Democratic leaders in the House and Senate allegedly pressured Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to incorporate their bill, the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Legislators caved into lobbyists’ demands. Despite strong resistance from House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, who is widely expected to become speaker of the House on January 3, 2019, the JCPA was included in the NDAA’s core language. The idea was approved by the House by a vote of 3-1, with McCarthy being the lone prominent leader to vote against it.
After the Democrats’ midterm election loss, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that she would resign from legislative leadership due to the NDAA while maintaining her position in the House.
McCarthy and other Republican obstructionists, including Jim Jordan, Steve Scalise, Marsha Blackburn, Tom Cotton, and many more, have slowed down efforts to pass the controversial JCPA through Congress for a whole year.
Lobbyists for well-heeled business groups have been keeping a watch on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and funding packages like the omnibus budget measure currently being negotiated since before the Republican Party won total control of the House in January 2019.
The NDAA’s escalating cost has hindered the passage of a federal finance package. Instead, leaders may seek a continuing resolution (CR) to finance the government through December. The NDAA was used in the last hours of this Congress as a means by which unrelated proposals, such as this JCPA one, might be attached and pushed through the House and Senate.
The JCPA has been widely panned since many regards it as Silicon Valley’s effort to subsidize the media behemoths that have been widely criticized for their bias and lack of transparency. The media business could negotiate better “terms and conditions” with IT firms in exchange for carrying their material if they band together in a cartel and avoid antitrust restrictions.
The press will almost certainly try to bury the news several times. Unless prohibited by law, media organizations are free to advocate for their reporting to be prioritized above content tagged with less specific terms like “disinformation,” which are frequently used as an excuse to silence critical voices.
The Senate amended the bill at the last minute to calm conservatives’ concerns about the media industry and Big Tech working together to hinder competition. However, the package still gives the cartel several opportunities to hurt conservative media.
The agreement’s prohibitions against “viewpoint discrimination” are insufficient. Generally, all sides of a debate are presented on corporate censorship websites, social media, and other online platforms. Critics of censorship argue that it is the spread of “misinformation,” “hate speech,” and “conspiracy theories” rather than any specific political ideology that suffers.
Must-pass legislation sometimes includes contentious but unrelated amendments, which prevent members from debating the merits of the law and spark debate about an otherwise noncontroversial topic (military expenditure, in this case).
Democrats have weakened the once bipartisan cornerstone of U.S. national security by backing the NDAA’s bailout for media allies.
Unless the Senate can mount a significant counterattack, the Democrats and their frequent enabler McConnell will have used a defense spending package to set up a government-approved gravy train from one set of wealthy, powerful corporations in Silicon Valley to another: the world’s largest and most powerful media companies.
Full text of the NDAA might be available as soon as Monday evening.