Exclusive – Sen. Tom Cotton: JCPA Media Cartel Bill 'Very Worrisome'

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) spoke with host Alex Marlow on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Daily about the latest on the Journalism Competition and Protection Act – a bill that would enable establishment and legacy media companies to form a cartel and collectively bargain with Silicon Valley tech giants while excluding conservative media companies. 

Senate Democrats are looking to resurrect the zombie bill, which has been revived numerous times in recent years. Most recently, Democrats and their establishment Republican counterparts attempted to shoehorn the legislation into last year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). 

Cotton, a staunch JCPA critic, told the Breitbart News editor-in-chief that while he “almost always support[s]” the annual NDAA, “I had to put my foot down and say that I would not just oppose, but I would filibuster the defense bill” adding, “They put in this extraneous and unwise legislation into it.” 

“This bill is very worrisome to me,” Cotton said.  “It addresses what’s a real problem, Alex. You have relatively small newspapers or news outlets that have their content taken by big tech companies and repackaged, they lose revenue from that, that hurts our communities. You know, we want the readers of the Russellville Currier or the Jonesboro Sun, or the Baxter Bulletin in Arkansas to be able to follow their local news and their local communities. Of course, in the media landscape today, though, it’s not just about local newspapers or TV stations, or radio stations. It’s news outlets like Breitbart that we want to make sure are not being taken advantage of either by these big tech companies. But I don’t think this bill is the solution for it, however, because what it does is create a giant antitrust exemption to create a kind of media cartel.” 

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The bill would enable large media companies to coordinate in ways that would violate antitrust laws in any other business sector, “and then they can collude with big tech to exclude companies like Breitbart, and that really gets to the heart of the matter,” Cotton added. 

“They’ve already acknowledged that they wouldn’t let your news outlet into their club,” Cotton explained. “So they would be getting the benefit of their content, they would be forcing these big tech companies to pay for their content, but the tech companies could still take your content. So it’d be even worse for any disfavored conservative outlet because, right now, you’re at least on par with every other media company or small news outlet, and the big tech companies are taking advantage of you. But in this world, it would be worse because everyone else, mostly liberal media outlets, would be getting compensated, and conservative outlets wouldn’t be getting compensated.” 

While the bill is being revived in the Senate, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told Breitbart News the bill would be dead on arrival in the GOP-controlled House, as Cotton pointed out. 

“Fortunately, with Jim Jordan in charge of the House Judiciary Committee, it’s not going anywhere there,” Cotton added. 

When Marlow followed up, asking who was behind the lobbying for the bill, noting that “This is really playing with fire here to make the media landscape so much worse,” Cotton identified the largest media companies as the chief benefactors.

“Well, I mean, I think the biggest beneficiaries here would be the biggest media companies that have a chance to participate in this cartel and therefore reap more revenues from the contents that big tech companies are currently using,” he said.

Marlow also pointed out a phenomenon where Breitbart News articles are often excluded from searches on Google unless the keyword “Breitbart” is included in the search. This occurs both under the “news” tab and broader traditional searches. When many other news outlets write about a particular topic, their articles appear without their moniker being included in the search entry. 

“This is totally uninteresting to anyone in Washington who crafts legislation, Senator. No one cares about the obvious discrimination that’s taking place,” Marlow said. He added the fact that he could not comprehend how “some conservatives support,” actually support the JCPA. 

“I agree, and what happens with Google and Breitbart is very telling. In fact, Alex, when you were just talking, I just went to your website, and I took your first headline about the Michigan city banning pride flags, and I typed that exact headline into Google, and your website does not come up,” Cotton said. ” I think that’s pretty telling that your lead story, with a very distinctive headline, I would say, doesn’t even come up in Google if you type the entire headline, and I’m afraid that this bill would encourage that, it would actually promote it. And it might not be just Breitbart. It might be plenty of other conservative media outlets, because once this cartel is formed, then they get to decide who’s going to be in the club and who’s not going to be in the club. And again, they’ve already indicated that Breitbart doesn’t get to be in the club.”