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GLORIA REBECCA GOMEZ
Arizona Mirror
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a former news reporter, earlier this week joined nearly a dozen other attorneys general to advocate for federal legislation that would protect local news outlets.
The digital age decimated the country’s newspapers, which suffered a 26% employment decline from 2008 and 2020. The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act of 2023 seeks to mitigate that by empowering local publishers to fight for proper compensation when digital giants, like Facebook or Twitter, use their content to capture online traffic. But the legislation has stagnated in Congress and Mayes, along with 10 other Democrat attorneys general, pushed for its passage in a letter sent on Tuesday.
“We are deeply concerned that local news organizations across the country continue to struggle because of significantly reduced revenues, media consolidation, and a growing reliance on online news to serve those roles,” they wrote.
Roughly half of Americans get their news from social media. And while she acknowledged that the platforms have an important role to play in connecting people to community and regionally-specific information, Mayes noted that they’ve also contributed to the rise in disinformation and polarization. Research has found that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter operate under algorithms that help amplify inaccurate and often harmful content.
