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."

Comments

Why journalism?

[Roodvlees]

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.

Re:Why journalism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fox News is run by James Murdoch, a very liberal leaning person.

I doubt Fox is the bastion of right wing political views that the Democrats like to make people believe.

Re:Why journalism?

[goombah99]

The word liberal with a lower case "L" is something all newspapers should strive for. In case you don't realize it, a "liberal arts education" has nothing to do with a Liberal political stance. Perhaps you need one?

Re:Why journalism?

[liquid_schwartz]

The word liberal with a lower case "L" is something all newspapers should strive for. In case you don't realize it, a "liberal arts education" has nothing to do with a Liberal political stance. Perhaps you need one?

OP makes a valid point. By being so left leaning NPR has poisoned the well on broad public support for government funded journalism. When I occasionally listen to NPR it tends to be 98% of the time is spent on a liberal point of view with only a sentence or two that some disagree and a shallow and completely unexplored reason cited. Lopsided reporting shouldn't be publicly funded.

Re:Why journalism?

[fish_in_the_c]

unfortunately mainstream journalism has been taken over by people of politically liberal idealism. If you really need any evidence of that just watch the people literally crying when Hillary lost. Most of them don't care 1 iota about objective journalism.

I dated a woman who used to work in a newsroom near Boston (about 20 years ago now).
Here instructions for things coming in from AP were this. 'When it come to child molestation or sexual assault stories, catholic priest are always headline news. Teachers and other minsters are not news worthy'. She finally was fired for refusing a direct order to take footage of a peace pro-life march and "cut this footage to make this people look like crazies".

The problem is , there really isn't any reliable ,or unbiased alternative.
I do believe NPR and The Christian Science Monitor both at least try to be objective, but the reality is they both still are staffed in such a way they bias shows in both there topic choice, whom they choose to interview, and how the interview is conducted.

Re:Why journalism?

[Roodvlees]

You're talking about progressive's not liberals.
They took the word liberal because their own term had become toxic.

Re:Why journalism?

[DNS-and-BIND]

The problem is that most journalists are not Liberal, they are Leftist. How do you tell the difference? Easy! Liberals believe in free speech. They might disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.

Leftists have no problem with censorship and use it as a method of first resort. "Journalism isn't really journalism when it avoids stories for fear of how some might react." Think about that. It's an astounding confession. Ms Hinsliff is a staff journalist who worked at several of Britain's top newspapers for 22 years before she wrote that statement. You would think someone so experienced, who also benefited from a top-caliber Cambridge education, would have had the fundamentals of journalism sorted when she was a cub reporter in 1994. Appears she learned things much more devious. What else has she obscured and concealed during her career?

Re:Why journalism?

[Hillie]

Liberals love to polish the gas lighting on conservatives who point out the left-leaning media.

Stop trying. Everyone knows that in the 1960s the left infiltrated universities and that for decades the liberal arts have been run by radical leftists who provide "Liberal" education, as in turning college students into leftist propaganda mouthpieces.

This is precisely why the most harmless man in the planet, Ben Shapiro, weighing in at a total of 95 pounds, requires security guards to speak at college campuses because hundreds of mindless drones go to protest saying he is a huge danger to the world.

Now I will clarify that maybe in some (or even most) cases the people that are saying there's no bias are completely and totally ignorant because the mainstream media wants to keep the masses as ignorant as possible.

*waits to receive a handful of comments from AC's triggered by this post*

Re:Why journalism?

[kenai_alpenglow]

NPR has always had a liberal slant. However, they used to be more cerebral about it and not insulting to other trains of thought. Kind of like Joe Lieberman was. Well, the democrats canned Joe (he won anyway), and NPR has lost journalistic integrity to the point I can't listen to it. The last time was during the "Russians/Trump is obviously true" despite total lack of evidence. Shame. I used to listen to the Other Side's arguments when they were well-reasoned and not just insulting. Now they're just a calmer version of MSNBC.

Re:Why journalism?

[Killall -9 Bash]

What I'm saying is the problem has already been solved.
By Youtube, Twitter, ect
Normal people can report and discuss the news just fine.

....Until normal people say the wrong thing. Then their youtube account gets shut down. And their Twitter. And their patreon. And PayPal closes their account. And Mastercard won't process transactions for them. And their bank accounts get closed by their bank with no explanation.

And then people very helpfully point out that FREEZE PEACH doesn't apply to private companies, monopolies on internet speech or no.

A tax for journalism?

[AHuxley]

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"?

Re:A tax for journalism?

[AmiMoJo]

The problem with journalism being profit driven, especially in an age where news is basically a commodity that everyone gets for free, is that it corrupts it into a toxic mixture of outrage and hyper-partisan opinion.

When you look at the least biased, most reliable source of news and analysis they tend to be the ones that are not dependent on getting views - the BBC, and agencies like Reuters and AFP.

Re:A tax for journalism?

[Gravis Zero]

Start doing journalism that sells and that people will support.

We tried that model and the problem is that stops being journalism and starts being sensationalism. Eventually, it diverges from reality completely at which point it's like a tabloid. Fox News is the greatest example of this.

Why should a new tax have to look after any normal "job"?

Because it's not a normal job. An informed public is elemental to a healthy democracy.

Re:A tax for journalism?

[AHuxley]

Thats why letting journalism find its own money is so important.
So it is not having to consider a gov, tax payers, mil, an endowment, some random billionaire, NGO, think tank, Communist government, industrialist for its funding.
Write what people want to read and what people want to pay for.
Why should a new tax have to pay for more gov/mil propaganda?

Re:A tax for journalism?

[AHuxley]

Many jobs can be listed as not normal if its time for free funding from a tax.
Want to a new tax to look after many of such jobs?

Re:A tax for journalism?

[nitehawk214]

The problem with state-sponsored media is that for every BBC there are a dozen Russia Todays.

And I don't even know if BBC is unbiased when it comes to British politics. As an American, the BBC's famed neutrality seems based on its view of the USA.

Re: A tax for journalism?

[pgmrdlm]

1). I hate facebook for news, but it should not be taxed to support old forms of Journalism.
2). Yes, government is needed for certain functions. Regulation, infrastructure, international policy, ... But to insure an antiquated method of performing any given function is not one of them.

Re:A tax for journalism?

[Anonymous Coward]

forcing journalism to find a money stream has directly lead to billionaires fighting over the news they can pay for

Re:A tax for journalism?

[alvinrod]

The news agencies backed by Russia and other similar governments aren't dependent on getting views either. Don't be so quick to propose that model as a solution.

The problem isn't that journalism is profit driven. Were that the case, this would have already happened decades ago when the news media was every bit as profit driven. In some ways it already did happen, but we look back at those good old days through a rose colored lens and neglect to remember that there was similar levels of sensationalism and partisanism. Look at something like the National Enquirer and tell me that fake news is a recent phenomena. The term "yellow journalism" dates back over a century. None of this is a new problem.

The real issue is that the internet and a host of other technologies have made it incredibly inexpensive for anyone to do reporting, which means that the traditional news media is being squeezed by independent or small organizations that don't have the added expenses that old outfits have. When something becomes less expensive to produce, you naturally get more of it. Now there's hundreds of people offering hundreds of takes.

If you want a conservative point of view, there are people who will provide that. If you want a liberal point of view, there're plenty of people to provide that as well. There's everything in between and even more extreme. If you're a batshit crazy loon, there's someone out there catering to that as well. They were always there, but it was a lot harder to distribute their little pamphlets or newsletters 30 years ago, whereas today they can broadcast to the entire world and powerful search engines and social media have made it easy for people to find what they're looking for.

Re:A tax for journalism?

[AmiMoJo]

Write what people want to read and what people want to pay for.

That's the exact opposite of good journalism. That's just creating a bubble that people will pay to inhabit. That's just provoking people to anger so they buy your newspaper or watch your channel.

Re:A tax for journalism?

[AmiMoJo]

The BBC is accuses of bias by all sides of the political spectrum, by the government and the opposition. I take that as a good sign.

Re:A tax for journalism?

[Xarius]

Well government funding is extremely well-suited to endeavours that you do not want to be tied to a profit motive. Healthcare, military, and education are perfect examples.

High-quality unbiased journalism fits the same category, and is a "public good". The BBC model is a very good one (not quite perfect). It relies on a "tax" of sorts, but it's legally structured in such a way that it is not beholden to the government in any way and is not a state news service.

(If you're from the USA you might have different views on what government should fund)

Re:A tax for journalism?

[mjwx]

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"?

That's the problem.

They've spent so long printing crap that sells that none of them know how to practice real journalism. An investigative piece on an important issue gets buried down at page 78 between the personals and the classifieds because it isn't as gritty and hard hitting as the latest celeb sex scandal which makes the front page.

News agencies that have for so long been nothing but political mouthpieces for their owners (Murdoch, Rotherham, et al.) have made such a mockery of news, conflating opinion with fact that many people now cant tell the difference between the two. This has lead to Russia Today (A mouthpiece for the Putin govt, a modern day Pravda) being considered a factual and reliable news source. People simply cant think critically because papers have tried everything they can to prevent it. They want you angry, they want you to stop thinking because that is when you stop questioning their agenda and just start accepting lies.

The fact remains that a pleasing lie sell and an uncomfortable truth is often rejected. Lies are almost always pleasing to someone and truths are almost always uncomfortable.

Journalism is almost dead, if Murdoch had his way we'd murder the last vestiges of it in the UK by shutting down the BBC. Its little wonder that the only newspaper with readership that isn't diminishing is the Private Eye, a satirical paper that is not meant to be taken seriously.

Re:A tax for journalism?

[chthon]

That might be a reason. Here in Europe Clinton did not have any say in anything, but we have the same problem, even in small countries.

Re:A tax for journalism?

[Chris Mattern]

If people like journalism a lot they will pay for it.
Start doing journalism that sells and that people will support.

Quite true. The point at which it all falls apart is assuming that well-researched investigative journalism is necessarily "journalism that sells". Journalism that agrees with what the audience already thinks regardless of the evidence is journalism that sells.

Re:A tax for journalism?

[Solandri]

The problem with the BBC model for journalism is that it creates a huge monolithic organization for news. That promotes groupthink. You need to have a way for small, unconventional, and extremist views to be publicized, so those ideas can spread as long as a sufficient portion of the public who listens agrees with what they're saying. The acceptability of "news" should not be based on getting the approval of some editor or influential journalists who can decide what is or isn't newsworthy. Grass-roots journalism very much needs a way to get the ear of the public so it can spread and flourish. Once upon a time, the idea that women should be allowed to vote was radical and unconventional. Once upon a time, you had to be an idiot to think that racial minorities should be treated the same as whites Once upon a time, marijuana was viewed as an evil gateway drug to hardcore drug abuse. Once upon a time, the LGBT community was ridiculed and the butt of discriminatory jokes. These reforms all started off as small, minority views, and gradually grew to become accepted by the majority. They either would not have come about with the BBC model, or would have taken much longer to come about.

newspaper screwed themselves

[known_coward_69]

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

Re:newspaper screwed themselves

[AHuxley]

They thought it would last for decades and decades.
People found better things to do and read.
The money stopped.
Now we need a tax to support something people stopped paying for?
Who else can get tax support like that?

No, thank you.

[rickb928]

No. Public subsidies for journalism are wrong on so many levels. As wrong as public financing of political campaigns, though those are very popular.

Re: No, thank you.

[rickb928]

The 'free market' exists to permit the free flow of goods and services. Many participants pander to emotions:

- Automobile sales
- Clothing
- Beverages
- Food
- Electronics
- Pharmaceuticals

Virtually every product or service has an emotional appeal. Which of these should be restricted, and how?

Your complaint is with the human beings so easily swayed by their emotions. Redesigning man is a futile exercise. Giving our government the explicit power and authority to manage and direct our emotions is worse.

Information is the only antidote.

Re: No, thank you.

[Solandri]

Therein lies the motivation to institute some level of public subsidy for journalism.

No, that just gives government power over journalism, which is the last thing you want. The whole point of having a free press is that it's free to criticize the government. The press can no longer do that if the government is controlling its purse strings.

The real solution here is actually the same as the solution to the anti-vaxx movement and to fake news. Educate the public. Teach people how to think critically and rationally. Once you do that, the people themselves will make the correct decisions. They will review the anti-vaxx arguments and decide it's a bunch of baloney. They will review the basis for fake news reports and decide it's propaganda or based on flawed reasoning or insufficient research by the journalist. Ultimate power then resides with the individual people, which is the whole point of Democracy - you trust that the people will on average make the correct decision.

These other proposed solutions - panels at companies and in government tasked with reviewing information to stamp it as true or fake, a panel in government to decide which press organizations get a subsidy - are just ways for people in power to further consolidate their power over the population. You should only support these things if you believe fascism is better than democracy.

Scrolling down the NYT and WAPO Twitter timeline..

[RedK]

... I see : Opinion, Opinion, Opinion, Perspective, Why X is Y, Opinion, Opinion, Perspective...

I think I found the issue with "Journalism".

Ethical Journalism?

[XxtraLarGe]

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.

Better to address fake news

[onyxruby]

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.

Re:Better to address fake news

[sinij]

This phenomena of sensationalism and extreme partisanship is a direct consequence of dwindling revenues. Consider the following - if Fox News offered balanced and critical coverage of Trump presidency, do you think they would remain profitable?

Fundamentally, people don't like getting bad news and are all too happy to shoot (financially) the messenger.

Re:Better to address fake news

[mpercy]

OTOH, Trump is effectively subsidizing the liberal press by giving them something to sensationalize every day.

Re:Better to address fake news

[onyxruby]

The overwhelming majority of news coverage of Trump was negative (92%).

https://www.westernjournal.com...

Even Fox news had more negative (52%) coverage than positive (48%).

This stands is sharp contrast to his approval rating by the public which ranges from 38% to 48% based on which poll you want to use.

https://www.realclearpolitics....

Having that large of a disparity between the media and the masses shows that the public isn't buying what the media is selling. My point stands that the public doesn't trust the media. If you don't trust someone you will try to avoid paying for their services. The impact is that media outlets are going out of business in large numbers.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world...

Re:Better to address fake news

[omnichad]

Fact of the matter is that journalism is dying because people don't trust journalists.

It's equally dying because people blindly trust random people on the Internet despite not trusting journalists.

Re:Better to address fake news

[DNS-and-BIND]

When internet randoms have a better record of truth-telling than legitimate journalists, what are you going to do?

Here's something from an internet random that I bet you would never hear from the mainstream media: Your Complete Guide to the N.Y. Times' Support of U.S.-Backed Coups in Latin America

"What should be a conversation about American military and its covert apparatus unduly meddling in other countries quickly becomes a referendum on the moral properties of those countries. Theoretically a good conversation to have (and one certainly ongoing among people and institutions in these countries), but absent a discussion of the merits of the initial axiom-that U.S. talking heads and the Washington national security apparatus have a birthright to determine which regimes are good and bad-it serves little practical purpose stateside beyond posturing. And often, as a practical matter, it works to cement the broader narrative justifying the meddling itself. Do the U.S. and its allies have a moral or ethical right to determine the political future of Venezuela? This question is breezed past, and we move on to the question of how this self-evident authority is best exercised. This is the scope of debate in The New York Times-and among virtually all U.S. media outlets. To ante up in the poker game of Serious People Discussing Foreign Policy Seriously, one is obligated to register an Official Condemnation of the Official Bad Regime. This is so everyone knows you accept the core premises of U.S. regime change but oppose it on pragmatic or legalistic grounds. It's a tedious, extortive exercise designed to shift the conversation away from the United States' history of arbitrary and violent overthrows and into an exchange about how best to oppose the Official Bad Regime in question. U.S. liberals are to keep a real-time report card on these Official Bad Regimes, and if these regimes-due to an ill-defined rubric of un-democraticness and human rights-fall below a score of say, âoe60,â they become illegitimate and unworthy of defense as such.

For those earnestly concerned about Maduro's efforts to undermine the democratic institutions of Venezuela (he's been accused of jailing opponents, stacking the courts and holding Potemkin elections), it's worth pointing out that even when the liberal democratic properties of Venezuela were at their height in 2002 (they were internationally sanctioned and overseen by the Carter Center for years, and no serious observer considers Hugo Chavez's rule illegitimate), the CIA still greenlit a military coup against Chavez, and the New York Times still profusely praised the act. As it wrote at the time:

With yesterdays resignation of President Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator. Mr. Chavez, a ruinous demagogue, stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader, Pedro Carmona.

They flat-out lied about Chavez stepping down. LIED.

Free !== Freedom

[cordovaCon83]

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.

Re:Free !== Freedom

[fish_in_the_c]

of coarse if they don't take government hand outs they are beholden to either advertisers or rich benefactors who make large donations. Every review stream comes with some possible compromise of objectivity. Until the penalty for reporting things that are factually wrong is so high that it negates any benefit to money, the problem will probably not be fixed.

Peer review?

[goombah99]

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.

Re:Scrolling down the NYT and WAPO Twitter timelin

[Nidi62]

... 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.

Re: journalism?

[Nidi62]

How many people see and buy the lies of a random facebook page?

One of the main reasons I stopped using Facebook was a bunch of my friends constantly posting and sharing crap that was blatantly false, misconstrued, or taken out of context. And it's not just an American problem. In India, for example, multiple people have been killed due to misinformation spread through social media. So, to answer your question: a lot.

"Consumer Group"

[MSTCrow5429]

It is better propaganda than "special-interest group for corporate welfare for the media."

Yeah, that'll work

[Chris Mattern]

We can save independent journalism by making it depend on government funding! Uh, wait...