J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis and Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat from Ohio, credited Breitbart News and its editor-in-chief Alex Marlow with informing his opposition to the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA).
Vance spoke with Marlow on the Breitbart Daily News podcast about the mostly Democrat-supported legislation.
“I do want to get your quick take on the JCPA, which is this sort of a media cartel bill,” Marlow said. “It’s a tough one, because there are a lot of people framing it as anti-Big Tech, and I know you’ve been a warrior against the Big Tech conglomerates, but it basically — I think — will lead to a cartel of corporate media that will be collectively bargaining with Big Tech. They are some of the same people. It’s going to put people like me on the outs, and independent media. Are you up on this? You have any thoughts on it?
Vance said that if enacted, the JCPA’s facilitation of “cartel behavior” between technology companies and “mainstream” news media is a “dealbreaker.”
He replied, “Yeah, my brief thoughts are pretty much exactly what you said. There are some important goals that are built in the legislation, but it does, in some ways, encourage this sort of cartel behavior with the existing mainstream press, and that makes it a dealbreaker. It makes it basically a calamity.”
“So there’s a universe where — if you fix some of the problems here — you might actually have a good piece of legislation,” he added, “but I think it’s always important to look to the people who have actually been warriors on this stuff, where are they coming down on it? I think Josh Hawley — of course, has endorsed me in the Senate race, is a good friend of mine — sounds like he’s not a huge fan of this legislation, and I think that if Breitbart and Alex Marlow and Josh Hawley think that this is bad, we should step back and wonder what it’s actually doing.”
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