Commentary by Stutz: Competition, Market Failure, and Doublethink in News Markets

In this essay, American Antitrust Institute (AAI) President Randy Stutz argues that the Trump administration’s competition advocacy and enforcement to promote viewpoint diversity in digital news markets conflict with its regulatory interventions that mandate unilateral increases in the supply of viewpoint diversity in the same markets. Even if the administration’s actions pass muster under the First Amendment, it is unlikely to achieve any of its goals because it has failed to formulate a coherent policy.

The essay is reprinted with permission from Concurrences. It originally appeared in Concurrences’ November On-Topic series, Content Moderation and Antitrust. View the Original Source.

Abstract:

Viewpoint diversity in news publishing is either a public good—non-excludable and non-rivalrous and thus underproduced absent regulatory intervention—or a private good—such that publishers’ reputations, advertising, or other factors enable competitive market forces to meet consumer demand. Depending on which view is adopted as accurate, the proper approach to ensuring sufficient viewpoint diversity will differ. In its zeal to address a perceived imbalance of viewpoints in news markets, the Trump Administration has not paused to choose one view or the other. It has deployed both market-based and regulatory approaches in the same news markets simultaneously, all but ensuring that neither will work. Incoherent policy has led to self-defeating actions that work at cross-purposes with one another. Thus, the administration’s rhetorical support for greater viewpoint diversity is unlikely to lead to any meaningful benefits.

Read the full essay: Competition, Market Failure, and Doublethink in News Markets