The IFC Media Project -- Bailing Out the News?
This year both the Financial Industry and the Big Three have gone hat in hand to Congress asking for taxpayer investments in their failed business models. The Wall Street wizards got the largest bailout in American history; the auto industry is still waiting to find out its fate. But regardless of whether or not Detroit gets saved, politicians are now overseeing the largest period of nationalization since the FDR administration, and 2009 looks to only expand government's business in business. Since the American people are leaving it up to Congress to decide which industries deserve to live and die, I say let's have a national debate on bailing out the news. Good reporting is a valuable public utility. Maybe we should start to treat it like one.
It's no secret that the news business is having a rough time. Newspapers are failing, folding or slashing staff around the country. The Tribune Co. has filed for bankruptcy, the New York Times is second mortgaging its building to stay in business and the Christian Science Monitor has stopped printing entirely. With ad sales sparse and subscriptions waning, the long term prospects of many American newspapers is grim. Some of these wounds are self-inflicted. Some are the result of massive technological sea changes.
Regardless of their cause, top flight teams of investigative print journalists are now looking at tightening budgets, if not shuttered print shops. When it comes to broadcast, the election helped boost business last year. But next year, all major networks are predicting dramatic losses in ad revenue for their news divisions. And cable news, to compete for audience share, has gone from self-parody to tragic farce, tripping over a constantly lowered journalistic bar in an attempt to appeal to the most partisan, and opinion filled product containing the least actual beat reportage. This is all very bad for the average citizen.
Even though "the mainstream media" is just about everyone's favorite whipping boy these days, it often does get the story right. As the filmmaker Alex Gibney says in our episode of The Media Project this week, "the best thing about reporters is their ability to expose corruption and regulate the abuse of power." If that is not the definition of a public utility, I'm not sure what is. Just as the FDA keeps us from eating tainted meat or dangerous drugs, or the EPA keeps toxins out of our environment (or tries to under some administrations), good reporting holds tyranny in check: corporate tyranny, social tyranny, political tyranny and the other injustices in our system. But a privatized news industry is now largely failing because for decades it has had to compete in the market like any other business. And as the news has sought to find a working business model, the result has often been to skew towards "infotainment" or partisan marketing schemes. No other utility is treated like that.
We as a country have always been largely wary of government influence in our press because we fear journalism becoming a mouth piece for politicians. But the political apparatus in this country has already grown so savvy about message manipulation that is has effectively turned the private press into just that. Look at the selling of the Iraq War in print or on cable or the White House's payroll of proxy opinion makers. Just because the news business would take public funds does not mean that it would, should or could stop being a free press. Many of our allies in Europe and Canada have a partially nationalized media and not slipped into absolute dictatorships. So why not go public -- either create a truly new national news organization or transform and fund the hell out of NPR?
Government influence could be kept at bay with an adequate endowment that could be privately managed ... not unlike how we manage state worker's pension funds. And we could allow journalists to go back to doing what they do best: hard-hitting, informative, public service reporting. I know that for years it has been vogue to say that citizen journalism will be the answer to the transforming news business. But while bloggers have prevented many stories from falling through the cracks, the signal to noise ratio is deafening. Having at least one known, reliable source for actual investigative reportage is like a middle C of credibility the rest of reporters can tune up to.
James Madison said "to the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression." Maybe it is time to invest in that.
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Gideon, you write:
"it has been vogue to say that citizen journalism will be the answer to the transforming news business. But while bloggers have prevented many stories from falling through the cracks, the signal to noise ratio is deafening."
Agreed-- but if the signal to noise ratio is so bad, maybe this points to a greater need for citizen journalism curation and aggregation platforms (a la, say, Huffington Post or GroundReport.com).
I don't think that the fact of a prolific, chaotic citizen journalism landscape means we should turn our back on this undeniable phenomenon-- but rather that we should apply the same traditional media vetting systems to this new, vibrant resource, adding value and utility.
And why not fund it publicly as well?
Rachel
Founder, GroundReport.com
Our "news" organizations have and have had public funding.
Google "Operation Mockingbird"
Don't look now, but NPR is public. As for the feds funding it, remember when Newt Gingritch was Speaker of the House and did his best to squeeze NPR and public television to death. He transformed NPR all right, drastically. All of the humorous, non- news vanished, such as commentary by Daniel Pinkwater. You have to tune in on weekends, when there traditionally isn't any news with broadcast organizations to catch any "frivolity".
NPR became a leaner organization and somewhat repetitive and less in-depth than it had been when government funding was in its prime.
Maybe you're speaking of a news organization based on the Japanese model, where all the newspeople belong to a big club? They decide what's to be reported on and control all the major news outlets and don't let the Japanese suffer the shock of really bad news. People who want real news in Japan depend on the independant publications who are unaffiliated with the Big Brother News Club. Is that what we want? I heard about the Japanese news club on National Public Radio.
"transform and fund the hell out of NPR?"
No money for them because they have been taken over by the right wing and are just a mediocre version of FOX.
Transform them? Not likely.
you couldn't be more wrong.
This may be one of the most constructive and forward thinking pieces ever posted on this site. The U. K. provides the best model for such a publicly funded news organization--the BBC. It takes on big business, the sitting government with equal objectivity. It's news documentaries are legendary and it has the widest audience in the world.
The BBC is operated by the BBC Trust. America should copy the very same formula.
We already have the CPB.
Americans don't watch it now.
Only after the newspapers and cable become pure gossip fests, will viewers be forced to tune in.
Give it another year or two.
WE NEED BETTER INDIE MEDIA NOW! WE ARE GETTING MORE VIA THE INTERNET BUT WE NEED TO BRING BACK THE GOOD OLE PBS...REMMEBER THOSE GREAT KIDS' SHOWS..."WE THE PEOPLE" ETC?
the british broadcasting corporation and the canadian broadcasting corporation show how it can be done to everyone's benefit.
Government cannot do it, politicians will fight over it and it would become a political foot ball. Only a great patriot can do it, like Turner starting up CNN, but to design it to be a real unbiased, comprehensive, international, investigative news company. Only as a private entity can it be free from political control and influence. Buffet could do it if he wanted to spend the money for a good cause.
The media also exists to expose corruption in the government. Becoming part of it would create a pretty big conflict of interest. Even Alexander Hamilton, who argued for a monarchy, was adamant about the ability of the press to remain free and apart from the government.
the problem is that "old" media is owned by corporations that in turn are beholden to government.
we have to find a way to create a money-making structure for media so that they are not vunerable to buyouts by corporation.
Disney owns ABC
GE, a defense contractor, owns ( NBC, MSNBC )
Viacom owns CBS
Newscorp owns FOX
Turner owns CNN
Why????
Viacom dosen't own CBS but alot of people try to use westinghouse which dosen't exist anymore as "ownership" of CBS
TimeWarner owns CNN
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