U.S. presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) delivers a speech to defend his support for a sweeping "Medicare for All" healthcare plan at George Washington University in Washington, July 17, 2019. REUTERS/Erin Scott

Senator Bernie Sanders wrote in an op-ed on Monday that as president he would appoint law enforcement officials and regulators to clamp down on Facebook and Google and keep them from exercising too much control over the media industry.

In the piece for the Columbia Journalism Review, the Vermont Democrat wrote that he would name an Attorney General and officials to the Federal Trade Commission "who more stringently 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."

Sanders, who's currently among the leaders in the Democratic field, proposed increased funding for programs that support news gathering for independent local public media. He said the country should explore taxing targeted ads and using that money "to fund nonprofit civic-minded media."

It's the senator's latest attack on the power of Big Tech, an issue that he and other Democratic contenders, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, are bringing up with regularity on the campaign trail.

Sanders recently suggested that reporters at The Washington Post are critical of him because the organization is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Sanders frequently calls out Amazon for paying "nothing" in taxes while being one of the country's most valuable companies by market cap. He later walked back his comments on the Post slightly, telling CNN, "Do I think Jeff Bezos is on the phone, telling the editor of The Washington Post what to do? Absolutely not. It doesn't work that way."