Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) told Breitbart News that Democrats offered Republicans congressional support for removal of “vaccine mandates” imposed on members of the U.S. Armed Forces in exchange for inclusion of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) within the National Defense Authorization Act, which was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.
“[The JCPA] certainly shouldn’t have been used as the Democrats were trying to use it, as a negotiating chip for ending the COVID vaccine mandate on our troops,” Cotton said on Thursday’s edition of the Breitbart News Daily podcast with host Alex Marlow.
Cotton shared his rationale for opposing the JCPA, warning that it would lead to the creation of a news media “cartel” — while excluding news media outlets such as Breitbart News — to negotiate revenue-sharing terms with Big Tech distributors such as Apple, Facebook, and Google
He remarked, “The idea that you can create an alliance of news businesses that have an exemption from the cartel that will then be able to exclude explicitly center-right organizations like Breitbart — and who knows who else — I find very troubling.”
He continued, “So before anything like this happens, I think we need to have assurances that any such association would treat all comers on a neutral content and viewpoint independent basis, that they can’t just say to Breitbart, ‘We don’t like your news coverage. We don’t like your perspective. So while we’re taking care of the traditional daily newspapers like the Jonesboro Sun, we’re going to exclude you.’ Until we can reach that kind of understanding, I think the JCPA should be a non-starter.”
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Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter @rkraychik.