleague senator lee for his opening statement. >> thanks so much, chairwoman klobuchar. today's hearing is important. i look forward to it for a variety of reasons. i think it will be illustrative on a number of fronts. but first involves what ails the news industry. now, news publishers do, in fact, have a legitimate beef with google, facebook as

duopoly. a problem with facebook's unrivaled market power in digital advertising and poses a sort of de facto tax on every business that places or makes money from ads, which is a large swath of the 21st century economy. i'm grateful to you, madam chair, along with senator grassley and senator blumenthal working with my office to tackle that two headed hydra which does need to be tackled. we have a lot of agreement on that issue. i also think that it's important to ask the question whether that's really news publishers only problem. i don't think it is. in fact, i think it's far from

that. now, our witnesses today may not exemplify that. i'll assume for purposes of our discussion today that they don't, but there are a number of voices within the news, mainstream news media whose publications are rife with shoddy and extraordinarily biased reporting that many consumers simply don't trust or in any event don't want to spend money consuming. there are too many examples to cite all of them but i think it's important to point out at least a few of them. if the steele dossier, work of pure fiction, funded by the clinton campaign and dutifully reported on by news media outlets across the country, blinded by their own impassioned hatred of president trump, they help to spread the lies, even after it had been proven

demonstrably, literally false. we are still waiting on the retractions. or what about the "washington post" defamation covington catholic high school student nicholas hammond? or the post fawning description of islamic state leader al-baghdadi as a quote-unquote austere religious scholar? and who can forget the "new york times" reporting that russia placed bounties on heads of american soldiers, which was quickly dutifully parroted by other outlets in the run-up to the 2020 president election. it was until after president biden was not good that they felt comfortable admitting that the story didn't hold up, mission accomplished i suppose. i know senator cotton will recall how his suggestion that covid-19 may have been leaked from a lab in wuhan, was scoffed at and derided rather viciously

in a series of personal attacks against him for saying that. as it turns out he was right. so how did the media respond? well, they still have their original reporting. they pretend it never happened. just last month just in the last few weeks the salt lake tribune editorial board literally said that if you tell we are a more just decent place at the national guard would be mobilized, it would affect all people on under house arrests if there unvaccinated. so they are fiery but mostly peaceful protests, the summer of 2020. the denials that critical race theory is being taught in the

schools. these things add to and constitute part of this list along with quote-unquote temporary inflation, and the list goes on and on. look, today's news media is often a source of misinformation, and it's one of the leading causes when it does this, so a people especially doesn't even acknowledge its mistakes and especially when it's mistakes appear so frequently, so consistently, so constantly to lean one direction and not the other. self-proclaimed fourth estate loves to preach to the masses about democracy dying in darkness while they themselves turn out the lights here. on top of the fact the mainstream media is selling something that in many cases people don't want, there are also the series of poor business decisions that been made within

that industry. during the years in which they make comfortable profits, almost nothing in some of the copies of these was reinvested into the business to innovate and to grow in response to changing technologies. and when the market changed with the advent of the internet orsi newspapers for the first time to face meaningful competition advertising dollars, many publishers just went all in on advertising only business model, even abandoning the subscription revenue for online content. the bottom line here, whatever the challenge is that the news publishers are facing as a result of big tech's dominance over digital advertising, for some publishers, perhaps for many, they have got other problems. and for some of them, perhaps

for many, that may involve inferior product quality and a failure to take into account evolving technologies to adapt their business model. the second thing to sit straight here is that what we should do about this, or rather, what we should not do also matters. the last thing i think we should do is to try to solve this or any other competition problem by saying that it's okay to just accept a cartel, that it's okay to make changes to the laws to encourage the formation and allow the formation and thereby encourage the formation of a cartel, as many publishers are requesting. make no mistake, that is what this is. it is what this call is for. and that is what the jcpa would

do here we're not talking about an arguably procompetitive type of competitor collaboration on some sort of run-of-the-mill joint venture. this would be competitors themselves colluding with the approval of law against a common business partner in order to fix problems they are facing. now, there is a lot that senator klobuchar and i have agreed on, and one of the many things we have agreed also a lot of areas within antitrust law. we held a fantastic hearing back in 2013 i think it was when we talk about cartels. senator klobuchar said cartels have no other purpose other than to rob consumers, and i agree.

and i certainly think we are not going to be better off by giving a cartel formation a hall pass to an industry that's been ravaged by a number of other problems that i have identified. this in the passing those problems along to consumers, the very same consumers that are being forced to in many cases except an inferior product and partisan hackery and so much else to goes along with it. now, i know publishers, including some of our witnesses today, believe that they would benefit, but legislation like the journalism competition preservation act would do are more to help the "new york times" and far more to help the "washington post," and it would be a benefit for local journalism in salt lake city or in minneapolis. the only way to fix this is by encouraging competition and allowing it and promoting it, not eliminating it and not,

certainly not giving people a hall pass to engage in contact that would challenge, , threaten and in a minute. but finally, as i understand the authors of the jcpa are rewriting that in an effort to mirror some reforms and australia and the music licensing system and the united states. i want to register my frustration that the majority hasn't shared draft text and we have seen a draft text. it's nearly impossible for senators and witnesses to prepare for hearing where draft legislation is floating around case tree but not publicly available for senators and for the american people, for that matter, to review. with all that said i look forward to this evening and hearing from our witnesses and their contributions. >> thank you very much, senator

lee. i would also note that the venue built we do not have any hearing on that, and we are here having a hearing on this and i of course am the lead author of that but i think, i went through after our last discussion on my innovation go and we found dozens of bills including led by republicans where the hearings were either at the subcommittee level or the wasn't a hearing, and we were able to have a markup and a discussion of the bill based on hearings such as the one we are having today. so think after we're done with this and we should look at that history. because we would be putting on a full venue built and many others if that was our new standard, that would be sadly adopted this week. i'm now going to introduce the witnesses that are before us today. from the local news area, something near and dear to my heart and the reason i feel so strongly about this bill,

jennifer bertetto, thank you for being here. did i say that correctly? thank you for is the president and ceo trib total media located outside of pittsburgh. the company operates a daily paper with a circulation of approximately 35,000, 11 weekly community newspapers with smaller circulation, and a handful of monthly newspapers. ms. bertetto has been with the company for more than 20 years holding positions ranging from regional advertising director to chief operating officer, to president. her first job in the news business was taking a small scores to the local baseball and soccer leagues at the age of 16. she also serves on the board of the news media alliance. next up, joel oxley. mr. oxley is a general manager of wtop news. for anyone in the d.c. area

you've heard wtop. it is a d.c. area radio station owned by hubbard broadcasting which happens to be located in minnesota. wtop has over 100 local journalists and it is known for its local news programming. the station first went on the air in 1926. mr. oxley joined wtop in 1992 and worked his way up the ranks in sales and sales management to general manager in 1998 dan gainor, mr. gainor is a vice president of free speech america and business for the media research center, a nonprofit organization focused on alleged liberal media bias. he is a commentator for fox and has a regular spot on the one american news network.

prior to joining the media research center, mr. gainor was an editor at several newspapers including the washington times and the baltimore news america. next, last but not least, daniel francis. mr. francis, dr. francis is a lecturer on law at harvard law school where he writes about regulation and competition. his research focuses on antitrust as well as constitutional and other rules that facilitate, constrained and shaped regulatory action and competitive processes. he has a particular interest in digital in high-tech markets. dr. francis previously served as the federal trade commission as senior counsel to the director associate director for digital markets and ultimately deputy director. another witness that's here with us virtually, hal singer. dr. singer is an economist who has researched, and testified on competition related issues in a wide variety of industries, including media, pharmaceuticals, boards and finance. late last republished a paper commissioned by the news media

alliance about the impact of google and facebook on newspapers finding that google and facebook under compensate newspapers for content and advertising. if the witnesses now would please stand and raise your right hand. [witnesses were sworn in] >> thank you. let the record reflect that each of the witnesses answered in the affirmative. you may be seated, and i will now recognize the witnesses for five minutes of testimony each, and as i noted, senators have voted. we've invited all the senators on the committee as it always due to this hearing, and so we would begin with you, ms. bertetto. thank you. >> chairwoman klobuchar, ranking member lee, and members of the

subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to participate in today's hearing. my name is jennifer bertetto and i'm the president and ceo of trib total media. we are a small publisher that delivers news, information and advertising to four county in southwest -- southwestern pennsylvania. our company is 272 employees strong with a daily and weekly newspaper situation and hyper local commander websites that comprise our neighborhood news network. our newsroom as a collective of 88 journalists, photojournalist, editors and designers. our high quality and award-winning journalism is why our flagship website tree of life.com draws more than 300 300 million views view. our company was transformed in 1970 when richard mellon scaife purchase our local publishing

company. we have remained focused on providing local news to our communities but with the rise of the internet we recognize we need to shift our focus from print to digital. having done that we are proud to provide our flagship website for free, a testament to our commitment to the community and to making news accessible. i've worked my entire career in the news industry started out of college and working my way up to president and ceo in 2015. i've seen firsthand the change in nature news consumption and distribution and can attest the news industry faces i dyer and insurmountable challenge. leveling the playing field against the vast power exerted by dominant digital platforms. i would like to discuss three main points. first, local newspapers are under incredible financial pressure, and we must ensure that the people who create high quality journalistic content are compensated for it. with the growth of the digital

platforms we saw our readership ship to fewer subscriptions and then cancellations. to become profitable, in 2015 we restructured our business. we close two newspapers, sold three others, , and made the difficult decision to lay off more than 150 employees. in 2016 we published our last edition of the pittsburgh tribune review and moved our reporting in that market online. these decisions were essential to stay in business but they have ramifications to this day. several communities in southwestern pennsylvania are considered -- not served by any local newspaper. second, access to news online has become concentrated on two platforms, facebook and google which serve as gatekeepers and determine how news is displayed, prioritize, monetized without compensating the journalists that create the content they rely on. tech platforms have become gatekeepers control access to

news. my companies original content on their sites. sadly, most americans get their news from these platforms who are raking in record profits by simply curating content. a . a word that is subtly devalued the painstaking work of real reporting by journalist. on google alone 65% of users don't leave their site to click through to newspapers website. depriving publishers of the traffic and ad dollars it brings. some say the newspaper industry has failed to modernize and that's nonsense. even with restructuring and enhanced digital offering the matter what we did it was not enough to level the playing field. small publishers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. we carry no weight in negotiations with platforms. we do not have the resources or the statue to bring them to the table. but there is a solution to the problem. the journalism competition and preservation act would give publishers a seat at the table

to negotiate fair terms for the value of our journalism. thanks to the leadership of chairwoman klobuchar and senator kennedy, the jcpa would provide the limited safe harbor period for publishers, irrespective of size or political persuasion. to negotiate electively with the platforms for fair compensation for the use of our content. it's imperative journalists are fairly compensated and the jcpa would allow us the opportunity to seek just that. the bill does not prescribe the outcome but it allows the opportunity to seek fair compensation, requiring the first to negotiate in good faith, to receive fair compensation for our work when it enables small publishers like my company to invest more in our communities, hire more reporters, increase quality fact-based news. thank you again for the opportunity to testify in today's hearing. >> next up mr. oxley. >> good afternoon, chairwoman klobuchar and ranking member lee

and members of the subcommittee. my name is joel oxley and then the senior vice president and general manager of all-news radio station wtop fm, wtop.com which are all owned by hubbard broadcasting the hubbard broadcasting is a single minnesota family owned and operated broadcasting company with 13 television stations located in minnesota, new york and new mexico, and 50 radio stations located in minnesota, illinois, missouri, ohio, arizona, washington, florida and washington, d.c. i appreciate the opportunity to testify on behalf of national association of broadcasters and it's more than 6600 free and local television registration members in your hometown. broadcasters represent one of the last bastions of truly local unbiased journalism come information that is to respected by all americans. their constituents turn to the local reporters and anchors for voices of a trust.

legislative action including swift passage of the journalism competition and preservation act, jcpa, is needed to preserve this essential cornerstone of our democracy. local journalists and the communities we serve face existential threat whose fate increasingly rests in the hands of a few dominant digital platforms. we applaud the subcommittees attention to this challenge and your continued work in examining the digital market place for news and journalism. the pandemic has shown that when needed most, local television and radio stations provide specific bond for the committee's we serve. doing incredible work in the face of her own enormous challenges. more importantly we continue to be the primary source of the committee focused information on which our constituents have relied during this pandemic from health and vaccine resources to vital information about schools and local businesses. i been in the news business since college. when i work for the school newspaper or sportscaster of the rescission. with the "chicago tribune" before joining wtop three decades ago where i worked my way up in sales and sales

management before becoming the gm in 1998. i understand the significant costs of producing quality strollers. i'm aware of significant financial resources needed to run a station and invest in the type of equipment necessary to serve the public day in and day out 365 days a year to a year. quality journalism delivered through uniquely free service has only been made possible over the decades through advertising revenues. as you are all aware these revenues have experienced of freefall in recent years due to almost exclusively to the rapid often anticompetitive expansion of the dominant online platforms who upended advertising marketplace. the market power of the tech platforms undermines the online advertising model for local broadcast journalism in two and part ways. the tech platforms role of contact gatekeepers stifled ability to generate using traffic. second, at competitive terms of service and a take it or leave it approach leads local broadcasters with a below market

sliver of those advertising revenues derived through products. for local broadcasters and our viewers and listeners rely on quality journalism this is a real catch-22. to attract online use traffic we must accessible to the major platforms yet the terms of -- devalue our product. for example, not only is wtop being compensated by facebook and google for its content, wtop is not being competent -- wtop is paying to make sure its content is being accessed on their platforms. 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 in search results. there is no doubt tech platforms and the algorithms for our content that they sensationalism over our journalism. the dominant online platforms

have flourished side near future mess of advertising revenues are the lifeblood of free local julissa. consider the big storm that just flew to the northeast e weekend, a nor'easter with blizzard conditions. tons of work and a lot of cost and time for local broadcasters to cover for millions of people but not for facebook, google and like. they take our coverage and profit from it and virtually nothing comebacks to us. without local news my guess is a lot of people would've not evacuated place like cape cod last weekend and lives would've and wrist. we just can have that. in conclusion this committee and address these concerns for the passage of the jcpa. nab thanks, senator klobuchar and senator kennedy for introducing jcpa. we support the jcpa which level the playing field by creating a temporary safe harbor for broadcasters in certain digital publications to join negotiate with dominant online platforms

regarding the trends of expenses for which their content may be accessed online. thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you today. i look forward to your question. >> thank you very much, mr. oxley. next up, thank you for being here, mr. francis. >> chair klobuchar, ranking member lee, members of the subcommittee, thank you for having me here to testify today. the former federal antitrust enforcer i strongly support the subcommittees focus on digital monopoly and i want to acknowledge the seriousness of the difficulties that many publishers are facing across the country today often some of our most important work. but i cannot think of anything the country needs glass now or ever than the national news media cartel. i want to make just three points. point number one, cartels are the supreme evil of antitrust. they are so reliably harmful that we extradite and imprisoned people who form them, they are

automatically illegal in civil litigation with no justification allowed law, and for decades the justice department had a flagship policy project of fighting cartels and opposing exemption just like this one. congress has license cartels a handful of times over the 130 years of her antitrust laws, but always with great caution and not always with happy results. point number two, i think the real complaint that i hear from the publishing industry is not so much about monopoly but is rather about property rights on the internet. so i appreciate the publishers complain that platforms end-users can share links to websites and can give previews of news websites that are essential too long without paying. they argue that evidence of monopoly power because platforms are profiting and they are not

paying, or not paying nearly so much, for those rights. but this is not evidence of monopoly power. platforms are not linking and preparing for free because they are monopolistic exercising firepower. it's that our property laws very wisely don't give a website owner whether it's a news website or something else the power to veto or tax linking or previewing of that website. it's pretty easy to see it has nothing to do with monopoly power because no one pays for it. we could at some has the coding ability and the shrimp we could start an app today and lincoln preview websites without paying for that privilege. our law is everyone that freedom. i think that's a really good thing here links to the lifeblood of the internet. imagine how hard it would be to write even a traditional article or book if you couldn't cite a source or quote a sentence or two without paying for that

privilege. and now imagine the consequences of that rule our internet today. so despite the framing, my strong sense is that this is not really about monopoly or monopoly at all. it's a request to dramatically expand proper rights on the internet. and then to allow that property right to be sold by a new national news cartel with major media conglomerates at the helm i think whatever antitrust reform we need today, any think we need some, this is not that. point number three, i think we're going to hear today about countervailing power. i think that's a red herring. it's true that in economic theory if you have a single dominant buyer, there is an argument that total welfare can be proved if you let the suppliers from a cartel, police and a perfect world theory. but it don't think that's applicable here today for two reasons. number one, i don't see evidence of monopoly power here at all

despite the sides of the platforms. again, platforms are not linking everything for free because of firepower. there linking and previewing for free because that bite that freedom is theirs under our property law today. so this wouldn't be a cartel that would correct firepower. would create new seller power. that's a monopoly surcharge and all the news in the tourney cascading down the supply chain driving up prices that are already too high. second, the harm would far outweigh any good. despite the size of the platforms it actually doesn't look a lot like a hold monopoly power in markets for news today. but a national news cartel she would be a monopolist i think think the subcommittee would be really concerned even two of the major publishers would propose a merger. the idea that we might put all of them together under one roof to agree on rates and terms and business models strikes me as a consumers nightmare. adweek the antitrust agencies here pretty creative but

sometimes fragile blackboard economic theories about why we should tolerate harmful conduct. i don't think the agencies would accept its argument at a don't think congress should i do. i think the best thing we can do for competition in news isn't typically increase our funding for the antitrust enforcer. i think that's most urgent advice. thanks for inviting me today and i look forward to your questions. >> thank you. next up, dr. singer who is here in person, so thank you. >> thank you, subcommittee for inviting me to speak today on this post serious issue. i want to begin on a slightly lighter note however by giving a shout it to my mom who turns 90 last month who's watching this young people fashion wear on c-span and does not forgive me to the state for becoming an economist rather have a lawyer. the economic content here are complex but a kind of boiling down to just a few by answering three questions. one, what is the competition problem this bill seeks to

solve? what is the social harms that flow from the competition problem? how would a targeted bill address the competition problem? regarding the competition problem, to platforms google and facebook have monopolized the digital advertising industry. google and facebook capture approximately 61% of all digital advertising dollars because of the ability to collect consumer data across the web. 70% of referral traffic to newspapers originate from just these sites. this market power makes news publishers completely beholden to the dominant platforms for viewers and advertising dollars. the resulting power imbalance insureds at the market rate for accessing news content will always be below competitive levels. google or facebook achieve their dominance in the mid-odds with acquisition of countless competitors, call the mentors like instagram and youtube as well as critical input suppliers and at tech like double-click an ad mob. also not by coincidence

newspapers begin losing advertising, mainly to the platforms. according to pew research, newsroom advertising declined from 37.8 billion in 2008 to 8.8 billion in 2020 and over 20 and over the same time, newsroom employees declined from 71,070 the 30,820. if these trends are left unchecked we might not have local newspapers in the near future. the reason why google scrapes indexes and post news publisher content for free is because it can pick it's like a school bully beating the smaller child's lunch. so long as market forces are allowed to dictate the payments for accessing news publisher content the access price will remain zero and news publishers will be deprived of the billions of dollars a year of value created for the platforms. turning to my second question, in addition to the private harms, the underpayment to news

publishers resulting underemployment of journalists and other news employees as well as a house of other social ills associate with local news deserts including less competent local governments, greater spread of partisanship and misinformation, removal of economic stimulus to local economies, and a reduction in the diversity of viewpoints. turning to my third and final question, a targeted intervention similar to negotiation framework adopted in australia with solve the competition problem and mitigate the associate social harms by doing three things. first, they could permit a coalition of news publishers to form a joint negotiating entity to alleviate the power imbalance. no news publisher no news publisher whatever unilaterally shut down access to google and facebook. to do so would be suicidal. second, the bill could compel the platforms to negotiate in good faith for the access rights. third, if the good-faith negotiation does not produce an

agreement, the coalition of news publishers but not broadcasted could invoke arbitration rights. at that point a panel of arbitrators would decide using baseball style arbitration whose estimate of the value added to the platform by all the members of the coalition was closest to fair market value for accessing the content in the absence of the power imbalance. now granted and narrow exemption to antitrust laws to address underpayments to vulnerable input providers find precedent in both the labor exemption and the farm cooperative exemption to the antitrust law. and other countries such as australia which have employed a similar intervention to what i call for here have seen immediate rewards to publishers for their interventions. relative to australia's model what i'm calling for would be more favorable to small publishers as it would not permit any large individual newspaper to avail itself of the good-faith negotiation or

arbitration rights. only news publishers that remain in the coalition would be entitled to those rights. thank you, and i look forward to answering your questions. >> thank you very, very much. and now our remaining witness who was appearing remotely is dan gainor, vice president free speech america and business for the media research center. thank you for being with us, mr. gainor. .. >> every single member of this committee would do the same.

the conservation act of 2021 does not fix this problem. attempt to level the playing field of tech and journalism. it's a misinterpretation of history that it was killed by tech companies. it was not. how do i know? i was there working with local journalism, bought at 20 to 25 to 30% profit reinvested. and there's the delivery that became difficult out of traffic and turned to tv news. furthermore, where i grew up, none of that was caused by this. the director of new media began to catch on and watched the organization downplayed the threat and put the content off for free. news outlets were unable to look at the opportunity and

they were dissected by the competition. there was the particular toll of local businesses and that meant advising, and restrictions were an example of heavy hand of government on local news, that's the background that brings us here today to discuss journalism. j c.p.a., rather than fixing big advertising, it's adding another to negotiate with. allowing the big media companies to act for others. -- we all want trusty journalism to help hold people accountable. local outlets who treated as cash cows, they milked them and slaughtered their remains.

a local media instead of independent media. and the new york times 550 million dollars in cash purchasing-- according to the journalist 270 plus sports teams and more than 47 local markets, times placed itself in local competition, and more than 8 million paid subscribers, and with the popular games in the low seven figures, why are we helping them. and there was the communities weekly and it was founded in 1959 with a 550,000 and circulation in suburban maryland. they were down by their owners washington post in 2015. in 2021 the post achieved regard breaking advertising, billionaire jeff bezos purchased the company in 2013,

why are we helping them? media with social media algorithms and makes it more powerful. this-- with the dedicated editorial, and independent journalists make news, but they're squeezed out by corporate media. there's a concerted evidence to get involved in the process of funding in journalists, it's unrealistic to expect journalists funded and supported by politicians to report aggressively on the same politicians. we can't expect them to be when they're accountable to those powerful people with their paychecks.

when the trusted media is near an epic low. the americans trust media to report fully, accurately and fairly, and for republicans, that number stands at 11%. why then are we bailing out corporate media when ordinary americans would rather find new sources and information. thank you, i look forward to your questions. >> thank you very much, and thank you for appearing remotely. i'll start with you, google is a search giant about 90% of searches as you know, 90% done on google and biggest in the on-line advertising space, nothing i know my colleagues are concerned about. google pays a large revenue generated on the newspaper site. how would you characterize your your negotiations with google over the share of advertising

revenue it gets compared to what you newspapers can keep? >> thank you for your question. >> i guess the best way to answer that would be there have never been negotiations between my company and google about the manner in which we get paid or how much we get paid. in fact, i've often had my company penalized whenever i have had other advertising services available on trib live, to help fund our free website. we get punished in the algorithms. if someone goes to search is tore trib live, because we're using other companies because they're not google, our search results are pushed down. when we've reached out direct to google to help our search rankings, we've been directed to google products 12 to 15,000

a month which is a lot the problem is to solve by removing other advertising mechanisms that exist on our site. so, when i have attempted to find other ways to monetize our content independent of google i've hit wall after wall with google and in fact, the resellers have been as brash as to say to me, look, i would take off the other platforms that you're using on your site when i explain i actually get a higher dollar per click using those resellers, they tell me, well, google doesn't like that and google owns everything. >> okay. pretty direct. >> mr. oxley. in your written testimony you wrote that big tech companies like google adopted anti-competitive service and take it or leave it which

leaves markets with a sliver of the ads derived from their product. can you tell your experience with negotiating about big tech companies like google. >> there's no negotiation, there's no e-mail, no back and forth. and they don't give you that opportunity. and we've tried every way possible with both of them. the bottom line they don't get back to you and even worse, they make changes whenever they feel like it. we oftentimes over a weekend or overnight or in the middle of the afternoon, we'll all of a sudden have changes in terms of services that come down to us out of the blue and we just have to deal with it. there's not any kind of negotiation, not any kind of conversation. >> okay. and again, direct. dr. singer, news aggregator, such an apple news, facebook news, take various news from publishers and give it to consumers and it