By: Shaanth Nanguneri 

A novel proposal that would mandate tech companies to pay local journalism outlets for using their news content failed to gain steam in its first floor vote in the Oregon Senate on Tuesday, effectively killing its chance to pass this year.

Lawmakers on Tuesday voted 15-14 against Senate Bill 686, introduced in January, which aims to regulate tech companies and social media platforms like Google and Meta that aggregate, publish and use news content for their feeds or algorithms to provide information to users. Four Democrats were in opposition.

“Does anybody honestly believe these companies are going to just write the check and keep doing business as usual here?” Sen. Mark Meek, D-Gladstone, asked his colleagues Tuesday before voting against the legislation. “No, they will stop sharing news content in Oregon all together, just like they did in Canada.”

The effort at enacting the nation’s most stringent rules regulating journalism content and reproduction has also met a mounting resistance from tech companies. Meta, for instance, has threatened to remove Oregon news from their platforms altogether if the bill passes, echoing its position in Canada where a similar law was passed in 2023.

The vote against the bill was followed by a motion by Sen. Kayse Jama, D-Portland, to send the bill back to the Senate Committee on Rules, where it was previously amended on June 11 in the face of legal concerns over regulation of private markets and the First Amendment. 

But it’s unlikely that the bill will be revived, amended and passed out of committee and both chambers by Sunday, when Oregon’s legislative session ends. And the bill’s author, Sen. Khanh Phạm, D-Portland, told the Capital Chronicle that she will be reintroducing the bill in a future session, though she hasn’t decided when.

The original version of the legislation had three avenues for platforms to satisfy the legislation’s regulations: pay each accessed provider an unspecified amount, enter into an arbitration process, or donate to a university-backed public media board. The new bill preserves those pathways but heightens the protections news outlets have if their content is used without an agreement with an online platform.

Under the legislation, companies like Apple, Google and Meta could pay tens of millions of dollars into a state fund that would support news outlets throughout the state, based on their size and the number of journalists they employ. Firms like Google, Instagram and Facebook could pay into a central fund that is doled out to different newsrooms based on size, paying $104 million annually if they have six billion or more monthly active users worldwide, or $18 million annually if they have fewer than six billion worldwide users. 

One-tenth of that money would go to the Oregon Civic Information Consortium, a proposed board under the purview of the University of Oregon that would help train future journalists, offer grants to newsrooms and ensure funding for news deserts such as rural communities. The rest of the funding would go to newsrooms based on the number of employees and journalists they have; 70% of the funds must be spent on journalists and support staff by providers. 

“We trust the people who work in this industry and whose vocation depends on freedom of the press to guide us on what they need,” Phạm said on the Senate floor, referencing the more than 50 Oregon newsrooms that have voiced support for the bill.  “Now they need a fighting chance in an unfair market.”

The bill was amended in a June committee hearing, however, to address legal concerns about violating the First Amendment and regulating the free market, though lawmakers anticipate the untested measure would face a legal challenge anyway. The new version shifted the focus away from cracking down on social media and tech platforms, aiming instead to empower news outlets to create agreements with platforms for payment or face legal consequences. 

Sen. Daniel Bonham, R-The Dalles, warned his colleagues that the bill could unintentionally incentivize platforms to establish agreements with politically-biased media. He was also unsure if the bill would survive under legal scrutiny.

Under the new version of the legislation, online platforms could face lawsuits for damages from newsrooms if the companies accessed their content without a written agreement. The proposal would establish an arbitration process to decide what proportion of ad revenue a platform should dole out to newsrooms. The reworked bill also classifies the access and use of such content through aggregation, publishing and distribution without a formal agreement with an outlet as an unfair trade practice. 

Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, told his colleagues there was no avoiding the uncertainty the bill would pose in the courts. But, he asked, “Can you think of a significant law in the past that tries to solve a significant problem that hasn’t been litigated?”

Aside from Meek, the three other Democrats who voted in opposition to the bill were Sens. Kayse Jama, D-Portland, Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene and Janeen Sollman, D-Hillsboro.  Jama reversed his position in order to be part of the prevailing majority against the bill, allowing him to call for the bill to be reconsidered and sent to committee. The one Republican who had expressed support for the legislation, Sen. Dick Anderson, R-Lincoln City, also voted against the bill.

Note: Oregon Capital Chronicle Editor Julia Shumway is board treasurer of the Greater Oregon Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, which supports the bill referenced in this article. She did not participate in the editing of this item.

Correction: Sen. Khanh Phạm, D-Portland, has not decided on a date in which she will reintroduce the legislation. A previous version of this story reported that she would do so next session.