Establishment Republican congressman Ken Buck (R-CO), who is on his way out of Congress, is once again teaming up with Democrats to push the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), a bill that would funnel billions of dollars from Big Tech companies to far-left legacy media companies.
Rep. Buck, who is set to leave Congress, has been a staunch supporter of the same legacy media industry that regularly smears Republicans and Republican voters as bigots, domestic extremists, and conspiracy theorists. Backed by donations from the legacy media’s top lobbyists in DC, Rep. Buck was the lead Republican sponsor of the JCPA in the House of Representatives.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The Congressman, who presented himself to Republican primary voters as a staunch “Tea Party” conservative back in 2010, is now on his way out of Congress, and is reportedly seeking a job at leftist, Republican-hating channel CNN.
In the meantime, he’s still looking to bail out the same media industry he hopes to join, by a last-ditch effort to push the JCPA. Earlier today, the Congressman appeared on a Washington Post podcast with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the bill’s lead Senate sponsor, defending his decision to back a piece of corporate welfare for the media industry.
.@SenAmyKlobuchar (D-Minn.) and @RepKenBuck (R-Colo.) join @PostLive to discuss their bipartisan push for the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act and the role of the free press in a democracy. https://t.co/KsdOi97SdL
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 28, 2023
One of the first bills introduced by Democrats during their time holding the majority in the House, the JCPA allows some of the nation’s largest legacy media companies to form a legal cartel, immune from antitrust law, to pressure tech companies for special favors.
The cartel could force tech companies, through arbitration, to funnel massive amounts of ad revenue to media companies owned by the likes of Hearst and Gannett — giant corporations with billions of dollars in revenue.
Following the passage of a similar bill in Canada, Facebook and Google blocked news links across the country, with little impact on their own traffic or usage. When it looked like the JCPA might pass through the defense bill in 2021, Facebook said it may have to do the same in the U.S.
The bill was repeatedly pushed by Democrats when they held the majority in the House and Senate, although the party failed to pass it as a standalone bill.
The JCPA lobby was determined, though, and succeeded in attaching the provisions of the JCPA to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in 2022 — despite the fact that bailing out the media has nothing to do with national defense. Only a massive blowback by Republicans stopped the JCPA from making it into the NDAA’s final draft, preventing the media’s golden giveaway from making it into law.
The Speaker of the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), has said that despite Democrat efforts, the JCPA is “dead in the House.”
The bill has numerous other Republican opponents, including Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Steve Daines (R-MT), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Mike Lee (R-UT), Mike Braun (R-IN), Katie Britt (R-AL), and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Steve Scalise (R-LA), and Ben Cline (R-VA).
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election. Follow him on Twitter @AllumBokhari.