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Senator Proposes Nonprofit Status For Newspapers
The AP is reporting that a senator has introduced legislation that would allow struggling newspapers to operate as nonprofits, similar to the way public broadcasting works. "[Sen. Benjamin] Cardin [D-Md.] introduced a bill that would allow newspapers to choose tax-exempt status. They would no longer be able to make political endorsements, but could report on all issues including political campaigns. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax-exempt, and contributions to support coverage could be tax deductible. Cardin said in a statement that the bill is aimed at preserving local newspapers, not large newspaper conglomerates. ... The head of the newspaper industry's trade group called the bill a positive step."
Why not just make everything tax exempt? Then everyone would be more profitable, not just the failed buggy-whip companies.
NPR is national, so it is relatively easy to keep tabs on and has to cater to a large and diverse audience to keep in the donations.
A local newspaper is a lot smaller, and will only attract donations from rich people in that town - so it has a much more pronounced bias in its donors.
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Alicia Shepard, ombudsman at NPR, has a lengthy article and attached PDF with charts over here. The main article is about NPR and campaign coverage, but they have something to say about the "general" news bias as well, and not just about themselves; an extract:
Timothy Groseclose is a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who also studies media bias. He and another professor published a study in 2005 that concluded that 18 of the 20 major media outlets studied (including NPR) were left of center, as compared to the average U.S. voter. Only Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume and The Washington Times scored to the right of the average U.S. voter. (Results are on P. 22 of PDF.)
"By our estimate, NPR hardly differs from the average mainstream news outlet," said Groseclose. "It had the same scores as Time, Newsweek and was slightly less liberal than the Washington Post and well to the right of the New York Times and CBS Evening News. One of the surprising findings is that NPR is not as left as everyone says it is."
NPR got a score of 66.3, with 50 being centrist and 100 being most liberal. The Wall Street Journal's news pages (not the well-known conservative editorial pages) got an 85.1 and The New York Times and CBS each got a 73.7.
Does this mean that news organizations are, on average, to the left of the general public, or does it mean that we've been sold the idea that they're lefties, and we see them through that lens, and this shows up when asked about bias? That's another matter.
Can we separate the concepts of coverage and quality? I would generally prefer to listen to something that sounds reasoned and equitable, though it may have a left-leaning bias, than listen to something clearly spewing, conspiratorial, and accusatory that has a balancing right-leaning bias. I care less about the bias than the approach to the news, to the guests, to the context.
Have you ever read The Economist ? These guys are economic conservative, and social liberals. Pretty much the opposite of Fox News: they advocate gay marriage, abortion...
I find in particular that they try to separate facts from opinions, and to be reasonably pragmatic.
Sample of articles for this week:
Mr. Obama's first 2 months: http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13362078
Religious people and death: http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13315834
Funding impacting a research paper: http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13361480
Online dating and the crisis: http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13381506
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