Dear California Assembly Members:

The California Journalism Preservation Act (AB886) is the wrong solution to the state’s local-news crisis. This bill is nothing more than a huge handout to the same companies — including conglomerates like Gannett and hedge funds like Alden Global Capital — that have systematically destroyed local news.

The CJPA also threatens to fundamentally alter and break the open internet by creating a “link tax” — and won’t support the kinds of news that we, your constituents, need to better participate in our communities.

If that’s not enough, AB886 would discourage sites like Google and Meta from taking down hateful and false content while forcing these platforms to actually pay purveyors of clickbait and extremism. Should this bill pass, it’s likely that small, community-based publishers would be left behind — and vulture capitalists and conspiracy-peddling websites will benefit.

Local journalism deserves the attention of lawmakers, but the CJPA is not the answer. We urge you to reject the CJPA’s bailout of Big Media, and instead invest public funds in communities that need better local news most. We need lawmakers to fill the gaps left by a commercial media market that too often ignores or misrepresents BIPOC, rural and poor communities.

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    Stop the California Journalism Preservation Act

    Urge Lawmakers to Stop the Disastrous California Journalism Preservation Act

    The California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA) is a horrible bill that would:

    1. break the open internet
    2. make it harder for websites to remove hateful content
    3. provide giant giveaways to the same corporations and hedge funds that have destroyed local news

    The bill would do nothing to support trustworthy local reporting and would instead pad the profits of massive conglomerates. To make matters worse, it would force social-media platforms to promote and pay for hate speech (yes, you read that right).

    We need policymakers to take action to address the local-news crisis, but the CJPA is the wrong solution. Tell legislators to reject the California Journalism Preservation Act today.