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Consumer Groups Want To Tax Facebook To Save Journalism (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: How to fund ethical journalism in the Facebook era is the multi-billion dollar question of the hour, and a technology-focused consumer group by the name of Free Press believes it has a solution. The group has unveiled a new proposal that suggests taxing all online targeted advertising, then using that money to fund the nation's struggling news empires, big and small. The program would apply a 2 percent tax on companies generating more than $200 million in annual targeted-ad revenues, then use that money to create a "Public Interest Media Endowment." The $2 billion collected annually would then be managed by the government itself, or an outside, existing institution such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Such a tax would most obviously apply to both social media giants, but also the giant telecom monopolies increasingly trying to elbow their way into the online ad space. This endowment, in turn, would help fund local journalism, investigative reporting, media literacy, noncommercial social networks, civic-technology projects, and "news and information for underserved communities," suggests the group. "The problem for journalism is that Facebook and Google control nearly 70 percent of this marketplace," Free Press Director Tim Karr told Motherboard via email. "And neither are news organizations. In fact, only one of the top ten digital advertisers in the U.S. (Verizon Media Group/Oath) is in the news business (HuffPost, Techcrunch), and then only partially so."
Porn and actual sexcapades for people who aren't getting any.
News just makes people upset. Blowjobs make everyone involved happy.
It has a good reputation but with local people reporting on the ground, there's no need.
Just go do something productive instead.
Even if it was useful, most journalism is political activism.
Like the attacks on Convington students showed.
I could name many more examples, this good reputation is undeserved.
Walter Duranty covered up the Holodemor and got a pullitzer prize for it.
So it was never deserved, only now the people can refute these elites.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
If people like journalism a lot they will pay for it.
Start doing journalism that sells and that people will support.
Why should a new tax have to look after any normal "job"?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
all the job sites, ebay and craigslist functions were originally controlled by the newspapers. if you wanted a job in NYC, you bought the Sunday NY Times. if you wanted to hire someone, you advertised in a newspaper.
They acted snobby when the internet came and watched their revenues vaporize
No one wants the truth, they want the popular opinion...
No need for journalists any more.
No. Public subsidies for journalism are wrong on so many levels. As wrong as public financing of political campaigns, though those are very popular.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Probably more likely a group funded and run by a major publisher, much like how the coal industry runs numerous anti-nuclear groups portraying themselves as grass roots movements.
To fund a thing is to control that thing.
Government funding for the press easily and quickly turns to government control of that press.
And unless government funds every single voice, the funding becomes unfair endorsement of particular voices.
... I see : Opinion, Opinion, Opinion, Perspective, Why X is Y, Opinion, Opinion, Perspective...
I think I found the issue with "Journalism".
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Translated: formerly "mainstream" TV channels and newspapers, both liberal (e.g., NYT, CNN) or establishment-conservative (e.g., WSJ, The Economist), with a globalist editorial line, which call "fake news" anything else, with a fraction of the viewers/readers they used to have in the past and some even close to bankruptcy, finally unable to influence the public opinion with their defunct, derelict theories on how world trade, multiculturalism and mass immigration were supposed to be nice things, and, most importantly, unable to accept that voters around the world are literally shi**ing on their "ideas" at every single major election or referendum.
So now "ethical journalists" want to extort money from Facebook and Google just like gangsters. Note that article 11 of the proposed new EU copyright directive is exactly about this.
If you want to have ethical journalism, how about not starting out by taking other people's money away to fund your own pet project? And how about reporting facts instead of speculation as news? How many times have we seen during the entire Mueller Russia hoax sensational headlines and "bombshell" statements from anonymous sources, with most stories ending with "So far no evidence of Russia collusion has been found." Apparently being ethical to these guys means writing all the agitprop that's unfit to print.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Journalistic standards have become nothing more than an idealistic concept. Take the Covington kid was tried and convicted in the media for what was effectively face crime. Even a basic check of the facts would have quickly shown that the kid was innocent of the accusations laid against him. Unfortunately it took a $250 million dollar lawsuit against the Washington Post to get them to correct their previous coverage.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Their journalists finally remembered their 'standards' and wrote up a much more accurate story. Too bad it took a $250 million defamation lawsuit in order for it to happen.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Fact of the matter is that journalism is dying because people don't trust journalists.
https://www.cjr.org/the_media_...
If you don't trust someone you don't value them. If you don't value someone you will try to avoid paying for their services.
A free press requires a free market solution. Any market that accepts government handouts is beholden to government interests, ergo any tax that subsidizes the industry is not in the interest of Freedom of the Press.
Online magazines need to think harder about how to monetize their websites. Perhaps they could write up a Terms of Service that explicitly charges for sharing their links? It fits their argument - journalists as content creators are what add actual value to social media sites. Perhaps the social media sites should be following the same rules that newspapers and magazines have been for decades.
Well, I think things will be coming full circle.
In days gone by, I remember the news (the big news anyway) being something a journalist worked away on for some time, following up leads, evaluating, and getting to a truth (or at least a stab at being impartial) of the matter. That's how they won big awards, and gained reputation, for uncovering things that needed to be uncovered, and for spending weeks, months, or years tracing stories, going through all kinds of data, analysing and filtering out the extraneous junk to come up with a solid timeline, and a solid set of facts.
Yes, sometimes the stories were couched in sparkly language, but it was based on solid evidence.
With the rising of the internet, 'news' had to compete with "blogging" as a source, and rather than staying reputational (big news outlets meant high quality news with long term stories), they chose to dive to the bottom of the barrel, and treat journalism as something to be acquired as cheaply as possible.
This, I suspect, was exacerbated by people going "Oh, we can get our news through this 'free' site", and not worry about reputation, as they were used to having a high reputation source available, and assumed all news was of that quality.
Now, we're in the situation where there really isn't a high quality source of news. Almost everything has descended to tabloid, retweet, copy/paste of blogs and unverified releases. And people are starting to worry that they're being told porkies.
Well, duh! That's what you get for having no high quality, objective news source.
Now people are scrabbling to find that objective source via "fact checkers" which are themselves often relying on funding.
The only possibilities I can see are to have a subscription basis for high quality online paper that is as objective as possible, presents facts, and avoids sensationalising, or do it as an "open" project, such as Wikipedia, except for news (a lot more time pressure on the volunteer moderators etc.).
But one thing's for sure, we need that high quality journalism back. And it needs to earn its reputation.
Do a thought experiment. Apply that reasoning to everything else currently paid for by taxes.
This whole thing falls apart when you ask the simple question of which "journalists" get money. Fox News? MSNBC? Intercept? Breibart? My local alternative newspaper? Who gets to choose?
I like what consumer reports does in *theory* and paid them for a subscription, but their site was 100% unusable unless I turned off all privacy and tracking tools and reset my DNS to plain vanilla (I have a dynamic block list of known tracking IPs & domains). The believe that they own and can aggressively monitize their subscribers is whatever the opposite of "pro-consumer" is; I have an immediate negative reaction to anything they have to say.
imagine a soft, buttery paw gently pressing down onto a sleeping soldier's face. forever.
That's an awesome idea. Some might argue this would be opening the doors to propaganda. I say that's fine. The more we bolster and amplify the current corporate propaganda machine, the less ignorant the populace would be. Fixing Facebook's journalism problem in this manner could ultimately fix the citizens in fly-over states by snuffing out their propensity to question authority or, worse, their desire to live lives free from authoritarian reality warping. With a Ministry of Truth amply funding news outlets, the U.S. could finally catch up to the rest of the civilized world!
MIght as well say, Why have peer review in science. With honest diligent compentent people there's no need.
The whole problem with the cognitive bubble feeding poison from facebook trolls is the lack of journalistic integrity.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
... I see : Opinion, Opinion, Opinion, Perspective, Why X is Y, Opinion, Opinion, Perspective...
I think I found the issue with "Journalism".
It's saturation. Even with global connectivity, there's really not enough stuff happening that is newsworthy enough to fill content 24/7. The only way to generate that content is to start loading up on opinion pieces or editorials. Used to with newspapers, you had the opinion or editorial pieces in their own section. Now you have opinions mixed in with actual reporting articles, blurring the lines between personal opinion or reported fact. Sure, the opinion pieces always (well, should always) have disclaimers, but no one really reads them, especially because they are usually included in the little author bio at the top of the article.
With websites it's definitely a revenue factor. Gotta keep generating articles to get people refreshing the pages-click on an article, read it, go back to main page- and therefore generating more ad views.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It's hard to unwind your bussiness model, snobbery or not. To compete with free craigslist ads? TO compete with nearly free e-bay ads? they'd have to go to no revenue almost overnight. How do you do that and support the NEWS function which isn't free? The were caught in a jam.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If people like journalism a lot they will pay for it.
Why do you think that? They never have. Most journalism in the last 100 years was not primarily paid for by the end consumer but by advertisements. Most journalism that has tried to bill the end reader directly hasn't worked out because the economic model doesn't work very well.
Think about it for a second. How do you assign a value to information you don't have yet? That's what selling stories It's impossible both for buyer and seller. I don't know what a piece of information is worth until I actually have that information and at that point you can't sell it to me. But a journalist has no way to know what value I assign to a particular bit of information or story. Any price they charge is a pure guess. Newspapers get around this by bundling a wide variety of data in the hopes that I will trust that some of it will be valuable to me. They do not and cannot know what value I will place on any given story so price setting is basically impossible. Advertising works because the advertiser doesn't really care about the value of the information, they just want eyeballs for a given demographic. So the newspapers basically give away the information and make their money from people who don't actually care about the story content.
Why should a new tax have to look after any normal "job"?
Lots of important and necessary jobs are supported by tax dollars including but not limited to police, fire fighters, road construction workers, teachers, soldiers, and many many more. Journalism is unquestionably important and necessary in a free society. I'm not saying we should or shouldn't have tax supported journalism but it's not like we don't support LOTS of "normal" jobs with tax dollars already. Some of our best quality journalism (NPR and PBS) is already supported by tax dollars.
It is better propaganda than "special-interest group for corporate welfare for the media."
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"We couldn't figure out a way to stay in business, but those guys did, so we want the *government* to legally attach us as parasites to them"
Means those resources are beholden to the government. There's enough complaints about access journalism right now... can you imagine if the survival of news paper relied on such access and spun coverage of specific individuals in high places? It would almost be like.... well almost like what we have now, but much much worse.
The people who they claim need it aren't going to use it. It's just another stupid idea to waste other people's money.
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Scrolling down the NYT and WAPO Twitter timeline... I see : Opinion, Opinion, Opinion, Perspective, Why X is Y, Opinion, Opinion, Perspective...
I think I found the issue with "Journalism".
You do know the Twitter timeline is curated based on what you engage with? What does this tell us about what you engage with on Twitter?
Nope, no sig
What we need are journalists that don't suck incredibly hard at their job.
All the journalists that are losing their jobs right now are losing them because they work for garbage idiotic loser firms like Buzzfeed.
Tim Pool is one of the best journalists. Like REAL journalists and objective journalists I've seen in a loong time. And I know, I know.. You lefties think he's biased, that's how STRONG the bias is in the mainstream media. You look at someone like Tim Pool and his objectivity looks like bias because the baseline that is 99% of the media is extremely biased like MAD towards the left.
Continuing on, Tim used to work for Vice Media. He left because he SAW THIS COMING.
I mean forgetting about politics for a second, look at all the horrible copy/paste borderline plagiarized articles that firms like Buzzfeed, Vice, etc. put out.
Now compare that with other quality journalists who are writing actual good content.
The way to keep your job has always been providing the most value to the company. However, if the company is a sinking ship because they're stupid, then you should find another job. We all should work for a piece of sh*t firm and go down with the ship and end up broke and penniless and jobless as a result. This will teach a LOT of things. Like for instance, don't stay with a sinking ship just because you're getting a steady paycheck because that paycheck won't be there forever and it takes a long time to find a job.
Best way to save journalism is actually to be a good journalist. Be objective, not biased, and actually do good work.
Really had to do politically though if you're a political journalist because if you're not on the left you're going to be fighting an uphill battle of true bigots and triggered idiots who are in positions of power.
- Alex
How about we make advertising worthless by not clicking on the bloody ads?!? Then we wouldn't have these massive advertising giants controlling what we consume. Charging for content would be the norm again. People would evaluate and choose their preferred aggregator, and journalism could thrive again via pay-per-view revenue - just like the old days. Information is free; good information is not.
This seems conflicted to me.
... but it also presupposes journalists and journalism are too sketchy, undesirable, and underwhelming for people to freely pay money to support them.
The proposal is obviously intended to help journalists
In some ways this is an attack on journalism.
We can save independent journalism by making it depend on government funding! Uh, wait...
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals not corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Sounds like a money-grab scheme to me. The last thing in the world we need is a government-sponsored Ministry of Propaganda. Imagine what it would look like if Trump controlled the news (or Obama, or Bush, or Clinton, etc.). Worst idea ever!