WASHINGTON • Bipartisan members of the US Congress plan to introduce a Bill in the coming weeks to make it easier for smaller news organisations to negotiate with Big Tech platforms.

Representative Ken Buck, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee's anti-trust panel, said on Thursday that the panel would bring out a series of anti-trust Bills and the first one in the coming weeks would allow smaller news organisations to negotiate collectively with Facebook and Alphabet's Google.

Social media firms use news to draw customers and have been accused by publishers of not sharing enough advertising revenue with them. The law could boost sales in the struggling news business.

The US Bill would be introduced at a time when Australia is in a pitched battle with Facebook, after the social media giant blocked news feeds and other pages as part of a dispute over a proposed law aimed at forcing it and Google to pay news outlets for their content.

While Facebook has fought publishers, Google has struck deals with them in France, Australia and other countries.

Smaller publishers using Google's ad sales technology have for years griped about their bigger competitors getting more favourable revenue-sharing deals from the search giant.

The news industry is struggling, with employment at US newspapers down by half since 2008 amid tumbling advertising revenue and changing media habits, according to data from Pew Research.

Mr Buck said the expected legislation would be similar to a 2019 Bill that would have allowed small publishers to band together to negotiate with big gatekeepers like Facebook and Google without facing anti-trust scrutiny.

That Bill specified that only small publishers could take advantage of the group negotiation.

Mr David Chavern, president and chief executive of News Media Alliance, an industry trade group that is promoting the Bill, said: "What publishers have experienced is that platforms go to them one by one, make them sign NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) and try to optimise per publisher without publishers being able to compare notes.

"Big national publishers probably have the capacity to get their own deals. If you look at smaller publishers, the only way to get some fair value is if they act together."

Last October, the anti-trust subcommittee's majority report detailed abuses by technology giants such as Google and Facebook.

Mr Buck said: "The biggest threat to the free market economy is Big Tech and (the potential legislation) should be fairly tightly focused on that."

REUTERS