OMI Issues Comment on California-Google Deal That Replaces AB 886 (California Journalism Preservation Act)

WASHINGTON - Yesterday, Google and California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a “partnership” between the state and the corporation to provide financial support to California news publishers and to launch an “AI Accelerator.” As part of the deal, California legislators abandoned plans to pass the Journalism Preservation Act, a law that would have required Google and Facebook to pay publishers for the news they carry on their platforms, with a focus on supporting journalism jobs and transparency. The action comes after Google in April began to remove news from the search results of some California citizens. In response, the Open Markets Institute and the Center for Journalism and Liberty released the following statement:

Yesterday’s deal was a shameful and dangerous betrayal of the America’s free press by the state of California. It establishes a sort of joint custody over the state’s journalists and news publishers by the government of California and the most powerful corporation in the world. It is an agreement that should outrage every reporter, editor, and publisher in America, and indeed every citizen who believes in democracy. The deal was struck despite a federal judge finding just weeks ago that Google is an “illegal” monopolist, and that the corporation has wielded its power in ways that endanger individual liberty and the public good.

The Open Markets Institute and the Center for Journalism and Liberty stand arm in arm with the many journalists and news publishers who have condemned this deal. We stand also with the journalists and publishers who have yet to speak out, perhaps because they view the deal as a way to live to fight another day, or simply because they are afraid of retaliation. It is important to recognize that California’s journalists and publishers – along with their colleagues across the nation and around the world – have been victims of a long-term predation by immensely powerful corporations that have illegally diverted billions of dollars of advertising into their own vaults while monopolizing search and social media. 

The details of yesterday’s deal are still murky. What is clear is that if enacted, it would amount to a taxpayer subsidy that lets the wealthiest companies off the hook. Among other problems, the system for distributing the funds to publishers poses a variety of potential conflicts of interest, and the guaranteed use of funding to hire and retain journalists is gone.

In sum, the deal completely fails to redress the power imbalances that have already undermined freedom of the press in the United States and around the world. Worse, it is exactly the sort of corrupt bargain between the private corporation and government that Americans feared when they established the First Amendment to the Constitution.

We call on the California legislature to reject this deal and finish the job of passing the Journalism Preservation Act, which will both provide more money for journalists and actually begin to cut the threat at the root. We also call on federal authorities to immediately pass the bipartisan Journalism Competition and Preservation Act.