BPM think that the bill misses the target, and is likely to benefit larger news media companies - if any - more than small ones. Instead, they proposes using an industry-wide levy - say on all digital ad revenues - to fund something like the Public Journalism Fund.
"If we introduced a levy on the digital advertising market, which is roughly worth $1.8 billion a year, you'd be generating as much money as the Public Interest Journalism Fund. I think that would be a far more elegant, transparent and fundamentally simpler model to implement than one that relies on negotiations between news media and the platforms, and then goes to a very convoluted arbitration process if they can't agree."
"And then of course the harvesting of our personal data - quite apart from the privacy issues - has been used to orchestrate campaigns specifically to undermine democratic process. Both in the Brexit campaign, and in the US presidential election. I haven't got time to talk about Cambridge Analytica today, but Google them.
...I don't think they're all-powerful, but a 1% nudge in a tight election could make quite a big difference."