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."

Comments

1st Amendment?

[DoofusOfDeath]

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."

Re:1st Amendment?

[guyminuslife]

I would agree with you, but there's already a lot of precedent for this.

For instance, churches are already tax exempt. (Apparent First Amendment violation number one.) But they are legally prohibited from making political endorsements, or risk losing their tax exempt status. (Apparent First Amendment violation number two.) As with all nonprofits organizations.

A lot would have to change for this to be considered unconstitutional.

Re:1st Amendment?

[LoverOfJoy]

The risky thing here is that newspapers practically need to cover political issues while most religions are fine staying out of political issues except when something covers what they see as a moral issue.

So what happens when the government decides a newspaper is a little too biased in their reporting and claim that it's endorsing another candidate? Will the press have to censor themselves to avoid appearing like an endorsement?

Re:1st Amendment?

[langelgjm]

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."

Not really, because the assumption is that everyone deserves to be taxed. Not being taxed is the exception - it's a special privilege, and if you want that status, you are required to do certain things.

Re:1st Amendment?

[TinBromide]

Its the opposite. The government is not punishing any existing newspapers that wish to continue to endorse candidates, instead, they're providing a reward for news papers that wish to return to reporting news instead of making it.

Great

[Maury Markowitz]

Why not just make everything tax exempt? Then everyone would be more profitable, not just the failed buggy-whip companies.

i like it

[digitalsushi]

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.

Re:What a good idea

[commodore64_love]

>>>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.

 

Balanced media

[qbzzt]

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.

Re:Balanced media

[quanticle]

To be fair, though, the one major example I have of donation supported media (National Public Radio) is remarkably balanced, especially in it its coverage of the ongoing economic troubles. At the very least they've not been more unbalanced in any direction than privately funded media.

Re:Balanced media

[qbzzt]

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.

Considering costs...

[RobBebop]

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.

Re:BS

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Drudge is 21st century news, adapt or die.

In case you didn't notice, Drudge and his host of imitators are news aggregators, not reporters. The stories they link too have to come from somewhere. If all the old line, stale, MSM news outlets that people love to bitch about closed up shop, the blogosphere would have precious little to do.

Re:What a good idea

[bravo369]

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.

Re:What a good idea

[SatanicPuppy]

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.

Re:What a good idea

[Fulcrum of Evil]

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?

Desperation effort

[Animats]

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.

Re:What a good idea

[Sigismundo]

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.

Re:What a good idea

[Hordeking]

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.

Re:What a good idea

[SatanicPuppy]

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.

Re:What a good idea

[_Quinn]

I can't resist: that's because reality has a well-known liberal bias. ;)

Omission is not always bias

[orthancstone]

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.

Re:Omission is not always bias

[Unordained]

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.

Re:Omission is not always bias

[sycodon]

An unbiased news report might look like this:

Politician A today unveiled his plans for [some program]. The major parts of this program are [Part A],[Part B],[Part C]. The new legislation will be offered in the legislature next week.

A biased new article is more like this:

Politician A, whose approval ratings are at record lows, today unveiled his plans for [some program], which has been is blasted by [some hyperventilating critic] as [some affront to any number of fringe groups] . The major parts of this [controversial] program are [Part A],[Part B],[Part C]. The new legislation will be offered in the legislature next week but faces widespread opposition by [a minority of lunatics].

Note that there would generally be several paragraphs detailing the supposed failings of the three parts and featuring criticism from various people who have not even seen the legislation.

I suspect that if you are paying attention, you will notice that articles of the latter nature are more prevalent in the media today than.

I care less about the bias than the approach to the news, to the guests, to the context.

So you are OK with the condescending, arrogant attitudes that are typical of NPR?

Re:What a good idea

[obarthelemy]

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