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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."
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!
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. 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.
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.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
... 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
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.
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.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
1). I hate facebook for news, but it should not be taxed to support old forms of Journalism. ... But to insure an antiquated method of performing any given function is not one of them.
2). Yes, government is needed for certain functions. Regulation, infrastructure, international policy,
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
forcing journalism to find a money stream has directly lead to billionaires fighting over the news they can pay for
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.
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)
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