The Center for Journalism & Liberty at Open Markets Submits Written Testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sustaining the News Amid the Growth of AI

The current state of unlicensed and uncompensated use of news publisher and journalistic content will exacerbate the existing structural inequalities that undermine the viability of journalism.

WASHINGTON – The Center for Journalism & Liberty at Open Markets has submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law written testimony in response to the subcommittee’s January 10th hearing, “Oversight of AI: the Future of Journalism.” 

In her written testimony, Dr. Courtney Radsch, director of the Center for Journalism and Liberty, proposes a number of policy solutions for mitigating the biggest challenges facing journalism in the digital age: namely, the tremendous power imbalance between the tech platforms and newsrooms, which will only be exacerbated by the growth of generative AI: 

“Large digital platforms are effectively diverting digital advertising revenues away from news publishers because they compete against news publishers for the same eyeballs to generate revenue, and they control the “ad tech” services that serve ads across the web based on algorithmically driven systems built on vast troves of data that gives them an unfair advantage,” our testimony reads, citing our report “How to Fund Independent News Media in the 21st Century,” as well as additional testimony, reports, and op-eds supporting these points. 

Among those solutions is the need for rigorous copyright enforcement, reflecting our recent comments to the U.S. Copyright Office as well as our November 2023 report, “AI in the Public Interest: Confronting the Monopoly Threat:” 

"Key to the future of journalism in the age of AI is how the United States updates and applies American copyright laws, as the current state of unlicensed and uncompensated use of news publisher and journalistic content will exacerbate the existing structural inequalities that undermine the viability of journalism and the news media industry and threaten the foundations of our democratic system,” the testimony reads. 

Read full testimony below or download here. 

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