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Journalists Looking For Government Money
We've been following the ongoing struggles of the print media, watching as some publications have died off and others have held to outdated principles and decried the influence of the internet. A side effect of this has been many journalists put out of work and many others fearful that informed reporting is on its way out as well. Now, an editorial in the Washington Post calls for a solution journalists would likely have scoffed at only a few years ago: federal subsidies. Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols write, "What to do? Bailing out media conglomerates would be morally and politically absurd. These firms have run journalism into the ground. If they cannot make it, let them go. Wait for 'pay-wall' technologies, billionaire philanthropists or unimagined business models to generate enough news to meet the immense demands of a self-governing society? There is no evidence that such a panacea is on the horizon. This leaves one place to look for a solution: the government." They hasten to add, "Did we just call for state-run media? Quite the opposite."
They have run journalism into the ground...
If they would move past "Infotainment" and got back to writing good "News" instead of creating "Crisis" and attacking an administration simply to raise advertising funding I'd be inclined to buy a newspaper to read.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
What a fantastic way to ensure a free press: have them paid by the very institution they're supposed to be the watchdogs for. I'm sure they won't forget how to be objective and unbiased though... /sarcasm
Else we'll have the situation with Boscovs which was bailed-out, but after examining the store, I think should have died.
This store has not been modernized its look since the 1980s, still employs three people to man every single register (wasteful), and carries product a modern consumer has little-to-no interest in buying (sewing patterns & machines to make your own clothes). Other stores like Penneys and Sears have streamlined their operations, eliminating product that doesn't sell, and having 3 employees serve an entire QUARTER of a store not just one register. They've cut costs and grown more efficient. Boscovs has not.
Government bail-outs for stores just encourage inefficiency. Ditto bail-outs for newspapers. Let the papers innovate or pass-away into history (along with horsewhips and cobblers).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Once you start getting $$$ from good ole goobermint teet they pretty much tell you what you can do. Same will happen with the media. After all, if they allow journalists to get money, how are they going to control who gets the $$$ or not?
It's simple! They only fund people that are "favorable" to this years 'fad' administration.
How would government financing of media be anything but state-run media? The media is already tainted with clear and evident bias. And that's on all fronts, for those who want to taunt Fox news. We expect it from commentators and that is generally where the most overt lies but most news agencies get their news from AP and Reuters feeds. And many of them frankly read like commentary. As if personal bias hasn't destroyed true journalism over the past several decades what do you think asking for a hand-out from an administration already quite intolerant of dissent is going to do?
The broadcast spectrum monopolies that CBS,NBC,ABC don't pay a cent for and use to ram nonstop propaganda and spam down our throats, plus the entire copyright system (deployment of government power to control what people can do with the information on their own computers). That's many many billions of bucks worth of subsidies, maybe 100's of billions. The cellular phone spectrum monopolies are at least creating revenue, but the broadcast garbage is supposedly a public service.
Shut down broadcast TV completely, I mean all of it, have one govt-operated channel for emergency info but have it show weather reports and/or CSPAN 24/7 unless an actual emergency is taking place. Turn the rest of the spectrum over to low-power unlicensed use (like wifi). If companies want to show cheesy sitcoms, use the internet. And adjust the copyright system to stay out of people's private noncommercial communications, but to clamp down on companies (that means Google, Facebook, etc) cashing in on incidental noncommercial publishing (that means stuff like slashdot comments, that are essentially ephemeral and conversational in nature, but get vacuumed and monetized by 3rd parties who had nothing to do with producing them).
I'm sure the constant threat of their government funding being cut would NEVER affect their critical coverage of said government.
a state-run media is exactly what they're calling for. Craven fools.
Dog is my co-pilot.
The thing is, the criticism they'll hand out will be like the BBC, bitching about how the government isn't doing enough.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Am I the only person who is slightly appalled by saving a "medium"? I mean, fuck, why don't we just bailout the papyrus manufacturers while we're at it?
Obviously it's time to bail out Polaroid, or else there won't be any quality pictures ever taken ever again!!
Journalism will thrive. It will go back to its roots: pamphleteers. The idea of the monolithic newspaper journalistic elite is a product of a brief period during which corporations controlled the best distribution channels. Now they don't. Bloggers do. And journalism will be the better to show for it.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
The American Press is already owned by the government, just not directly. When was the last, really hard hitting documentary you saw on American television? When was the last time you saw a journalist beat up on a senator or congressman (with good, tough, questions and a refusal to yeild) that led to them "blackballing" that particular newspaper/journalist?
One of the best Australian TV shows that is quite prepared to ask tough/embaressing questions of any member of parliament is the "7:30 Report", on the ABC. The ABC (Australian Broadcast Comission) television station is solely funded by the Government, yet there is never, ever, any question about the integrity of its host (Kerry O'Brien), despite the interviewees often being the ones responsible for his pay cheque.
I imagine it is a lot worse for all of the commercial outlets beceause they have to walk the line of being tough but nice so that where there's a new, exclusive, story to break, they have a chance of getting it. To Government funded media, there's no quest to be first with a major, breaking, story, only to do it right and do it well.
Without corruption, I can't find a way to justify the pandering of American reporters to their politicians. And that exists today, without any subsidies, etc.
A solution journalists would have scoffed at a few years ago? Given that more of them are left-leaning Democrats than any other specific political orientation, why would journalists have opposed government subsidy?
Look, these guys claim that the job of journalism is to "question, analyze and speak truth to power". What a weaselly bunch of crap. They'll cover up anything for people they like (and that crosses the political spectrum). They even quote Obama as saying "Government without a tough and vibrant media is not an option for the United States of America." This is the same guy whose administration says that Fox News isn't a real news organization, mostly because a lot of its shows spend their time attacking him and his policies - i.e., being tough and vibrant. If you disagree with my politics, then imagine if instead of the Republican kabuki of not financially supporting information about abortion in worldwide birth control efforts were suddenly to apply to domestic newspapers the next time the political tide turns. Do you think that's good for democracy?
They then cite the historical example of some printing and postal subsidies (presumably similar to the current subsidies for books and other media via mail) and then suggest we should honor that by "greatly expand[ing] funding for public and community media, and establish[ing] policies that help convert dying daily newspapers into post-corporate low-profit news operations that realize the potential of the Internet." Do I get to qualify for "public and community" funding if I add a couple of news items to my posts about how home sales are doing in my neighborhood? (They're fine, FWIW.) Because otherwise it sounds suspiciously like how "community" funding keeps getting distributed via the same few organizations - the ones with the connections get solid government funding, and in return they toe the line.
I like newspapers. I enjoy sitting down on Sunday morning and slowly making my way through the whole thing. So, apparently, does the president. But making public policy based on the Sunday morning habits of the upper middle class is wasteful snobbery. They're dead. Move on. And if you're a journalism major, strongly consider switching.
There is a crisis for journalists as a result of the sudden crash in their industry but that crash isn't the result of some horrible failure of the market for journalism. Just the opposite. The newspaper industry has hit bottom because the internet has made the buisness of reporting so much more efficient. I mean just thinking about the huge number of daily papers across the states carrying the same national and international news on print is enough to make one sick at the waste. Not only does it cost a great deal to publish a print daily but each of these dailies employs editors and layout people to format the same news availible anywhere in their particular style. Many of them even insist on hiring their own reporters even when it's obviously duplicated effort (say reviewing national movies/TV shows).
Once competition drives most local papers to focus on local intersts and everyone to publish online it will free up a quite substantial amount of money for real reporting. Though actually a lot of what journalists call real reporting is duplicated effort for the sake of status. I mean does it really help the public understand what's going on better to have 40+ journalists at the white house press briefings and who knows how much AV equitment? If they just sent over a single camera crew and agreed on a way to pick questions there would be no harm to the quality of reporting. Much of this is just done because historically that behavior signaled prestige and seriousness in the news industry.
I don't think the newspapers are doing anything wrong. But when technology lets you accomplish the same job with disruptively less total effort (delivering news to the nation) many people are going to lose their jobs and most of the companies in that industry will go out of buisness. I feel sorry for the people with careers in the industry but I think there is every reason to believe that after things settle down there will be just as much investigative reporting and important journalism. There will just be less redundancy and a more efficient use of reporting resources.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
In norway print media is getting significant goverment subsidies. The consequence is that rather than having media which is a watchdog over goverment, they have become a shill of the leftist 'big-goverment' political parties. (Since these are the parties that will guarantee their continued pipe into taxpayer money)
Every time somone brings up the question of subsidies you can trust that every newspaper will write long editorials why they need to keep getting money.
Particularly aggravating is the fact that a small selection of newspapers are getting preferential treatment (more money than others). These papers just happen to be the papers that used to be the publishing fronts for four leftist political parties. They claim to be independent of cource, but it won't take much reading to realize just how skewed their presentation really is.
So just take a look around and you will quickly find good reasons why not to start subsidizing the press.
>>>The broadcast spectrum monopolies that CBS,NBC,ABC don't pay a cent for
False. I wish people would stop repeating this oft-stated lie. The ~2000 TV stations plus ~10,000 lowpower/clear air neighborhood stations all pay a lease for their spectrum (called a license fee).
>>>plus the entire copyright system
On this we agree. The original version in the 1790 Act was reasonable - 14 years of monopoly helped the authors stand on their own feet and earn money from their labor. Today's 105-year span is ridiculous. It's like creating a welfare state where an author pen a best-seller in his 20s, and then sit on his ass for the rest of his life, signing books, and collecting the residuals. (cough J.K.Rowlings). The rest of us poor slobs have to work 'til we're 70 or 80.
14 years plus a possibility for renewal (28 years total) is long enough.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
We already have state-run media. They might as well get paid by the government for their services.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Hold on, I just noticed this:
>>>Shut down broadcast TV completely, I mean all of it
I like my free television, thank you very much. Including the subchannels I am able to get 40 different programs at any time of the day. Why should I give that up for some inferior slow, interference-prone, overloaded, non-HD Wifi connection? I do watch some steaming television via the net, but don't particularly like it. It's poor sub-standard definition VHS-level quality and prone to sudden pauses in the middle of the show. I tried to watch Sanctuary on scifi.com, and the damn thing got stuck in an infinite loop - the same 30 seconds repeated over and over.
I prefer broadcast. Maybe someday in the future, say 2030, the internet will finally catchup to the same HD-level quality as over-the-air ATSC, but certainly not now.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
News is alive an well, just not in the traditional, dominant media outlets. We have online blogs and weekly newspapers that are in many cases thriving. In my hometown, a tiny rural weekly called "The Altamont Enterprise" has such a demand for local advertising that they've had to add a second section. 15 years ago, it was a 10 page weekly, now its closer to 50.
Why the growth? The local newspaper, the Hearst-owned Albany Times-Union doesn't really provide a service to people in the outlying areas of Albany. Even within the area that the traditional paper claims to serve, the editorial practices of the paper marginalize it as a provider of news that people want to hear. Often, you know when important things are going on because they don't appear in the paper.
When the daily papers die, others will take their place. The only thing missing will be the editorial boards that are typically in cahoots with politicians and business. Keeping them on life support is suppressing the development of new news organizations.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Anyone who believes otherwise is a fool (or a liar who wants government control).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Personally I can't wait for the demise of corporate media -- which is beholden to advertising and other corporate interests, and has a dismal record for blatant editorialising.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I'd buy into one... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_cooperative
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
Or the communications arm of the democratic party called MSNBC, NBC, GE, or any other organization that stands to gain huge profits from Carbon Taxes. 'k thanks.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I worked for the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Newspaper Agency (DNA) for a number of years. I'd like to share my thoughts on why newspapers companies are failing.
First, in this era where Content is King, the quality of newspaper content has been declining steadily. Most reporting is little more than regurgitated press releases and wire stories. The original writing is largely confined to the sports section. Reporting quality has been discussed to death so I won't go into details. Suffice to say that most of the original reporting in the main section is stories about stories. These secondary stories have very little value.
Second is the rampant cronyism in the executive ranks. At the DNA I watched a seemingly endless parade of senior executives come and go. These people move from one newspaper to another every couple of years. Much ballyhooed when they arrive, they never accomplish anything. At least two senior execs are on their second round at the DNA. These are the people who lead the newspaper industry right to the brink. They do not know what to do now. Most of them are nearing retirement age and I doubt the newspaper industry can recover until they do retire.
Next, ignoring the web was a huge mistake. It might be fatal. As an example, in the spring of 2009, the new President of the DNA (he was President of The Denver Post a few years ago) said something like "We've barely scratched the surface of what we're going to do with the web". The voice in my head was screaming "That's why they're eating our lunch!" So what have they done with the web since then? If you read the preceding paragraph you already know the answer to that question.
Finally, there is the revenue problem. The last twenty years or so have seen an explosion in the amount of available advertising space. Think back a few years, half a dozen local TV stations, a few radio stations, and your local newspaper were the main venues for advertising. Today, advertising is everywhere. It's a simple case of Supply and Demand. The skyrocketing supply drove prices down. Meanwhile, the price of newsprint was also skyrocketing. It's reached the point where newspapers can't compete because their costs are too high.
So what's the solution? I don't know. I do know that government subsidies aren't the answer. Propping up an industry that's killing itself won't help you or me. It will help those old newspaper execs retire comfortably. That is all.
I can't believe the comments that say that government-funded media will be Soviet-style Propaganda machines. Are you people out of your minds? Can anyone here name me one program or reporter more critical of the government than Bill Moyers? His programs get financed by PBS, a government corporation.
In fact, that's exactly what corporations want you to believe, because public funding will be the only thing that frees journalists from the corporate teat. It will effectively shut down the corporate media oligarchy we have today.
Are you all slaves for the corporations or whatever organization pays your salaries? Is that the only lens through which you can see the world?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
The BBC is the single best news organization in the world, full stop. Nobody else comes close for global reach and insight. It receives "government" money, i.e. the TV license fee. As a result, it is required by law to be politically neutral, which is one of the best things about it. (So too, is NPR, and if you think NPR is biased, as many conservatives do, it just shows where YOU stand.)
Because the BBC is government funded it is watched like a hawk by everybody -- the party in power, the party in opposition, the taxpayers' lobby, and so on. It just cut out 20% of its own management thanks to public pressure.
It's not perfect; there is waste and abuse at times. But it beats the hell out of any American news organization whatsoever.
I piss off bigots.
Where has that been hiding? Where were they during the buildup to the iraq invasion, covering all the WMD non stories, that they were pushing after getting "the real info" from out of the government's lie-hole? Parrots, not journalists, the safe way, no boat rocking, no fact checking. Where was all this "fact checking" going on, the post, the ny times, where? Where has been the useful coverage of the economic situation, where were the *good articles*, with the real skinny, main stream traditional news, regurgitating Whitehouse and Fed and Treasury press releases, or places like matt taibbi's stuff in the rolling stone, and dr. housing bubble blog and so on? Why can't they investigate government COMPLETE BS statistics on the economy, and you have to go to shadowstats instead to get it de obfuscated? Where has the real news of war come from, those "embedded" reporters? Ha! How about black box voting? Main stream news..not a peep, it took blackbox voting dog org and brad blog and places like that to get some notice and action going out there, you sure as hell didn't see abcnbccbswallstreethjournalnewyorktimeswapo nonsense bringing it up, and that is sort of *important* in an alleged free democracy. Where the hell is their coverage of sibel edmonds rather *interesting* tale?
One million examples there, tends to indicate a "trend"
Blow dried blowhards. They know where their check comes from and what they can say or not.
Naw, let the controlled establishment propaganda arm of government/ big money interests (the same exact thing) crash and burn, they DESERVE it. They deserved it years ago, as pointed out by an insider journalist a long ago, who grew disillusioned working for the mainstream press and switched to being independent and working for the then new labor movement:
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
False. I wish people would stop repeating this oft-stated lie. The ~2000 TV stations plus ~10,000 lowpower/clear air neighborhood stations all pay a lease for their spectrum (called a license fee).
Can you provide some evidence of this? I can find application fees, but not spectrum license fees for the TV stations.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Did you even bother reading the source you linked? It completely undermines your argument, and supports mine.
Take this little snippet: Despite the commonness of such claims, little evidence has ever been presented for a left bias at NPR , and FAIR’s latest study gives it no support.
It's hilarious that blatantly biased conservative media will call something like NPR/PBS as "liberal media".
Conservatives are circumspect when talking about the bias in their favourite media -- and invariably go on the offensive, accusing objective media outlets as being liberally biased -- when there is no evidence for that in NPR/PBS. The supposition is that people disagree with your life-stance because of poor education, and are suckered by the liberal media elite, when no such elite operates in comparison to the conservative media elite.
In psychological terms, that's called projection. It's also irrational, since there are ways to operationally define media objectivity, even though it's a complex issue.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Did we just call for state-run media? Quite the opposite.
We seek to renew a rich if largely forgotten legacy of the American free-press tradition, one that speaks directly to today's crisis. The First Amendment necessarily prohibits state censorship, but it does not prevent citizens from using their government to subsidize and spawn independent media.
Indeed, the post-colonial press system was built on massive postal and printing subsidies. The first generations of Americans never imagined that the market would provide sound or sufficient journalism. The notion was unthinkable. They established enlightened subsidies, which broadened the marketplace of ideas and enhanced and protected core freedoms. Their initiatives were essential to America's progress.
So, the subsidies were on the infrastructure of free speech, eh?
Fine; how about this: The government subsidizes the Internent, and to satisfy that "first amendment" thing you mention, they also require net neutrality. For the subsidy side, I propose that the United States government establish and fund some sort of entity for assigned names and numbers that can remove the expense of individual corporations having to develop their own contentious and lawsuit-encumbered system for apportioning such things, and a do the same for a name resolution system of some sort, with root nameservers provisioned largely at government expense. Perhaps the government could even go back in time and invent the system itself.
Would that be enough of a subsidy and guarantee of freedom of speech? I think it is a pretty solid foundation at the least.
Now, jerkwad, go forth and take advantage of all that we taxpayers have given ourselves through the creation of the Internet and the continued provision of its core infrastructural metadata. You want to journalize? Good! Be fruitful and journalize. Compete, you putz. And if you think the competition is skewed (and I think it is) perhaps you can start by journalizing about what is wrong with the system, just as the pamphleteers started not by begging for handouts but by invigorating the public furor.
But stop trying to dip in my pocket, you welfare queen.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
They spend the least amount of time pushing sensational stories.
They report the news evenly. They do not stop everything just to get a shot of the Balloon Boy.
They do not manipulate the viewer with false outrage or emotionalism.
They promote dialog (the Doha Debates), not punditry.
They gather stories from all over the world, not just one place, i.e. the USA.
They do hard-hitting indepth interviews with intelligent people (Hardtalk)
I could go on.
Yes the BBC is slanted: towards quality journalism.
There is no comparison between the it and CNN/MSNBC/FOX.
I think many people here defending CNN/Fox/MSNBC (pick your poison) confuse the righteousness of their political beliefs (and therefore the villainy of any news organization that promotes alternative ideas) with the qualities of good journalism in general. Good journalism is what furthers their beliefs. Bad journalism is the other guy.
The fees paid to the FCC seem to be meant to reflect the cost of processing the application and performing the FCC's regulatory duties. Not a word about paying to use the spectrum itself. [src]
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
While the CBC has a mandate to promote Canadian unity, which I feel compromises its reporting on Quebec nationalism, I think nobody in Canada would say the government controls what the CBC reports.
So apart from where it controls what the CBC reports, it doesn't control what the CBC reports.
OK. :-)
I am not saying that the press can't act independently most of the time. I am saying that -- unless you have full transparency, which of course (ironically) doesn't exist in journalism -- you never know if there's something they are hiding or misrepresenting. Maybe 99 percent of the time they are independent, but you never where that one percent is lurking. And this strikes directly at the issue of trust, without which most mainstream media cannot survive.
As the MSM audience bleeds away, the danger to quality journalism at the CBC comes from market forces, not government forces.
For now. As far as you know. And as the MSM audience bleeds away, there's less opportunity to KNOW whether the government has undue influence, because there's fewer other people from other media checking up on the stories.
Whether or not the CBC is independent now or in the past is not the point. It's about trust for the next story, and the next, and the next after that. And trust requires not just a track record but also a reliable foundation, and being paid by the people you're covering is simply not such a foundation.