Sponsors of American C-18 legislation still waiting for Congressional vote

September 28, 2023

Today The Washington Post hosted a video interview of Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn) and Congressman Ken Buck (R-Col), co-sponsors of the US version of Canada’s Bill C-18, the Online News Act.

Klobuchar’s proposed Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) has been stuck in the Senate for two years now, cleared the Judiciary sub-committee in June, but has not come to a vote on the Senate floor. During today’s interview it became clear that Klobuchar has no idea when it will get a vote in the full Senate, although she says Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is committed to getting it there before the end of 2024. Only then can the JCPA move to the highly dysfunctional House of Representatives.

The House sponsor Buck stole the show during the WAPO interview. The five-term incumbent from Colorado’s rural Fourth District is an interesting cat. He is a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus but not a Trump acolyte. He has cut himself a profile as a trust-buster and foe of Big Tech market power. His commitment to saving local news outlets is that “news is what binds our community” and its decline “is a threat to the rural way of life.”

Buck’s support for the JCPA is closely aligned with the policy foundation of the Australian News Media Bargaining Code which emphasized above all the correction of Google and Facebook market power over news distribution by overriding anti-trust limitations on news outlets combining to bargain over news value with the larger tech platforms. “This isn’t ‘intervention in the marketplace,'” Buck told WAPO, “we don’t have a market, we have a monopoly.”

Klobuchar chimed in, suggesting that if US Congress can make anti-trust exceptions for farmer co-ops it can do the same for small news outlets.

As for getting a vote on the JCPA, Buck thinks Klobuchar and Schumer could get the required sixty Senators on board for an unfilibustered majority. On the other hand, Buck acknowledged in a massive understatement that getting a Senate Bill passed by the House during this session “is more difficult than in the last Congress.”

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