Bailouts for Newspapers?
It had to come eventually, I suppose, but you would think that some would understand the implications. Apparently not, because one legislator from my own backyard is trying to get a hometown paper a bailout.
I don’t think this is a good idea simply because the loss of independence that could come with it.
Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his duty. But others think he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome precedent for government involvement in the U.S. press.
Nicastro represents Connecticut’s 79th assembly district, which includes Bristol, a city of about 61,000 people outside Hartford, the state capital. Its paper, The Bristol Press, may fold within days, along with The Herald in nearby New Britain.
That is because publisher Journal Register, in danger of being crushed under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, says it cannot afford to keep them open anymore.
Nicastro and fellow legislators want the papers to survive, and petitioned the state government to do something about it. “The media is a vitally important part of America,” he said, particularly local papers that cover news ignored by big papers and television and radio stations.
Look, I’m all for the local papers as much as the next guy. I love one called The Reminder, which is an announcement-type paper that gives its product away for free and depends on advertising to stay afloat. But with government assistance strings typically come attached, and I don’t want to think about what strings might come here. Many sources in the media already are accused of being pro or anti administration, depending on who’s in power. What happens when media sources have a direct lifeline to government?
You can call me paranoid if you wish, but I could see what would happen. Perhaps something along the lines of, “You know, you might just lose your funding if you don’t print this article.” The federal government does it all the time. You know why the drinking age is still 21 in every state, despite some states threatening to lower it? They’d lose their federal highway funds if they lowered it, that’s why. It’s essentially a form of coercion by the feds to follow their line of thinking. Now apply that to the media, and you’d have to blind to see the propoganda opportunities government would have by keeping papers afloat. They could simply then threaten to pull funding from a paper that’d fail otherwise, and I’m not confident that some publishers would hesistate to take the money to save their livelihood.
Again, call me a pessimist if you wish, but just look at the last adminstration. Nearly every media source toed the government line in the run-up-to and first months of the Iraq War. Then the administration paid military analysts to go give the government’s side. Don’t get me wrong, those are just examples; propoganda is a very bi-partisan thing. Why any media source would want to make that easier is beyond me.
Some don’t get it:
Former Miami Herald Editor Tom Fiedler said that a democracy has an obligation to help preserve a free press.
“I truly believe that no democracy can remain healthy without an equally healthy press,” said Fiedler, now dean of Boston University’s College of Communication. “Thus it is in democracy’s interest to support the press in the same sense that the human being doesn’t hesitate to take medicine when his or her health is threatened.”
Maybe it’s in democracy’s interest, but not necessarily the government’s interest. There are still two wars going on, and no matter who’s in office, the government will want to make itself look good. I’d like to believe that journalistic integrity would stop an editor from printing obvious propoganda, but as they themelves contributed to the propoganda many times before, and weren’t able to recognize it when it happened in recent years, I’m not confident they would recognize it again.
I think Ed Morrissey says it best:
The need for a truly independent media is to make sure that the citizenry is fully informed of government activity and policy, and not just relying on the self-serving communications from elected officials. Without independence, newspapers and other media have as much value as press releases from Congressional offices.
Now, what happens when government suddenly takes a stake in newspapers and other media? Can they remain independent — or will they cater themselves to those politicians who support those subsidies and target politicians who don’t? In fact, the very act of asking for those bailouts has destroyed their independence and credibility on political matters, the very core of what makes a free media necessary for a democracy.
It’s very simple: Find a business model that works (i.e. get with the times and start transitioning online) or die. Though it’d be difficult for a time, if I were a newspaper journalist, I’d rather get laid off than possibly be forced to print government propoganda.
That might be easy for me to say because I’m not a newspaper journalist. But I am a video editor, and I’d still think the same way if I were working for a television media org right now and it was failing.
first off they haven’t been accused of being biased – they are biased. They finally admitted as much and have been catering to one party or another for quite some time now. In this Morrissey is wrong – they have not had political credibility to begin with.
In either case, it’s a business and business’s require people to care enough about their product to choose to spend money on it. Bailouts force people to do that. Pure economics tell you that Newspapers are deemed to be of not enough value than the money it costs to purchase it.
As such they need to refine their way of doing business as you mention(like perhaps actually report news) or fail.
As it sits, I fully support newspapers failing by refusing to buy.
God I love the free market.
Good Work, Michael. I was going to post on this, but I think I’ll just follow up. As I said in my response to your follow up to my post on the Iseman suit, the media has serious credibility problems. A bail out just compounds them. Interested’s comment above isn’t quite fair, because at one time, say 20 years ago, most of the major media did try to hew to some kind of objectivity, and did make a distinct separation of the news (factual reporting) and the opinions on the editorial page. You never had to guess who the Portland Oregonian was supporting – it was plain on the editorial page – but the news reporting was pretty much the facts. mam, just the facts. I think this all began to change following Watergate, and the film “All The President’s Men,” which cast Woodward and Bernstein as heroic champions of truth and justice. The movie, unlike the book, really didn’t emphasize that there were editors who actually held reporters to some sort of journalistic standards.
The fact is, as you and Morrissey both say, honest and honorable people regardless of political party should be outraged over the suggestion that a government media would be created. The fact that they are not, and that a serious proposal has been made by a congressman to bail out the media, shows how far the rot has gone.
Business is in a period of change, and the media need to change with it. Newspapers are not competitive with instant on-line updates. This is a blessing if you have fast-breaking news, but the reality is that most news is not that fast moving, and in a way, people have traded the sort of writing and editorial review process that was possible for a newspaper for speed. In some ways it works, but not always. A longer news cycle, even over night, allowed the editorial process to refine news coverage to weed out the worst sensationalism, bias, and error. With the instant updates, that doesn’t happen. It also means we see the same rather unimportant bulletin several times an hour when really, nothing needs to be said until the next morning. Some of that may be due to the cable news phenomenon, with constant updates, which the public came to really like after the Challenger launch accident, the Columbia break up, and especially, the September 11, 2001 attacks. Instant updates are, perhaps, one reason the old overnight newspaper just isn’t able to compete in the current market.
Regardless, the media needs to change, and not be kept on life support by the public.
Interested: I’m know there are bias problems, but this article was not talking about self-created biases. I meant “accused” as in people say one publication or another is biased some way, not accused as in pointing something out without evidence.
Orson: The legislator was actually a state rep, not a Congressman. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.