Save Journalism Project Launches “Share Your Story” Campaign as Senate and House Prepare to Question Big Tech on Market Power and Censorship

WASHINGTON, DC — In the lead up to bicameral hearings today on online platforms and big tech companies, the Save Journalism Project is asking colleagues and audiences across the nation to share their experience with the decline in journalism. The storytelling campaign aims to showcase the pertinent and looming issues incited by big tech, especially the slow and painful decline of America’s free press throughout localities and national outlets country-wide.

Big tech is monetizing the news for the sake of their own profits and it shows. Facebook and Google alone control 60% of all digital advertising revenue and media outlets cannot sustain – almost 60% of Americans no longer have a daily newspaper. When more people share their story, the power to protect journalism from this existential crisis grows.

Today, the House Judiciary Committee will hold the second part of a hearing regarding Online Platforms and Market Power, this time focusing on innovation and entrepreneurship, while the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Google and Censorship through Search Engines. 

John Stanton, former DC bureau chief for Buzzfeed who was laid off in January, went on to describe the necessity of the campaign: 

This is a way for journalists, photographers, photojournalists, editors, columnists, producers, you name it, to say in their own words how this issue has affected them. Journalism isn’t just my livelihood, it is the mouthpiece by which Americans, and people across the world, make decisions and form their worldviews. The Save Journalism Project has given me the medium to tell my story as it relates to this grand dismantlement of America’s free press, and we want to give others that same opportunity. 

Local and national newsrooms are folding at alarming rates. 2,400 journalists have lost their jobs in 2019 alone. They’re not just a statistic. These layoffs represent people like me and my colleagues who are doing their best to create a society where Americans have access to reliable news and information. My colleagues and I don’t tell our personal stories for the celebrity. It goes against every fiber of what we’re all taught. But if we don’t make our voices heard now, we’ll be sorry we didn’t shout them from the rooftops earlier. 

Senators and Representatives alike should remember these stories and burn them into their memory, because this is just the beginning, if we allow big tech to continue on this path to destruction.