Bernie Sanders goes after Facebook, Google in plan to revive 'real journalism'
Bernie Sanders, the Independent Vermont senator who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, on Monday released a plan to protect journalism and the U.S. media industry, taking aim at large corporations including Disney, Facebook and Google.
In an op-ed posted in the Columbia Journalism Review, the 2020 presidential candidate alleged that journalism is under “assault” from Wall Street, billionaires, Silicon Valley and President Trump.
Sanders said, if elected, he would appoint officials who would enforce antitrust laws “against tech giants like Facebook and Google, to prevent them from using their enormous market power to cannibalize, bilk, and defund news organizations.”
“Their monopoly power has particularly harmed small, independent news outlets that do not have the corporate infrastructure to fight back,” he wrote.
Sanders also suggested there are conflicts of interest at news outlets owned by Disney and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, since they can promote their companies while failing to “aggressively cover” workers’ fight for better wages within those same organizations. Sanders waged public campaigns to push both companies to raise their minimum wages to $15 per hour.
Part of his plan includes an immediate moratorium on merger approvals in the industry, while ensuring that future deals allow employees the opportunity to purchase media outlets through employee stock-ownership plans. A Sanders administration would limit the number of stations that large broadcasting companies can own, he added.
Sanders also floated the idea of taxing targeted ads and using the money to fund “nonprofit civic-minded media.”
The senator credited a lack of “real journalism” for allowing mortgage fraud to go unnoticed and unpunished, eventually precipitating the financial crisis.
Trump has also criticized the media and tech industries, frequently calling various news organizations “fake news.” He has blasted Google, and other tech companies like Twitter, for an alleged anti-conservative bias. Just last week he referred to a report that claims Google “manipulated” votes in the 2016 election. Additionally, he has gone after Bezos’ ownership of The Washington Post, and has accused the outlet of “presidential harassment.”
His administration has also set into motion antitrust reviews of large technology companies, like Google, Facebook and Amazon.
Even though some of Sanders' ideas are reminiscent of what has been said by the Trump administration, the president is part of the problem, according to the Vermont senator. That’s due to his “authoritarian bullying of the media.”
Sanders pointed out a lack of resources in the industry, which is undergoing job cuts and a loss of local newspapers. Sanders said newsrooms have lost 28,000 employees over the past decade, in addition to 3,200 people in the media industry who were laid off this year, alone.
A focal point of his campaign is going after large corporations, which he consistently accuses of acting based on greed at the expense of workers.
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Facebook, Google, Amazon and Disney have been contacted for comment.
