Posted on 07/07/2009 7:49:49 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
After his employer gets caught trying to peddle influence with the Obama administration, the Washington Post's blogging wunderkind Ezra Klein asks, "Should Newspapers Be Funded by the Government?":
The question, then, is whether we want newspapers (and magazines, and so forth) so agonizingly vulnerable to these pressures. The news, after all, is not a market good. Among other things, it is not profitable to sell it. But we think society needs it. ...
We have public universities and public centers for disease research and public firefighting departments and a public military and public roads. Why should news be different?
You can argue that it must be oppositional to government, of course, and so government funding is a conflict of interest. But many European countries have solved that problem by developing automatic funding structures free of government influence.
So in short: The solution to concern about the Washington Post jumping into bed with the federal government is to encourage the federal government to jump into bed with the Washington Post. Surely, that will take care of conflict of interest concerns . . .
Matt Welch, who's covered this territory before, bluntly dismantles Klein's thinly veiled apologia for his employer's misdeeds. Then Michael Moyihan — a former longtime resident of Sweden who actually knows something about the Swedish and European news subsidies Klein is attempting to praise — queues up to shoot more fish in the barrel.
It’s clear from how the ‘Bama treats the media that he knows he owns it already. Why buy the cow when milk is free?
Why should they pay when you're already doling out the blowjobs gratis?
If the Left takes over the newspaper industry as they have the banks and the car industry...they are goners.
Klein also somehow completely ignores NPR, the already existing govt news service
Because NPR is not the sinking ship he is sailing on.
Beware the government-media complex!
These people are PRAVDA.
Why should the government pay for something it basically already owns?
Your question is certainly appropriate for several different situations, but in this case, most appropriate. If news is free, why not just wait for the PR releases from the various governmental agencies to be put on the internet?
For too long, we were told that newspapers needed to be independent from the government, in order to keep the government honest. With 0bama, we've seen that tenet abandoned. with the worst example being the assault on Sarah Palin by the MSM, and second, the total adoration of the 0bama family by the media.
It will be interesting to see how the media spins the declining poll numbers for 0bama.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.