Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, this week praised his colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee for including his amendment to the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) intended to prevent content moderation and censorship of conservatives on major social media and search engines.
"I think this is a good amendment," Cruz said during a hearing on Thursday. "I think this is a significant amendment. I think this amendment protects against this antitrust liability being used as a shield for censorship."
The JCPA passed the Senate Judiciary Committee today with the backing of Sens. John Kennedy, R-La., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
The bipartisan approval of the JCPA is a major milestone for the bill. The bill would require Big Tech and social media companies like Google and Facebook to pay for content it carries that is derived from small, local, and independent news publishers.
"Tech Goliaths like Facebook and Google are strangling smaller conservative publications by keeping them from making a profit on online platforms," Sen. Kennedy said today in a statement.
"This bill bars Big Tech firms from throttling, filtering, suppressing or curating online content while providing local news outlets with a fair playing field to negotiate against these censorship giants," Kennedy said.
The JCPA is backed by many conservative media outlets including Newsmax, the Washington Examiner, the Washington Times, the Daily Caller, Salem, and many others.
Cruz added, "Big Tech hates this bill — that to me is a strong positive for supporting it. Moreover, if this amendment is adopted, this will be the first meaningful consequence for, and protection against, censorship based on viewpoint and content in the Big Tech space. That's a big deal."
Cruz also accused major tech companies of "nakedly and brazenly engaging in censorship" and "silencing views they don't like."
He added, "Right now it so happens the views that they're silencing are right of center, but there's no guarantee that will continue."
The House has yet to move on its version of the JCPA, but the Senate Judiciary approval may spur passage of a bill this session.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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