The Kentucky senator backs antitrust exemption letting newspapers negotiate better terms from the tech giants.

NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE K entucky senator Rand Paul is signing on to a bill attempting to help a struggling industry, print and digital news organizations, by giving them more power to negotiate the terms under which Google and Facebook may distribute their content.

Current antitrust law forbids news organizations from banding together to negotiate terms of distribution and advertising rates, but the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would provide a four-year exemption to existing antitrust laws for “news content creators” to collectively negotiate with “online content distributors” that have at least one billion active users each month (i.e., Google and Facebook). “Government threatens the viability …