U.S. Policy Landscape for the News Media Industry

The news media industry in the United States is in a state of flux, with meaningful technological and policy developments changing the industry landscape seemingly every single day. As the industry evolves, it's crucial that the policy framework around it does so too, reflecting the needs of 21^st century publishers and consumers.

"In many ways we're operating in uncharted waters," said Coffey, while addressing the WAN-IFRA member associations on the U.S. policy landscape for news media. "But that gives us a lot of opportunities to help the industry grow towards the future."

As the leading voice and lobbying organization for the news media industry, representing more than 2,200 publications ranging from local to national newspapers, magazines, broadcast, and digital natives, News/Media Alliance has been working on the front lines of a wide variety of policy battles at both the state and federal levels. While many reports on the state of the industry, particularly under the Trump administration, focus on the challenges facing news media publishers, Coffey indicated that there's real reason for optimism, citing several recent positive developments.

Google Antitrust Rulings Offer Significant Benefits for Publishers

Coffey's remarks began with some good news, explaining how recent court rulings on Google's anticompetitive practices will end up boosting publisher revenue.

For years, Google has dominated both the search market, with more than 90 percent of all searches occurring through Google or one of its platforms, and the online ad tech space, with control of nearly 70 percent of the market. Google's dominance of these two markets and its anticompetitive practices have allowed the company to keep a stranglehold on consumer data and advertising, which has led to devastating revenue loss for creators of original, quality content. By using its monopoly on search to keep users within its walled garden (nearly 60% of users do not click through and leave Google's platform), the company has deprived publishers of subscriptions and web traffic. And even when users do click through, Google's monopoly on ad tech has allowed it to skim a disproportionate amount off the top of ad sales, depriving publishers of even more ad revenue.

Thankfully, after years of advocacy and lawsuits, Google's monopolies are on their way to being unraveled. Over the last two years, federal courts have in two separate cases found Google to be engaging in anticompetitive behavior, in both search, on August 5, 2024, and ad tech, with a ruling released just weeks ago, on April 15, 2025.

The remedies trial for Google's search monopoly is currently ongoing, with potential fixes including opt-outs for AI training, a nondiscrimination provision, search text ad transparency, choice screens, divestiture of Chrome, and data-sharing provisions. The remedies trial for the company's ad tech monopoly has yet to be scheduled, but the separation of the company's publisher ad server DFP and exchange AdX is likely.

Google has entrenched its monopoly so thoroughly in the infrastructure of the internet that these changes might cause some growing pains, but increased competition within the search and ad space will inevitably end up positively affecting news media publishers, giving them more choice and higher ad revenues. "The math speaks for itself," said Coffey.

State-Level Policy Proposals Provide Both Challenges and Opportunities

On a more local level, Coffey reports news publishers are facing a wide array of state-level bills, both positive and negative, that could potentially impact their bottom line. Issues they're tracking and lobbying on include:

• Compensation: Following Google's agreement with California to jointly pay between $280 and $360 million to news publishers, a number of other states are following suit. Oregon, Illinois, and New York are all considering bills that would require tech giants to pay news publishers for the use of their content, with Oregon's closest to being passed.
• Taxes: On the positive side, a number of states are considering tax credits for journalism. On the more harmful side, more than a dozen states are considering a digital advertising tax, and some states are considering limitations on advertising deductibility.
• Subscription Renewal: Many state legislatures are considering proposals to restrict auto-renewal practices, proposals that are misdirected when affecting news organizations with good relationships with their readers.
• Data Privacy and Online Safety: Over two dozen state legislatures have proposed new data privacy or online safety laws in 2025. Many are well-intentioned, but feature design flaws that would jeopardize consumer access to free or affordable high-quality journalism.

Publishers Need Protections from Artificial Intelligence

One of the most significant threats to news media right now, Coffey says, is the rise of artificial intelligence, particularly AI chatbots and search products. Big Tech companies are scraping publisher content, often without permission or compensation, and then using that content to fuel their AI products which, in many cases, directly compete with the publishers themselves.

A consumer using ChatGPT is much less likely to click through to a news site, which ends up depriving publishers of ad or subscription revenue, and in the long run, makes creating quality content financially unfeasible. "If we strip away the financial incentive publishers have to create the content, then there won't be any more content made for AI to use," Coffey said. This makes finding a solution to the AI content problem critical not only for news media publishers, but also for AI companies themselves.

Remedies

The Courts: By all reasonable interpretations, AI companies taking content without permission or compensation should be blocked by current copyright law, but many have made the argument that publisher data should be considered "fair use." To combat this claim and achieve legal clarity, many members of the News/Media Alliance have filed a copyright and trademark infringement case against Cohere, Inc.

Legislation: Publishers are currently working with state legislatures to enact transparency legislation, so they can see when their content is being used by AI companies. The Alliance is also working on introducing a piece of federal legislation that will create a cause of action for unfair competition with news and media content.

Licensing: New media publishers are not trying to stop the AI industry from growing and serving the needs of consumers - they simply want to be properly compensated for the time and money they spend creating the content that AI companies are using. To that end, many publishers are now engaging in licensing deals with AI companies, allowing their AI products to access publisher content for a fee.

From Tariffs to Press Freedom, There's a Lot of Uncertainty Right Now

While most of the challenges facing news media, from technological developments to anticompetitive actors to legislative changes, are long-standing issues, unpredictable changes to policy from the administration are leaving the industry to deal with a great amount of uncertainty. The industry has been left to respond to:

• AP's Removal from the White House Press Pool
• The DOJ's recent reversal of its policy that kept it from issuing subpoenas compelling journalists to reveal their sources when investigating government leaks
• Tariffs on products used by news media organizations. Of particular concern is potential tariffs on newsprint and other paper products from Canada, which most American publishers rely on. Newsprint is currently exempted, but the industry is holding its breath for future changes.

It is critical that publishers stand together. "Keeping the news media industry financially sustainable and free from government interference is what it's all about," Coffey concluded. "If we keep the core of our industry strong, we can handle anything else that comes at us."

Article by Sam Quigley, Communications Director, News/Media Alliance

Elena Perotti

elena.perotti@wan-ifra.org