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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."
So in the US, we have the 1st Amendment which says this: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; ..."
It seems to me that what this law would do is give a competitive advantage to those newspapers that avoid endorsing candidates.
Isn't that abridging the freedom of the presses that want to make political statements endorsing candidates? It basically says, "Don't make political endorsements, or else we'll tax you."
Why not just make everything tax exempt? Then everyone would be more profitable, not just the failed buggy-whip companies.
Considering that when a local newspaper goes under a small part of the community is gone, I think this is a good idea. These small papers fill the niche market that are only in small communities have and help promote local issues that larger newspapers tend to gloss over. Losing the political endorsements would actually be a good thing since it might make the papers less biased. Providing both sides of an issue is much more informative than printing one sided articles because of the political leanings of the paper.
I think this is a really great idea. It forces them to be a little less biased, and it keeps well-written articles available. The natural beauty of print is that it's costly to publish, compared to digitally. This tends to force the writing to be polished, which online articles, blogs specifically, never achieve. There's just something nice about reading an article someone else has proofread before you. It's jarring to read blogs that have foregone this, as you tend to notice the little grammatical mistakes everywhere. Or worse, it's syntactically correct, but semantically rubbish.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
You mean we can look forward to having an entire week's worth of issues, once a quarter, be full of nothing but spots begging for donations? Yeah, that'll make subscription rates soar!
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
>>>A somewhat more balanced media is in everyone's interest.
Yes it is, but "balanced reporting" is a myth. The reporters allow their own biases to sneak-into the articles. Not on purpose of course, but just as a natural consequence of being human. For example if you asked me to report on the Democratic Convention, it would probably be very negative since I don't like big-government parties. Vice-versa if I did a Libertarian Convention article, it would probably end up being a fluff piece. It's just natural bias.
I prefer reporters be honest about their views, even if those views are slanted, rather than pretend to be unbiased, which is a falsehood. Nobody is unbiased.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
That's bullshit, if a news organization cannot survive in the market it doesn't deserve to exist. We don't need another NPR-style organization. News is not Sesame St. for adults. The papers are facing the 21st century with a 19th century technology, WHAT DID THEY THINK WAS GONNA HAPPEN? Meanwhile, New York Times still makes me laugh every time someone links to it and it asks for registration, BS, I close the window right there. Drudge is 21st century news, adapt or die.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
We've actually had that for a while now.
Someone just forgot to tell the suits that they couldn't really commoditize culture without some serious problems creeping in.
The problem is, the vast majority of newspapers are owned by giant conglomerates. Gannett and McClatchy just going to say, "Oh hey, lets dissolve!"? Don't think the CEO's with their 7 figure salaries are gonna get behind that one.
Anyway, even the papers that are already non-profit are taking it in the ass. Look at St. Pete. The industry has to successfully make a revenue transition from 1 medium to another without going bankrupt in the process, and it doesn't help that the web sucks for revenue. Look at all these huge, popular web 2.0 services that still haven't found a way to make a profit. The Ad revenue pie is the same size, but way too many people want a piece, and you don't get that natural geographic advantage that newspapers have traditionally enjoyed.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I know that the path to a "somewhat more balanced media" rides right though my local newspaper collapsing and falling into oblivion. Of course, I'm speaking of the San Francisco Chronicle, and they are collapsing.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
The newspapers are not making money now, so having their advertising and subscription revenues tax exempt won't matter. The big difference would be they'd be able to get tax deductible donations.
Why do you think soliciting donations will make the media more balanced? As the mayor of Corruptville, I of course realize that we need balanced reporting in our fair town. I will even donate some of my embezzled funds towards that end - as long as the newspaper doesn't tell anybody about my embezzlement.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
The best part of Capitalism is letting bad business fail. If the newspapers can't fund themselves legitimately through voluntary commerce, like any other business, they need to fail, as they deserve.
With tax-exempt status, they exists solely at the mercy of government legislation. What are the chances they will criticize the government that grants them favored status?
This is a recipe for State control of news dissemination.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
but they surely will still have their respective slants on stories, which political cartoons they carry, and so on.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
If they are losing money, they are not being taxed anyway (even the federal tax code has limits).
Just between us, are you comfortable with a newspaper's independence if government officials and bureaucrats can threaten their tax-exempt status?
Couple this with the return of the fairness doctrine, and you have a recipe for an Orwellian experience.
The two primary costs of operating a newspaper are (a) paying the reporters, and (b) printing papers. We all know subscriptions are down and that the medium is evolving so that only the largest national papers can afford to print copies. Also, readership in local areas doesn't really demand printed copies as much as they want access to the information. For example, one thing local reporters cover is town council meetings and police reports. Thanks largely to digital search mechanisms, it's way easier to grab this information from the pages of a reputable townie news service website than to sift through a printed paper.
So, I see the costs of printing a newspaper disappearing over the years and that leaves only the cost of paying reporters. My question is... what's to stop the small newspapers from firing the majority of their staff and operating like Internet newspapers with self-moderated volunteer staffs? All it'd take is to deploy Slashcode, buy-in from town administrators and business owners, and a critical mass of town residents to begin operating a near-free town news service.
Meanwhile, I see "tradition newspapers" as an occupation disappearing, regardless of tax exempt status or not.
And look at it this way... the newspaper profit model has been largely based on ad-revenue for so long that a simple "local" implementation of Craigslist could easily facilitate job postings, garage sales, and local advertising so that tiny, tiny charges for these would pay the small staff that's needed to maintain the hardware and post the most interesting stories on the mainpage.
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How will this make the media "more balanced?"
Non-profit status for newspapers (that now can't have a political view) is simply a tax on newspapers that do. This seems like a limit on free speech along the lines of the fairness doctrine.
This is further complicated by the fact that no journalist seems to believe that they are capable of bias.
DATABASE WOW WOW
I don't think balanced reporting is a myth, it just doesn't seem to exist anymore. It's supposed to be a news column, not an editorial. To use your example about reporting on the Democratic convention, why would it be so hard to report who was there, sequence of events, and what the person said. whether you agree with it or not shouldn't play any part in doing your job as a news reporter. What one side considers a joke the other side considers an insult..example being the 'lipstick on a pig' comment during the election. The quote should be in the NEWS article and the editorial should give the viewpoint that it was insulting or whatever they want to say. and yes it can be a natural bias that creeps through but then shouldn't the editor be demanding the reporters stick to the facts. if not then what good are they.
The thing is, if you give up trying to be unbiased, you get Fox News.
Even if it is a mostly unattainable goal, it's better to try and deliver an unbiased product.
I do admit, it'd be nice if a reporter would be open about their bias right from the start. The nice thing about the web (if any papers transitioned to it correctly, which, of course, none have) is that you could make that sort of information available in a reporters bio. Trusting your news source is important; nobody has time to fact check all their news.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Presumably the goal is to preserve newspapers as a necessary source of information gathering. The idea is that in the age of the internet, we face a free-rider problem and fundamental news gathering is less profitable. Ostensibly journalists are performing a public service.
But how well this proposed solution will address the real problem? There are lots of right-wing newspapers that are not profitable but they have dedicated corporate sponsors so they keep operating. Consider the Washington Times, or the Pittsburgh Tribune. If we let newspapers be non-profits we are giving a huge tax-break to Richard Mellon Scaife, and Rupert Murdoch, and Sun Myung Moon. All of the money these guy pump into their right-wing propaganda machines will be tax-deductible.
I want to save newspapers too, but this proposal will incentivize more propaganda than it will actual news.
Considering churches get non-profit, and even some HMOs as well, I would say that newspapers have much more of the public interest in mind than either of the other two. Churches and HMOs generally pay their top employes more than most newspapers; but yet where does the non-profit status currently go?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The thing is, if you give up trying to be unbiased, you get Fox News.
Or the Economist. Bias is OK as long as you acknowledge it - does Fox still claim to be fair and balanced?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
You have to realize how desperate the newspaper industry has become. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed their last paper edition last week. They're just a web site now, and they distribute their news via Twitter. That's how far down they've come. The Detroit Free Press only prints on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday now. The San Francisco Chronicle may go next.
And those were once Great Metropolitan Dailies. Little papers go under every day.
Nothing is really replacing them. Blogs are mostly punditry; few have paid reporters. If anything, the future may be TV news presented via the Web. TV news has historically been time-limited, but that's not a Web problem.
I think that bias creeps in most often in the form of omission. To continue with the Democratic convention, for example, someone who supports the Democratic party may choose not to report so much on the protesters outside the venue, or place this coverage closer to the end of the article. Newspaper articles are limited in length, so only the "most significant" information makes it in. Often the selection of what is important (by the reporter or his editor) allows for bias to creep in, however unintentionally.
If the tax system was fair in the first place, no loopholes would be needed. Income tax is really unlawful. It punishes productivity and penalizes saving.
Umm... Arguably, without taxes and nothing backing the US dollar, inflation would spiral out of control and that would really punish savers.
Arguably, income tax is preferable over spending tax, because if you reward saving too much you end up with a deflationary death spiral which is what caused the great depression and would still punish people who saved their money because they'd probably be unemployed and have to spend those savings.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The thing is, if you give up trying to be unbiased, you get Fox News, or CNN, or MSNBC, or Pravda.
Fixed that for you. Bias doesn't just swing to the right. A major complaint of a lot of people is that most of the media bias seems to be to the left.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
The problem is, the online news services are all leaching off the traditional media for their content.
I'm actually looking forward with mild amusement to the panic when the flow of content from the big boys ceases.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
When the editors and such lean so hard to the left while the area they serve doesn't. A prime example is the AJC (Atlanta Journal and Constitution). They are so far the left they had to actually ask for a "conservative writer" for the editorial page. It was hilarious their reaction to known conservative writers they "refused to consider" . In other words they needed someone harmless and unknown. The AJC was practically the OJC during the last election. Yet go read pages which accept reader submissions and its clear the base doesn't lean at all the same way.
Now they are still bitching about loss of jobs and liberal professors are decrying the loss of jobs and "professionalism"; ready those dirty peasants with their blogs versus the glorious gods of journalism produced by said schools.
Bite me. Papers are getting what they deserved. Do not expect in an age where information is available from many sources that if you don't appeal to your possible customer base that you can remain viable. Either adapt to your customers or go the way of the dodo
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Dude, their slogan is "Fair and Balanced." I admit they're not trying to be unbiased, but they are definitely trying to pretend like they're unbiased, which is the worst of all worlds.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I can't resist: that's because reality has a well-known liberal bias. ;)
Reality Maintenance Group, Silver City Construction Co., Ltd.
I don't think advertising your bias works either. People who don't like your bias won't read your article, even if you did some excellent work.
What's missing is reading (and listening) with a grain of salt. Trusting news because it came from The Paper, or A Scientist, or A Doctor. Credentials are just there to stand out amidst the riff raff. They may still be complete idiots.
You may not like the DNC, and will obviously have a bias going in but presumably while you will have a critical eye you are going to be listening and asking questions. To the statements that sounds good, you will likely have doubts. To the statements that sounds bad...well you obviously have thought that part through.
Unless your livelihood depends on a certain candidate, like us you probably want to figure out who to vote for. You might have made a choice but harbor some doubts (likely he's just the lesser of evils). That's all we need. What we get, a lot, is corporate influence that needs a particular vote they can't outright buy. They heavily influence the outcome by blatant propaganda.
Nonprofit isn't a single status. Certain nonprofits to which donations are tax-deductible for the donor have to avoid "substantial involvement" in politics, including explicit endorsements, to retain that particular status (Particularly, 501(c)(3) organizations, so called because their tax exemption is established in 26 U.S.C. sec. 501(c)(3)). When the group of people who make up a 501(c)(3) want to act collectively politically, they typically set up separate organizations which are also tax-exempt nonprofits, but to which donations are not tax-deductible for the donor, which can be substantially involved in politics.
Most tax-exempt nonprofits are not restricted in their political involvement at all. See, generally, 26 U.S.C. sec. 501 [excluding 501(c)(3)].
Furthermore, with regard to newspapers, any newspaper which chose to become a nonprofit (i.e., not to be operated for the benefit of private owners/shareholders) could do so now and become a 501(c)(3) now with the restrictions that would be imposed by this bill. So I don't see how this really provides any new options.
That is my first thought - what is preventing them from doing this right now?
There is noting that says you can't incorporate a "business" as a non-profit, or rather nothing prevents a non-profit from generating revenue. One of the major disadvantages is that since you don't have profit, it's hard to have investors, which makes getting capital for expansion harder.
So to me the most important question is what does this bill allow the newspaper companies to do that a normal non-profit couldn't and is that really a good idea? Of course the story completely neglected to include that information.
Why is it that every story I read, or news report I watch I leave thinking that journalists completely failed to investigate the heart of the story? They rarely even explain what the relevant details of the situation are, let alone think to ask any of the important questions (the ones I would ask :), instead just running whatever random quotes they could get from people.
Not every report needs to be a 10 page listing of everything going on.
For example, why are protesters relevant? You're clueless if you don't get the idea that they are presenting an opposing viewpoint, but why do we need to know every anti-Democrat opinion there? If you want a story on it, it should be a SEPARATE story (or even editoral) and thus shouldn't be a part of the general convention coverage article. Thus omission isn't bias, it's proper reporting.
By your argument, failing to report the tin-foil hat conspiracy version of stories is biased omission. But what is the cutoff? Presenting "both sides of the story" isn't the basis of unbiased reporting, it is the basis of turning editorials into reporting when it should be left to the opinion pages. I don't need to read the conservative counter to a Democrat's speech in an article about the speech. That counterspeech should be its own story or in the OP-ED.
At this point in time, there is still an advantage to using print that many people tend to neglect. Sure it's easier and more efficient to post to the web, where content can be dynamically generated and altered on the fly as updated statistics come in, but by allowing newspapers to die out you're severing awareness of the community for the people without access to the internet, in essence forcing a change to the new lifestyle. As the internet is a relatively new thing, it would behoove us to stick with something traditional for the space of a generation or so, rather than switching to the "latest and best toys". Internet access is still not freely available in the way a newspaper might be found on the street - one has to actually have a computer to access any information at all about your community. While access is becoming widespread, it's still another level of abstraction that makes it that much more difficult to reach for people who refuse to use computers, who can't afford computers (or access), or who don't know where in the enormity of the world-wide web to search for local information.
This is similar to the argument from yesterday that the American lifestyle and physical community is built around having a car; most of the time those people without a vehicle are shafted by not having access to reliable public transportation systems and not being in reach of the jobs or services they need. At present, news is accessible in both formats, and should *stay* that way for awhile longer, through whatever means possible. Not sure if tax-exempt status is the answer, but the notion of keeping it afloat awhile longer interest me.
Fixed that for you. Bias doesn't just swing to the right. A major complaint of a lot of people is that most of the media bias seems to be to the left.
Really, mind pointing out who "a lot of people" are? I find it funny that so many people reference that the general public is sick of liberal bias in the media, yet I never actually see the evidence that proves it. I never see where the general public even acknowledges that it has a clue what said liberal bias is.
Was it liberal bias that the majority of the nation didn't give two shits about a blowjob yet the media harped over it for a year and a half because a certain party was pushing the story daily?
The so-called "liberal bias" in the media is nothing more than "conservative propaganda" being dished out. Sure, there's liberals in the media utilizing tv and radio just as well as conservatives. But acting like they are more prevalent is horseshit being fed to you by an agenda that's fooling you. Having a couple of segments per day of liberals doesn't make everything you do liberal bias (COUGHCNNCOUGH). Meanwhile Fox News is 24/7 conservative mouthpiece and yet no one has the balls to say the words "conservative media bias." Or maybe it has less to do with having the minerals and more to do with people spreading the word, which they've done blindly and without question in regards to the "liberal media bias."
I tell ya, Murdoch and fellow conservatives have done a great job brainwashing the public. Apparently if you don't read the GOP line word-for-word all day long, you're liberal biased media. How fucking moronic.
Wake me when the media stops sucking and the unwashed masses pull their heads out of their collective asses. The only story I see coming out of any station, CNN, Fox News, etc., is their obvious belief that their viewers are idiots who can't think for themselves. No thanks, I'd rather my media doesn't treat me like I lack the ability to come up with my own conclusions.
David Swensen and Michael Schmidt proposed that newspapers simply receive endowments and operate off the interest, insulating them from commercial pressures and conflicts of interest. I think that's a fantastic idea, especially in conjunction with legal nonprofit status for newspapers.
A somewhat more balanced media is in everyone's interest.
What we need to do is dispense with the charade of calling it Journalism or News. It should be called Entertainment...
EntertainmentPapers
EntertainmentTV
Perhaps setup a requirement that to be called News also requires full disclosure of sources. Maybe even restrict the use of 'pundits' or so-called 'experts'. Require opinions to be clearly labeled as such. Require all funding and payments to be publicly disclosed.
Reporting from undisclosed sources could still occur, just not on 'News' channels. Only on 'Entertainment' channels.
Just some random ideas...
MSNBC and HNN have nearly the same format, a morning variety show with varied opinion, but definitely not a "just news" program, some number of hours of news readers and then opinion guys/gals for primetime.
Nobody from Fox News would ever claim that O'Reilly is a news man (well he might, who knows? His program clearly isn't a news program though, and even he'd say that) same with MSNBC, Olberman nas been very outspoken on the fact that's he's paid to give his opinion, that's the point of his show, and as such, it's not a news program. It was MSNBC that really botched it over the convention coverage and tried to use the prime-time opinion line up for news.
Bottom line though, and it affects papers too, people tend to like to read opinions and editorials and they seem to like to watch it more than they like real news. You non-profit either the papers or the broadcast news and you probably have to dump them. There is probably a greater problem here if you take a step back; ABC,NBC, and CBS have been scaling back news for decades, they're basically down to a 30 minute evening news broadcast and that's about it without some sort of entertainment/investigative journalism spin. More people want to watch Jeopardy than "The News." Making papers non-profit might be a good way to make them cover more news and to protect them a little bit, but it remains unclear to me that people want to actually read news, they kind of like how they get to pick the kinds of "news" they can read or watch on their own and listen to the bias.
Even the financial news has become a sham, and if there is ever something you should be able to report on without bias, it's the markets. They do more cheerleading than real news. They're poopooing Jon Stewart's criticism and he's the wrong messenger but his points are 100% valid. Honestly, I think a whole lot fewer people watch and you can hardly run a 24 network with real news, let alone the dozen or so that we've got. It's hard to put the horse back in the barn.
The fourth most centrist outlet was "Special Report With Brit Hume" on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC's "World News Tonight" and NBC's "Nightly News" to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.
Sounds surprising right? The report eventually concludes to with that while most media leans left of center, they are almost all more moderate in comparison to our politicians.
And no offense but I take it you are not a reporter. The fact that you would be unable to provide an unbiased article on the DNC does not indicate that people trained in journalism would be unable to do the same. The ability to put aside personal beliefs is a skill that is stronger in some compared to others. Lawyers do it everyday for instance.
"Yes it is, but "balanced reporting" is a myth."
Which is exactly why we don't want the government doing the press any favors. It's going to be hard to get anything critical about the government from press that needs government favors to survive.
Reporter bias, editor bias, assignment bias, publisher bias. Take your choice.
The only people not biased are people that don't have any background in the subject. And they are worthless too, since they don't understand what they are seeing and hearing.
Which leads us to how Entertainment Tonight covers political campaigns. Or maybe thats ABCNNBCBS Faux sensati-celebri-news. Hard to tell anymore.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Maybe instead of shooting your mouth off you can make the observation that liberals and conservatives think the media is biased against their respective positions. Both sides dutifully drink the Kool Aid served up to them by whomever they consider a trustworthy source.
There is liberal and conservative bias, predominantly on cable news, but it most often is in the form of very vocal editorial (O'Reilly, Olberman, etc.) rather than true journalism. Perhaps what we are seeing is the polarizing effect of editorial jousting combined with the decline of true journalistic integrity. The 'chicken-or-the-egg' argument can deal with which came first: a lack of education on the part of the viewers or the coercion of viewers by media moguls.
There is lots of information out there, but if people stop looking once they get the answer that reaffirms what they already believe we will never be able to engage in a rational discourse.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
When everyone else in the world seems to have turned upside down, maybe it's time to look at your own orientation.
Truthfully, until the internet came along, we used to get most of our daily news filtered through some reporter and editor. Today, we can read the federal register, congressional web sites, get blogs from people in the middle of a war zone, and so on.
This is just like all the problems we're having with the RIAA, MPAA and others. Distributors do not have a monopoly on the news any more and they're losing out to people who want to get their information, movies, music, entertainment or whatever from the source.
I won't argue whether "the media" is biased or not. It's rapidly becoming irrelevant. And now my very own Senator Ben Cardin wants to prop them up with my tax dollars.
I have a better idea: let them die a normal, free-market death.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
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
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
A lot of people are Chinese. A fair old number are Indian. HTH.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I agree entirely. There seems to be a bias on /. that scientists are some kind of creative robot, where it's all about the facts and no bias or preconceptions creep in. People who say as much get flamed for questioning the objectivity of scientists. I suppose they think they're some different kind of creature than what the rest of us humans are.
Sure, bias can creep in, but objectivity can be applied. You may not achieve perfect balance and have the most correct interpretation of the event in question, but it's a lot better than if you don't even try.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
The fair and balanced slogan is meant to be ironic, Fox News bias is the opposite of CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, NYT, Newsweek, Times, Washington Post, NPR ... who all claim that they show little to no bias.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Does CNN management send memos to their reporters with instructions like "His [Bush's] political courage and tactical cunning ar[e] [wo]rth noting in our reporting through the day"? Memos that a former employee describes as "talking points instructing us what the themes are supposed to be, and God help you if you stray"?
If so, I promise to despise them. If not, then Fox is a different kind of organization than CNN, not a differently biased one of the same kind.
You can be biased and still be honest. You can be biased without being a party's house organ. I wish we had more bias like we get from The Economist, which wears their opinions on their sleeve while still doing real reporting.
That's why the more diverse sources of reporting there are, the better. Readers can read different reports which focus on different details and make up their own minds based on the whole. Unless of course they want to be spoon-fed a headline and two-sentence summary and sound bite of outrage, then they can watch Fox News.
Incidentally I work as a newspaper reporter, and I think this senator's idea is great. So I am clearly declaring my bias.
If diverse sources of reporting are conglomerated into fewer and fewer media sources (look at Canada as a micro-example, there are two companies controlling most of the daily newspapers across the country) then variety suffers. If this continues, as it will if corporatism dominates media through buyouts, bankruptcies, etc. then there will be very little diversity. You will have, essentially, what existed before the advent of the printing press - only the wealthy could afford to have anything recorded, so the they got to write history.
The wealthy have often controlled the press (e.g. Hearst) but in the 20th century there were a wide variety of "slants" in print because it wasn't too hard for someone to round up investors, or start a non-profit and create their own publication. Today ownership of or access to a colour press capable of doing magazines or newspapers is prohibitively expensive and the biggest problem is the business model is broken. Few people want to pay for what they read, so subscription revenue is down, and advertising revenue is drying up.
Yes, the Internet will change everything but no big media companies have found a way to make money off Internet-based publications on the same scale as their print products. And no one is going to pay to subscribe to a news website, that's been tried several times and in my opinion it will never work on a large scale.
To bring my ramblings to a close, I think this senator's idea is great because it could pave the way for independent, Internet-based publications to thrive, providing news to niche markets, and as non-profits, they could solicit donations from loyal readers. That could be enough to allow investigative journalism to thrive again, and to allow small, independent publications to grow and thrive by the quality of their work, instead of by virtue of being the biggest game in town.
No thanks, I'd rather my media doesn't treat me like I lack the ability to come up with my own conclusions.
My favorite is, "What happened (was discovered, almost happened) today, and why you should be scared." At least I know what they're trying to sell.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Newspapers replaced the town crier. Newspapers are the 21st century equivalent of the town crier. Newspapers will be replaced by something else that has advantages and disadvantages.
Newspapers are largely full of things I don't care about and things that I don't understand why they even have like coverage of national sporting events. Aren't the multiple ESPNs and Fox Sports channels and websites enough? Why do newspapers have horoscopes? Why do they have comic strips that haven't been funny for 20+ years?
If newspapers want to survive they need to figure out what they do better than any other medium. Coverage of what the news channels talked about yesterday isn't one of them.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Which facts? Facts according to whom?
All media choose to include certain facts, and exclude other facts.
Here is a good example of media bias. Next time someone gets into trouble with the law, pay attention. The news headline will say "Prominent Republican So and so was caught ______ " while if it is a Democrat you might see "So and so under suspicion of _______". The bias is there, because facts are emphasized or de-emphasized according to the bias.
It is up to you to realize that such things happen all the time, regardless of if is on FOX or NBC. The fact is, I can see the bias because I have a brain.
I don't have a problem when people admit their bias (left or right). Just quit pretending you're unbiased when you're clearly not.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Then in the next statement you assume that 'large contributors' would be stupid enough to support something that you are insinuating is going to be ignored ("just needs to please the few large contributors").
That is self-contradictory and tin-foil-hat-conspiracy-theory thinking at best. (That, or I you were not very clear).