Congress leaves out the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act from the US defense spending bill, after intense pushback from industry and advocacy groups
but this version of the legislation was a total trash fire. Good riddance. https://twitter.com/... @evan_greer : BREAKING: Bloomberg, NBC & others reporting that #JCPA is now OUT of the #NDAA. That's good, cuz it was a bad bill that would help Alden Capital not journalists But now @SenSchumer @SpeakerPelosi need to move #AICOA and #OAMA to *actually* rein in Big Tech monopolies. Let's go! Matthew Keys / @matthewkeyslive : Congress (thankfully) drops the “Journalism Competition and Preservation Act” from its defense spending bill, because it shouldn't have been in there in the first place, and it's a deeply flawed measure https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Cristiano Lima / @viacristiano : NEW: Lawmakers' NDAA agreement is out WITHOUT the JCPA, the bill to let media orgs band together in negotiations with the tech giants which Facebook threatened to block news in the U.S. over My full story on a dizzying couple days: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Makena Kelly / @kellymakena : NDAA is out - Doesn't look like the JCPA made it in. But the bill includes a ban against federal contractors from using Chinese-made semiconductors ⤵️ https://rules.house.gov/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act had real momentum: a Senate committee approved it in September, letting news outlets jointly negotiate with big platforms over content payments. Its backers then tried the classic endgame — attaching it to the must-pass NDAA rather than risking a standalone floor vote.
It failed there. Industry and advocacy groups — including critics who argued the bill would enrich Alden Capital more than working journalists — pushed hard enough to get it stripped, on the same day senators also scaled back a China-made chip restriction in the bill under trade-group pressure. The backdrop is years of escalating spend: Amazon and Meta each set record federal lobbying totals above $20M in 2021.
First-order effects
- News publishers lose their nearest-term route to legally protected collective bargaining with Google and Meta over content payments, since committee approval no longer translates into law.
- Big Tech platforms avoid a mandated negotiation regime they lobbied against, keeping distribution and payment terms bilateral and discretionary.
Second-order effects
- Proponents' stated fallback is standalone antitrust legislation — AICOA and OAMA — so Big Tech's lobbying apparatus now has to defend those narrower bills directly instead of fighting attachments to spending vehicles.
- News publishers are pushed back toward unilateral leverage plays, such as withholding content or striking individual licensing deals, which favor large national outlets over small local publishers.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, US platform regulation advances only through standalone votes with recorded positions, not riders on must-pass bills — raising the bar for passage but forcing every member to go on the record.
- The episode reinforces that committee approval is not destiny for tech policy: concentrated industry and advocacy opposition can kill a provision at the appropriations stage even after bipartisan committee momentum.
The trend: US tech regulation is increasingly decided in the final text of must-pass spending bills, where lobbying intensity — not committee votes — determines which provisions survive.