California Legislation Would Force Meta, Google to Pay Ad Monies to News-Producing Outfits

By The Vanguard Staff

SACRAMENTO, CA – California legislation to force companies like Meta/Facebook and Google to kick in some of their advertising monies—described as a “journalism usage fee” —to news-producing groups shared on their platforms is amended and moving forward here, and will be heard by the end of June in a key Senate Committee.

The measure, authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), is AB 886, known as the California Journalism Preservation Act, according to a story in the Sacramento Bee.

Soon to be heard in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Assembly Bill 886 was recently amended to make tech industry types more amendable to it, reported The Bee.

“Big Tech is continuing to make its displeasure with the bill known,” The Bee wrote, noting the measure would tax the sites “for news links shared on their platforms.”

Google and Meta, the two primary targets of the bill, have generally refused to discuss the legislation, but NetChoice—a lobbying group representing the tech giants—released a statement this past week charging the bill is bad for free press.

“With AB 886, the free press in California hangs in the balance. If enacted, journalists will unquestionably face new financial pressures from government officials and politicians to report favorably on them or lose funding, further undermining the public’s trust in news media,” said NetChoice Vice President and General Counsel Carl Szabo in a prepared statement.

Brittney Barsotti, of the California News Publishers Association, said that NetChoice was introducing “red herring” arguments about the bill.

“If AB 886 were to become law, tech companies like Google and Meta would have to pay for accessing, crawling, indexing and displaying news links that appear on their platforms,” and “companies with online platforms with at least 50 million monthly U.S. users, with a market capitalization greater than $550 billion and at least 1 billion users worldwide” are targeted,” wrote The Bee.

The bill language states companies would have to enter into arbitration with California news organizations to agree, The Bee explained, to a “journalism usage fee or pay directly into a fund that would be distributed to news outlets, based on how many journalists are employed. The bill specifically requires that payouts should be made only for reporters who are employed for the specific purpose of covering California news.”

One percent of the funds collected would be distributed to small, often ethnic, news organization.

The Bee added, “News organizations would be required to spend 70% of the money to pay journalists and other staffers. For publications with five or fewer employees, that threshold would drop to 50%. They also would be allowed to consider freelancers and part-time employees as employees for the purposes of the bill.”

In his statement, Szabo said AB 886 would hurt independent media, making them “dependent on government handouts, terminating the independence and credibility of news organizations based in the Golden State.”