Former Secretary of State, CIA director, and GOP lawmaker Mike Pompeo sounded the alarm Wednesday on the Journalism Competition and Protection Act, saying Congress should vote it down.
“The last thing we need is to give the media a special privilege to collude with big tech,” he tweeted. “Congress should vote down the Journalism Competition and Protection Act.”
Contrary to its name, the JCPA would create a cartel of corporate legacy media that would exclude anti-establishment media when bargaining for special favors from Big Tech.
As Breitbart News’ Senior Technology Correspondent Allum Bokhari has written: “In essence, the bill is a bailout for the same corporate legacy media that has made an industry of smearing Republicans as extremists, bigots, and worse, pushing conspiracy theories like Russiagate while ignoring legitimate stories that harm their preferred party, like the Hunter Biden ‘laptop from hell.'”
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), is due to be considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee this week.
House Republican leadership has condemned the bill. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA) has called it the “antithesis of conservatism,” and Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan (OH) is warning the bill will be used to suppress competition.
“[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?” Jordan said.
In the Senate, support is divided among Republicans. Supporters include Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John Kennedy (R-LA), who is the lead GOP co-sponsor. Opponents include Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Mike Lee (R-UT).
Kennedy’s office said he pushed for changes to the original bill, but conservatives remain unconvinced it will mitigate the risk to anti-establishment media outlets.
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