Posted on 10/19/2009 6:21:54 AM PDT by La Lydia
News reporting that holds accountable those with power and influence has been a vital part of American democratic life, especially in places with daily newspapers profitable enough...to maintain substantial reporting staffs. That journalism is now at risk...American society must now take some collective responsibility for supporting news reportings....In a comprehensive report commissioned by the Columbia University Journalism School, we suggest a number of public sources of support for this news reporting:
- The Internal Revenue Service or Congress should clarify tax regulations to explicitly allow new or existing local news organizations to operate as nonprofit or low-profit entities, allowing them to receive tax-deductible donations, along with advertising revenue and other income.
- Philanthropists and foundations should substantially increase support for local news reporting to levels they provide for arts, cultural and educational institutions.
- Public radio and television should be substantially reoriented, through action by and reform of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to provide significant local news reporting in every community served by public stations...
- Universities and colleges should become institutional sources of local, state and accountability news reporting, following the lead of pioneering journalism schools whose faculty and student journalists staff community news and investigative reporting Web sites.
- A national Fund for Local News should be created with fees the Federal Communications Commission collects from or could impose on telecom users, broadcast licensees or Internet service providers. Grants should be made competitively by independent state Local News Fund Councils to local news organizations for innovations in local news reporting and ways to support it.
- Governments, nonprofit organizations and journalists should increase the accessibility and usefulness of public information collected by federal, state and local governments, taking advantage of digital tools to analyze and use it for news reporting...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This is a recipe for a complete liberal/socialist takeover of all news media. Tax revenues indeed. More funds for NPR? And we all know how well allowing "foundations" to take over certain responsibilities works out: no matter how conservative their founders were, they are inevitably taken over by socialists and other Left wing types. Examples: Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, countless others whose money is being spent in a way that would cause the originators of the fortunes being spend to spin in their graves.
In the past, this approach was commonly known as the Ministry of Propaganda.
I must have missed the /sarc marking. Of course, if your rag of a newspaper isn’t profitable, just get the gummint to subsidize you with taxpayer $$. Jeez.
I am a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and this article marks an overt admission that the so-called “objective journalism” model that we were taught to aspire to (all of the winks and secret handshakes notwithstanding) finally is dead.
These authors are asking the US government, which already is running deficits at a previously unimaginable rate, to take more money from we, the people, to give it to a propaganda arm, and to allow tax-exempt contributions to these propagandists — at the same time that McCain-Feingold has made it illegal to contribute to political campaigns under certain circumstances. In other words, George Soros would be able to make massive tax-exempt contributions to The New York Times or another Democrat-Socialist propagandizer and the government would receive fewer tax dollars as a result.
At long last, Mr. journalist, have you no shame?
Regardless of whether we are talking about religion or propaganda, I think his principle should stand. Do you really believe you should be taxed to make sure the Washington Post remains profitable for its owners? Which components do you think Jefferson would support?
It really does rise to that level, doesn't it? They've crossed the line. The game is over. We all see the wires. It's time for them to get off the stage, because we understand what it is they're doing.
Well, the efficiency that would result is that Soros could fund the Washington Post and the New York Times directly, cutting out the MoveOn.org and “Center for American Progress” and “Come Together” and “Open Society” (pro-death and pro-drugs) funding, and eliminating the middle men.
What a load of garbage.
There’s already a proven effective model for news reporting, it’s called “free enterprise”. Gather information that people are interested in , validate that it’s true, present the facts, and get paid for the gathering and presenting” process by means of subscriptions or ad revenue. The failure of the “news media” isn’t happening because there’s something inherently wrong with that model (just ask Rupert Murdoch), it’s because much of today’s media isn’t following it, and is generating BS propaganda instead.
Find the successful media (whether print, radio, TV, online, or whatever) and you’ll find the above model is working fine.
Bias = Layoffs. Bias = bankruptcy. Bias = demanding for public funds. (See NPR and PBS). See also Mark Lloyd, and how he plans to pay for this.
It’s single payer health care for the cancerous MEDIA now!!!
Give ‘em an effin’ PAIN PILL! ! !
Translation: we want your money !
I am so sick of elites foisting their idea of "collective repsonibility" off on me. Just repeat after me guys at Wash Po: nobody owes you anything !<
Anyway, it seems to me that Americans, through their use of the internet to get news, are creating a new journalistsic ecosystem. It's just not the way these guys would like it, so they are going to use the power of government to sway things their way.
Nothing keeping them from doing so now, AFAIK.
The local liberal rag, the St. Pete Times, is I believe run by a non-profit foundation.
Public education even in 1850 is nothing like public education today.
Also, you ignore the debates about the First Amendment itself in Congress. If you read the Annuals of Congress records, it is clear the establishment clause was never intended to go as far as it did today.
I would say it does go slightly further than what some claim, that it only banned a state church. But, it was never intended to go as far as the SCOTUS interprets it today.
It should be noted that for all the talk of that law, Virginia was not exactly following pure separation of church and state even after its adoption.
These are only a few of his remarks on that subject:
"The press [is] the only tocsin of a nation. [When it] is completely silenced... all means of a general effort [are] taken away." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, Nov 29, 1802. (*) ME 10:341
"Since truth and reason have maintained their ground against false opinions in league with false facts, the press confined to truth needs no other legal restraint. The public judgment will correct false reasonings and opinions on a full hearing of all parties, and no other definite line can be drawn between the inestimable liberty of the press and its demoralizing licentiousness. If there be still improprieties which this rule would not restrain, its supplement must be sought in the censorship of public opinion." --Thomas Jefferson: 2nd Inaugural Address, 1805. ME 3:381
"The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. ME 14:384
"Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it." --Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786.
And, finally, but by no means the entirety of Jefferson's thoughts on the need for freedom of the press, no matter how critical its views:
"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."(Underlining added for emphasis) --Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1804. ME 11:33
See Post #17 for more on Jefferson’s interpretation of the significance of “freedom of the press”—in his own words.
The difference between an acorn and an oak tree. To tax someone for a purpose other than protecting an inalienable right is robbery.
Nice quotes. Think I’ll save them.
Says it all.
problem: the internet does not get news, reporters do. And reporters must be paid or they go find new jobs doing something else.
to pick a paper, The internet allows me to read the reporting and opion pieces of the Boston Globe about national figures from Mass. and about the local impact of national issues. My reading Boston Globe online, second hand means they get no ad revenue from me. If the Globe goes under, then I don’t get to read for free anymore.
It seems to me we need the newspapers to improve the quality of thier reporting, not die.
All of the author’s argument can be boiled down to: we are failing in the free enterprise system and we want a government bailout!
“... Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.”
I can’t help being cynical here. So THAT’s why families and education are constantly being weakened: So the people can’t read.
That along with neutering the free press ...
TJ must be rolling in his grave.
A couple of twenty something young people went to a few Acorn offices and gathered and reported more news than the Boston Globe has in years. Most of what newspapers "report" today is spoon fed to them by some party, agency, governmental official, special interest group, etc. In other words, they stopped reporting the news a long time ago and that is the principle for their impending failure.
To say that a healthy free enterprise system won't create a different model for gathering and delivering news is like saying Americans will stop driving cars if GM and Chrysler go under.
a new model? does she have red hair?
“American society must now take some collective responsibility for supporting news reportings.”
We do, have you noticed no one is watching the MSM news any longer except empty seats in airports.
Many of the good reporters leave and go into PR or some other field where they actually make a living wage.
I make enough to survive as a reporter (since my wife also works), but not enough to really have much of a savings account.
There is an opportunity I think for good journalists to put together online ventures and get rid of the problem of all the expense running a printing press and massive staff.
But, it’s not easy. I have tried to think of a way to go do it, and I haven’t come up with anything that would be really doable to even start on a reporter’s salary.
It’s sad because journalism is critical to this country and to every community, and I think newspapers are only going to get worse as they have to cut staff as advertising revenues continue to decline.
Online is the future, but how we get there....nobody knows.
Putting it frankly, blogs can’t cut it and many small online ventures only have one reporter. That’s just not enough to do a good job.
Len, Mike...consider for a moment the Machiavellian possibilities of reporting the facts without fear, favor or affection, the way you’re supposed to.
The place of “citizen donors” used to be taken up by “investors.” For a couple of hundred years, newspapers were owned by individuals and families who made a decent living from them. These people and families had a vested interest in serving the communities THEY lived in with real, accurate, information. I’m not saying they were always balanced, but they at least attempted to be. Then there came a time when they were bought up wholesale by large corporations, such as Gannett, McClatchy, etc., the managers of which began to see themselves as “players” on the national political scene. At the same time, they allowed their reporters to write editorials in the place there were supposed to be news stories. These corporations drove them into the ground. To this day, there are profitable, hometown newspapers being operated.
Bookmark ping for later.
Excellent points - I hadn’t thought of it in quite that way. The historical time line seems pretty accurate.
People and reporters who are local have a vested interest in the health and welfare of that locality, unless they’ve been financially comproprised by some outside influence.
That same reasoning can be extrapolated to multi-national corporations in general as well. The obvious question being, do they care about particular local populations health and welfare? They virtually have no country and imho, it appears a lot of them have kissed the US goodbye, despite the rhetoric to the contrary.
Of course, other elements have come into play that have not helped newspapers. Stiff competition from other kinds of advertising, the fact that the public schools no longer turn out truly literate readers (also, the public schools churn out millions of kids with short attention spans), and finally the devastation of our national paper manufacturing industry. The environmental movement ran it into the ground. There are only one or two remaining paper mills producing newsprint in our entire country, there is no competition or large-scale capability, so it is expensive, and most of it has to be imported. That is one of the reasons newspapers are getting smaller and smaller.
I doubt very much that Jefferson would be in favor of FEDERAL control of education, and probably not even of STATE control. I do believe he'd be opposed to his children being forcibly indoctrinated with ideas that he opposes.
I think there was (and still is) a lot of unanimity around the idea that children should be taught to read, to write clearly, to think clearly and to have a solid foundation in facts. I don't think Jefferson would at all been in favor of mandatory public education where they taught the divine right of kings back then, nor of the rights to other folks property and labor being taught now.
>>I do believe he’d be opposed to his children
>>being forcibly indoctrinated with ideas that he opposes.
“I swear upon the altar of God, eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Yep.
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