Content compensation at issue in JCPA bill

In its infinite wisdom, Congress let the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) die a silent death after having had it on the front burners for the past couple of years. I hope our industry is not doing the same.

In our country’s founding beginnings, our imperfect founders wrote close to a perfect document. In that document was an unfettered freedom of the press, added as another check on power that is still needed today.

But that document said nothing about reporters, editors and publishers having to work for free. Let me explain.

Much of what is left about this bill is solely about compensation. Other channels share the work of news gatherers, those same reporters, editors and publishers. But where mediums such as radio and television found a way to compensate composers, writers and producers, when their work is shared or rebroadcast, today’s social media and tech giants say it’s just too complicated. (Really?)

When a composer writes a hit song, radio stations play it, bring in listeners and they sell advertising to those listeners. In the days before royalty agreements, those representing the songwriter and performer said that wasn’t fair, so they came up with a way to charge that radio station fees when they played the song that was the creation of someone else.

When television reruns air, TV stations sell advertising to their viewers of that program and the powers that be came up with a fee to broadcast those popular reruns and compensate the writers, actors and actresses and so on.

So why not for the written word?

Google and Facebook take between 60 to 80 percent of the digital advertising revenue in any market across the country. (It’s higher in rural markets.) Our content is shared to their channels, but they say they can’t work out a system to compensate the content creators, even though they do so for popular Youtube video artists.

So, we have seen a steady decline in ad revenue for newspapers, which in any market is the news source closest to the people (and many times the only news source doing original reporting and producing of news).

I liken it to chocolate bars. If I took a bunch of Hershey Bars from H-E-B without compensation, then put a new wrapper on them and sold them as my own, I’d be hearing from the police for stealing and from Mr. Hershey’s lawyer’s for product theft.

Well, the news is our product. And we have invested a substantial amount in its production. Why should we not be compensated when it is shared and viewed on other channels, the same way a hit song continues to support the writer and singer well after it is originally aired?

I try not to be a Debbie downer, but our industry has suffered. More than a few rural counties now have no newspaper, so the “news” is whatever garbage is shared on the free-forall that is Facebook. Now there’s a scary thought.

And it has had a negative effect on democracy. There are now just a handful of reporters covering the goings on at our State Capitol due to cuts to newsrooms forced by the drop in advertising revenue. If we had no one covering school board, county and city government, our knowledge of the goings on would be only what our representatives told us it was. Sorry, but we need a filter.

We also tell wonderful stories about people overcoming challenges, starting new businesses, and other uplifting stories. Those who “cancel” us because of an article they didn’t like are missing out on a lot of unique local content.

The JCPA would allow news organizations to negotiate with the big tech companies for fair compensation. For now, it’s on the backburner, but I hope lawmakers will see its importance in time.

I’m going to write U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, and Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz and ask them to consider what’s happening to the legitimate news ecosystem. It may get ignored, or they may say “you deserve it,” but hopefully it will raise awareness of the hometown outlets that cover their constituents and state and local governments. We’re not all just Fox News or The New York Times fussing consistently over national issues.

We worked it out for radio and television. It’s hard to believe the tech giantas who built these behemoth entities Facebook and Google can’t figure out a way to compensate producers of the work we publish.