Media seek to negotiate with Google, Facebook

News outlets are seeking permission from Congress for the right to negotiate jointly with Google and Facebook, two companies that dominate online advertising and online news traffic. The News Media Alliance, which represents nearly 2,000 news organizations, says that because of those two companies’ dominance, news publishers are forced to “surrender their content and play by their rules on how news and information is displayed, prioritized and monetized.” “These rules have commoditized the news and given rise to fake news, which often cannot be differentiated from real news,” the alliance said in a media release on Monday.