The state Senate passed bill SB 1327 on June 27 with a bipartisan vote of 27 to 7. The bill is now on its way to an Assembly vote.

State Senator Steve Glazer presented his authored bill on the Senate floor, emphasizing the critical role of newsrooms in our democracy. He highlighted the current threat to democracies and stressed the importance of independent news as a vital indicator of a democracy’s health.

A $500 million annual journalism fund will be created from a data-extraction mitigation tax on tech platforms earning over $2.5 billion annually (Google, Meta, and Amazon), with an additional $400 million allocated for schools.

The fee aims to address the unfair advertising advantage that tech giants have gained through mass data collection of their users. This advantage has led to a significant loss of advertising revenue for newsrooms and has contributed to the sharp decline of the newspaper industry in California over the past 15 years. (www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/). Read the bill here:https://legiscan.com/CA/text/SB1327/2023

The co-sponsors of SB 1327 are state Senators Catherine Blakespear, Melissa Hurtado, John Laird, Mike McGuire, Steve Padilla, Henry Stern, and Scott Wiener.