Senator wants Google, Facebook to pony up for local news

Enlarge / Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) at a Senate hearing on The State of Broadband Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic, on Wednesday, May 13, 2020. (credit: Bill Clark | CQ Roll Call | Getty Images)

The decimation of local media is by now a sad, familiar tale experienced by tens of millions of Americans all over the country. In a report released today, the Senate Commerce Committee's top Democrat is laying blame for the bloodbath squarely at the feet of Google and Facebook, claiming the companies have participated in destroying local news in the pursuit of monopolizing monetization.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) released the scathing new report (PDF) today, ahead of a scheduled hearing Wednesday in which Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be testifying.

It is true that the advertising streams that funded local newspapers before the advent of the Internet changed dramatically in the 21st century as news went digital. Even so, the report says, outlets could have been able to manage except that "local news has been hijacked by a few large news aggregation platforms, most notably Google and Facebook, which have become the dominant players in online advertising."

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