We need a Newspaper Czar.
Posted on 06/15/2010 6:08:03 AM PDT by IbJensen
Before he was an Academy Award and Noel Prize winner, Vice President Al Gore headed a commission charged with formulating a strategy for "reinventing government." Today, in an American economy featuring government bailouts of large financial firms and public ownership of General Motors, government is looking at "reinventing journalism."
As newspapers continue to lose circulation and revenue and daily newspapers go out of business or get swallowed up by large newspaper chains, the Federal Trade Commission has been looking at ways to save journalism as we have known it. The FTC has been gathering and analyzing suggestions in a series of public forums, the last of which will be held in Washington on Tuesday. The suggestions in a draft report released last month included tax exemptions for news organizations, loosening antitrust statutes, imposing a tax on iPads and other electronic devices, increasing funding for public broadcasting, and creating a program like AmeriCorps to pay young journalists. The commission is scheduled to release a final report late this year.
None of the suggestions thus far have been endorsed by the FTC, and some have received a less-than-enthusiastic response from Chairman Jon Leibowitz. The commission has "a very strong allergy" toward antitrust exemptions, Leibowitz said at a Senate hearing last month, and he considers a journalism tax "a terrible idea." The commission's director of the office of policy and planning, which oversees the study, said specific commendations could be premature, given the current state of flux in the news industry.
"In this case, one of the issues is that we're in the midst of a profound transition in the news," Susan DeSanti told the New York Times. "Nobody knows exactly where this is going to end up, and nobody really knows at what point we are in this transition." The commission could report an analysis of the various suggestions without recommending any specific action, something DeSanti said would not be unusual.
The "Reinventing Government" theme was adopted by the Clinton administration in the early '90s from a best-selling book with that title by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler. The authors cited numerous examples of municipalities partnering with both private enterprise and non-profit organizations to provide government services at lower costs. The various proposals for "Reinventing journalism" would be a move in the opposite direction in an industry where, apart from the Public Broadcasting Service, government assistance has involved little more than the licensing of broadcast frequencies and lower postal rates for newspapers' bulk mailings. Suggestions of government involvement in the business of gathering and reporting news have prompted warnings of interference with the freedom and independence of the press, as a well as misallocation of taxpayer dollars.
"If there was grumbling about bailing out General Motors, imagine the hailstorm about raising taxes to save newspapers," Jeff Jarvis, a professor at City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism, wrote in an op ed piece for the New York Post.
A Washington Times editorial, appearing both in print and online, derided the idea of placing a five-percent tax on iPads, kindles, and laptop computers "to encourage people to keep reading the dead-tree version of the news." Another suggestion included in the commission's draft report last month was to require "news aggregators" to pay news organizations for the use of online content, "perhaps through the use of copyright licenses." The editorial labeled that idea "the Drudge tax" after the online "Drudge Report" that gathers news from and provides links to a wide array of news sources. The paper warned against any scheme involving a government distribution of funds to news organizations.
"The conflict of interest in having the government pay or contribute to a newsman's salary could not be more obvious. Reporters and columnists would have little incentive to offer critical analyses of tax increases that might mean a boost in the pocketbook. Once Congress has the power to fund the news, it can at any time attach 'strings' designed to promote certain viewpoints — in the name of fairness, of course."
Steven Brill, co-founder of Journalism Online, LLC, is working on a private-sector method to help publishers charge readers for online access to news stories. He also believes government should not be subsidizing news media and is especially scornful of an AmeriCorps-type program to bring young people into the newspaper business.
"You're going to create a fund so a bunch of kids from Ivy League colleges can get jobs going to zoning board meetings with pens and pads? It's like you're living on another planet if you think this is going to happen," Brill told the New York Times.
The "iPad tax" suggested in the commission report would raise an estimated $4 billion to help the news industry with, among other things, investments in technology for "improved electronic note-taking." Taxes on broadcast spectrum and advertising are also among the proposals considered.
"Most dangerous of all, the FTC considers a doctrine of 'proprietary facts,'" Jarvis warned. "Copyright law protects the presentation of news but no one owns facts — and if anyone did, you could be forbidden from sharing them. How does that serve free speech?"
The journalism professor said the draft report made no mention of information he had shared in testimony before the commission on new, lower cost business models for news and of bloggers collecting $200,000 a year in advertising revenue. "But those entrepreneurs don't need government help," he wrote. "They need to be left alone with the assurance they won't be interfered with by the FTC — or the FCC, which has its own hearings and reports on the future of journalism." Jarvis said he had four simple words of advice on how both agencies might help save journalism: "Get off our lawn."
For example, the protest that President Obama recieved on his last visit to Chicago(his home town). It wasn't in any of the major news media. People are starting to notice this and want the real news. Not reporting stuff like that is just BAD JOURNALISM.
A good read to explain why the media does this is the book "The Shadows of Power, The Council on Foreign Relations And the American Decline" by James Perloff. All the major news outlets have been owned by members of the Council on Foreign Relations(CFR) for decades. CFR is a group whose agenda is "One World Government, under Socialism". It is a very eye-opening book. If you think I am a radical right wing extremist for saying this, read the book. You will be very surprised.
We need a Newspaper Czar.
I thought we had one.
Amazingly there is a WH clandestine office that is busily re-mapping the USA by erasing troubling state boundaries and chopping our nation up into five regions.
No doubt they will be named Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Cuba.
They have already started with Gore. According to the National Enquirer; it’s all Tipper’s fault. Gore supposedly asked for the divorce because she has jealous fits of rage.
Can’t let the liar of global warming and soon to be global cooling be exposed.
Let the newspapers fail!
They deserve it. they are not telling the truth. They promote lies like man-made globull warming and they are puppets of the reigning class in BrainWashington.
How to reinvent Journalism? Maybe the “journalists” should tell the truth for a change.
The last thing we need is a governemnet take over of another industry. If the mass media can’t survive selling the fiction they peddle then let them die!
The ‘news’papers are also going down the crapper!
I stopped my subscription to the local Gannett rag three years ago and read IBD and the internet now.
Uh, try printing the unbiased TRUTH????
Government isn't doing this, it's liberal Dems doing it.
Which is like the football team taking up a collection to buy the cheerleading squad new kneepads.
And the government will "own" the facts change them at will, allow only certain facts to be published and redact any facts now not politically correct. The ownership of facts will be overseen by the Ministry of Truth. George Orwell was a great prophet.
“No doubt they will be named Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Cuba.”
No doubt the statue czar will be erecting likenesses of Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong, Stalin (possible Kruschev-the Left is having trouble deciding if “All the sparrows on the rooftops are crying about the fact that the most imperialist nation that is supporting the colonial regime in the colonies is the United States of America.” or “Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.” will be the inscription)and cuddly Fidel.
For good measure the statue czar will knock down the “offensive” “racist” Washington Monument and the Lincoln statue and replace them with monuments honoring PolPot, Ceausescu, and the darling of all modern journalism professors, Dr. Joseph Goebbels.
| they are puppets of the reigning class in BrainWashington.
Notice that all of a sudden, it's OK in the media to criticize Obama. But only from the left. He isn't liberal enough. He isn't enough of an environmentalist. He hasn't pulled out of Iraq. He's incompetent at producing more Socialism. |
“...a doctrine of ‘proprietary facts,’”
And the government will “own” the facts change them at will, allow only certain facts to be published and redact any facts now not politically correct. The ownership of facts will be overseen by the Ministry of Truth. George Orwell was a great prophet.”
He was only off by 24 years....
“they are puppets of the reigning class in BrainWashington.”
Breitbart has suggested that it’s the other way around: the press is “the Left” and the Democrats are the stooges. The more I watch what’s going on, the more I think that Breitbart is correct.
Notice that all of a sudden, it’s OK in the media to criticize Obama. But only from the left. He isn’t liberal enough. He isn’t enough of an environmentalist. He hasn’t pulled out of Iraq. He’s incompetent at producing more Socialism.”
Fair enough. It could easily go that way too.
The point is the are in cahouts.
The newspaper industry must be saved! Without newspapers, how would we house-train pups and in what could we wrap fish? The internet is worthless for these two important tasks.
Hmmm...my first thought is that if the government is involved, costs will go up and quality will go down.
My second thought is...why are 'intellectuals' so intent on replicating the Soviet model, from schools to journalism?
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Breitbart has suggested that it's the other way around: the press is "the Left" and the Democrats are the stooges. The more I watch what's going on, the more I think that Breitbart is correct.