The Daily Caller Says It Will Use Buffy Wicks’ Journalism Bill To Make Sure Google Pays It To Produce More Nonsense

Techdirt. 2023-06-07

It seems the propaganda peddlers are no longer even trying to pretend any more how they plan to abuse the bills being pushed by Democrats to “regulate” social media. It would be nice if some of the Democratic politicians actually listened to them. First, we had the story of how the Heritage Foundation, the main think tank of the GOP, flat out said they intended to use the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) to censor LGBTQ content as “harmful” to children.

And now, we have the website Tucker Carlson created, the Daily Caller, coming out in support for California Rep. Buffy Wicks’ Journalism Preservation Act while directly admitting that the reason they’re doing so is that it will prevent tech companies from moderating their content when they publish misleading propaganda.

The main issue in the article is the Daily Caller is calling out a trade group representing some of the internet companies, the Chamber of Progress, for its recent study that highlighted that under the CJPA (Buffy Wicks’ bill to create a link tax that forces internet companies to pay the news providers for… letting users link to their content) the biggest beneficiaries would be nonsense peddling outfits owned by Rupert Murdoch.

We mentioned this study recently, while calling out that even if you don’t trust the source of the study, you should at least suggest what’s wrong in their analysis. Is it not true that under the CJPA, Democrat Buffy Wicks will literally be forcing California companies (some of which her constituents work for) to fund Rupert Murdoch’s news orgs? If it’s not true, then present the evidence.

But, here, the Daily Caller goes further. And that’s because one of the worst parts of the CJPA is that it has this non-retaliation clause, that basically says that if a news organization files with a covered internet website under the bill, it cannot have its content downranked or removed. Now, there’s some catchall language that allows Wicks to pretend this isn’t how the bill works. Because the bill still allows companies to “enforce its terms of service,” but simply by saying that such a site cannot retaliate means that any news org will claim retaliation for any attempt to downrank or remove its propaganda content.

And, that’s exactly what the Daily Caller calls out in noting why it and its friends are so excited about this bill. They know it becomes a sledge hammer to use a Democrat-sponsored bill, to allow them to force their content onto Google, Facebook and more:

Conservative publications and independent journalists are the most likely to be victims of censorship from the gatekeepers at Big Tech, and the CJPA would take a sledgehammer to that power by making them finally pay conservative outlets.

Are there any journalists left in Sacramento who are not working for news orgs who would get paid off by this Wicks bill who might ask Rep. Wicks why she’s supporting a bill where the website infamous nonsense peddler Tucker Carlson created, is eagerly stating how it will stop “big tech” from handling basic moderation tasks to limit propaganda and misleading bullshit, while also forcing those tech companies to pay the nonsense peddlers?

It seems like a question Wicks should answer.