Facebook and Google's market power, especially over digital advertising, has translated to a potential "extinction level event" for local news operations, broadcast, online and print.

That was the underlying message of House Antitrust Subcommittee chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) at a hearing Friday (March 12) on “Saving a Free and Diverse Press.”

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Cicilline said his bill to give news content producers an antitrust exemption to negotiate collectively with the largest platforms (the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, or JCPA) was not a substitute for structural remedies to address the market power of a Google or Facebook, but was a short term solution to save trustworthy journalism before is it gone forever.

A Senate version of the bill has been introduced by Sens. John Kennedy (R-La.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).

Cicilline painted a dark portrait of local news, saying it was in free fall, in part because of the gatekeeper power of tech platforms. He called that a crisis in journalism that was also a crisis in democracy, and in a time of pandemic when local news is more important than ever.

Of Big Tech, Cicilline said that those gatekeepers can distort the flow of information with the a single change to an algorithm or ad option. With that power, he said Google and Facebook have captured nearly all the digital ad growth in recent years. 

He said local journalism is on life support, and to do nothing was not an option.

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Ranking Subcommittee Member Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), who co-sponsored the bill, said he was concerned about Big Tech's role in "cancel culture" suppression of conservative speech.

Buck said Congress sat idly by as Big Tech platforms became monopolies but it can't let them become arbiters of truth. He called the "digital kings' that need dethroning and have precisely the kind of power that antitrust laws were meant to address.

Emily Barr, National Association of Broadcasters TV Board chair and Broadcasting & Cable's 2020 Broadcaster of the year, testified at the hearing on the impact of Big Tech on her industry. 

She said their market power undercuts the online ad model for local broadcast news in two ways: 1) Their gatekeeper role prevents stations from generating traffic "independent of their services" and their "take it or leave it" terms of service "leave local broadcasters with a below-market sliver of the advertising revenues that are derived through their products."

She said quality journalism has to compete with "click bait" that is often favored by platform algorithms, that siphon off ad dollars from that quality news product.

In his testimony, David Chavern, president of the News Media Alliance, said Google and Facebook regulate the news media through their dominance. He said hope for a better journalism future is not a strategy, and the current path will lead to the ultimate destruction of quality news. He publishers need the collective action that Cicciline's bill will provide, but added that may not be enough.

Google did not have a witness at the hearing, but did send a statement that included a line that sounded pretty "take it or leave it. It said: "Every news organization can choose whether they want to be in Google Search and Google News," adding that "most do because it results in valuable free traffic."

But it also said for those who do choose to be in Google search, they have created Google News Showcase, "powered by a $1 billion investment in news organizations." It said that more than 500 publications are part of the showcase, with more being added. It said the company was "committed to finding new ways to continue supporting the news industry."

"Over the past 20 years, we’ve collaborated closely with the news industry and provided billions of dollars to support the creation of quality journalism in the digital age," the tech giant said. "Through both our services and our direct funding of news organizations, Google is one of the world’s biggest financial supporters of journalism."

Rep. David Cicciline (D-R.I.), chairman of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, has called on Twitter to suspend the account of President Donald Trump.

Common Cause and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law also called on Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to suspend the President's account given what they said were "repeated violations of Twitter’s Civic Integrity Policy" (see below).

Appropriately, Cicciline used Twitter to say that: [T]he President's Twitter account is posting lies and misinformation at a breathtaking clip. It is a threat to our democracy and should be suspended until all the votes are counted."

The President has been peppering his twitter account with allegations of widespread fraud and accusations the election is being stolen from him. That coming as states continue to count mail-in ballots from a handful of states with razor-thin margins, counts that are mostly going in Biden's favor.

Twitter has in recent days flagged, and moved behind a "view" link, a host of similar tweets by the President.

In fact the two most recent Trump tweets at press time, including "STOP THE FRAUD," were not on the first page of the President's account but instead behind the "view" link, with the now-familiar advisory: "Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process. Learn more."

That "learn more" link leads to Twitter's Civil Integrity Policy," which does not allow its site to be used for content it concludes is "manipulating or interfering in elections or other civic processes."

It was similar flagging of the President's tweets on mail-in voting and protests earlier in the year that prompted the President to call on the FCC to regulate social media sites, arguing they were trying to censor him and other Republicans in an effort to aid his Democratic opponents.

WASHINGTON — Sounding a bit like Google execs in front of the Senate Commerce Committee almost a decade ago, a top Facebook official told the House Antitrust Subcommittee that it faces “vigorous” competition for its products and services, including fierce competition for revenue and low barriers of entry for new competitors.

That is according to the prepared testimony of Matt Perault, Facebook’s director of public policy.

He also said the company had been a boon to small businesses, saying it had "democratized advertising, helping millions of small and medium-sized businesses along the way."

Perault suggested Facebook had been successful because it had worked hard and taken risks. "America does not punish success,” he said. “It rewards it."

Google was represented at the same hearing by Adam Cohen, director of economic policy, who was making the same arguments in his testimony about being subject to vigorous competition for search, including from Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and "many more."

Last year, Cohen pointed out, 54% of product searches originated on Amazon, and specialized search services are growing in the areas of flights, hotels and restaurants.

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Amazon associate general counsel for competition Nate Sutton weighed in, too. He spoke in his testimony of how each of the company’s many businesses “faces intense competition from well-established competitors,” including its online retail business. Sutton said Amazon knows its retail customers have many options, including brick-and-mortar stores that operate their own online businesses and the third-party sellers Amazon hosts on its platform — many of which are small businesses it is helping out.

And for Apple, said chief compliance officer Kyle Andeer: “The competition is fierce. Our customers have an ever-growing number of choices when it comes to products and services. We compete against some of the largest companies in the world, both foreign and domestic."

Their statements were at odds with the general tenor of the House’s inquiry into Big Tech, which is based on the companies' massive size, market cap and dominance in various areas. Legislators on both sides of the aisle have talked about the need to rein in or break up giant edge providers, with Republicans pointing to allegations of conservative bias and Democrats speaking of the need to downsize converged corporate giants in general.

Rep. David Cicciline (D-R.I.), chairman of the Antitrust Subcommittee, gave the companies props for dynamism, immense tech breakthroughs and economic contributions. But he said they had been allowed to grow without sufficient antitrust oversight, leading to an increasingly concentrated and less open internet “growingly hostile to innovation and entrepreneurship.”

The companies’ protestations about fierce competition notwithstanding, Cicciline said Google controls nearly all the search in the country (about 90% of all searches), with Amazon controlling almost half of all online commerce, despite the company's statement that it only captures a small percentage or retail. Cicciline said Amazon’s closest competitor, eBay, controls less than 6% of the market.

Facebook controls more than half of the U.S. social media market, Cicciline said, with about 2.7 billion monthly users. Notwithstanding the growth of Chinese social app TikTok — which Perault noted as one of its fierce competitors — Cicciline said Facebook captures over 80% of global social media revenue.

Apple, the chairman pointed out, is under scrutiny for prices in its App Store and policies that may favor its own services and products.

RELATED: Big Tech Bashed in Senate Hearing On Protecting Kids Online

Cicilline said there was a good argument that the market lends itself to shielding dominant firms and producing a "kill zone" for new startups that might want to challenge them. “There is growing concern that anti-competitive practices and the gatekeeper role of online platforms is now imperiling small business in our communities,” he said, echoing the knock on ISPs inside the Beltway of the past decade.

Ranking member Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Ill.) raised red flags about coming down too hard on Big Tech. The antitrust laws don't exist to punish size or success, he said, adding that just because a company is big doesn't necessarily mean it is bad.

He echoed the Big Tech comments that they had actually helped small businesses, not hurt them. “Breaking up big businesses because they are large could wind up hurting small businesses throughout the country,” Sensenbrenner said.

He also said breaking up the companies would not solve all the problems, like privacy, he said.

Sensenbrenner did not dismiss the possibility of anti-competitive conduct, but said he was offering a counterpoint to some of the more radical speculation. He said they should look seriously at wrongdoing, but not break up companies by fiat because big was inherently bad.