Sigh. The drumbeat for unwise government subsidies for journalism continues with a How to Save Journalism essay in The Nation. It was written by Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols, authors of The Death and Life of American Journalism, just published.
I hardly know where to start in addressing the faulty reasoning of the essay. It was not persuasive enough that I will buy the book. But government subsidies for journalism, for some reason, are a hot topic, so I weigh in once more.
Perhaps I took too shrill a tone in calling the push for government subsidies “madness” when I wrote Five reasons government shouldn’t subsidize journalism in October, responding to an earlier piece by McChesney and Nichols in the Washington Post. However, the five reasons I offered were all valid and still are.
McChesney and Nichols are sincerely concerned, as I am, about the future of American journalism and they have given their position a great deal of thought and a great deal of research, just as Michael Schudson and Leonard Downie Jr. did in their similar pitch for government handouts, a Columbia University report, The Reconstruction of American Journalism (which I also criticized last year). I respect all four men and honor their intentions. But they are wrong and policy makers and journalists should reject their arguments as sincere but misguided.
I will briefly summarize the five reasons I offered earlier but first I offer five more:
- Government subsidies will place another huge damper on innovation in journalism and in the media business. To the extent that subsidies reward companies that have failed to innovate (more on that shortly), the subsidies will greatly hold back progress. To the extent that subsidies successfully target actual innovators, they still will slow down innovation by introducing cumbersome application processes and regulations. Right now, we are seeing some encouraging entrepreneurship in media that promise intriguing possibilities for the future. McChesney and Nichols blithely dismiss entrepreneurial solutions as a fantasy. I think it’s safe to say they would have said the same of Google in its infancy. Here is the biggest difference between these Downie/Schudson/McChesney/Nichols (hereafter known as DSMN or just MN) and me: I have greater faith in the American marketplace and entrepreneurial spirit than they do.
- Academic arguments about how well government subsidies work in Europe and elsewhere (the strongest point made by DSMN) are irrelevant in the real world of American politics in 2010. We don’t have to theorize about how the government would go about subsidizing journalism. We can see how Congress is handling subsidies for health care and we saw how it handled subsidies for banking. You can’t argue that journalism subsidies would somehow be handled differently. Do we really want attention-seeking senators like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson deciding the shape of American journalism by demanding special breaks for their hometown media or by changing their minds on a whim? We have to accept the sorry state of American politics today on some important issues because government has a valid and necessary role to play in fixing those messes. We don’t need that for journalism, though. Other than its power to throw money at problems, it’s hard to see any good coming for journalism from Congress addressing this situation.
- Government subsidies will focus most heavily on bailing out and propping up the inefficient media companies that DSMN rightly criticize. Yes, MN propose an Americorps-like subsidy to put journalists to work for digital publications in underserved communities. But unless they can somehow reform the lobbying system first, we know, without a doubt, that powerful media interests that have failed to innovate would get the prime spots at the public trough, just as the powerful banking interests that caused the financial crisis did. That’s not speculation; it’s the fact of how government subsidies work. DSMN argue well for their proposals in the abstract. But legislation happens in the real world.
- Academic arguments about how subsidized media in other nations (or NPR and PBS here) operate free of government interference are also irrelevant in current American politics. This nation is too polarized, and media are too much a part of the polarization, to think that extremist interest groups and politicians would not be trying to steer the federal pork to the media they favor and attacking every nickel spent for outlets that don’t follow their agendas. Media are under attack enough for what we say. Let’s not complicate that by taking tax dollars.
- When respected people and organizations hold out hope that government can bail out the news media, the time and energy spent considering, debating and pursuing such a handout is time taken away from pursuit of innovation. We can’t afford all these distractions from true innovation.
I am not saying that government can’t play any role in finding a prosperous future for media. As I noted in October, Dan Gillmor makes an excellent case that bandwidth is the proper current parallel to the postal subsidies that DSMN love to cite. The tax break for non-profits is a huge government subsidy and I do expect to see a growth of non-profit involvement in journalism. I also would welcome steps to allow and help journalism organizations to function as low-profit limited liability corporations (L3C), though reasons 2-4 above do give me some pause.
Repeating (in condensed form; read them in full here) the other five reasons I already cited why government shouldn’t subsidize journalism:
- Journalists must be watchdogs and no dog bites the hand that feeds it.
- Journalism is not suffering as much as traditional media companies are. As noted above, we are seeing an energetic response from entrepreneurs and philanthropists that is producing a stunning array of new journalism organizations.
- Postal subsidies from our nation’s early founding, when newspapers were the only form of journalism, are irrelevant. In today’s multimedia world, federal subsidies would decide winners and losers.
- The federal government can’t afford to bail out newspapers.
- It’s just wrong. If government funds, government will regulate. Freedom of the press has to include freedom for the press to fail.
Government subsidies are a bad idea. They offer more danger than hope for journalism and we should stop pretending they offer hope.
Another good post, Steve, and well thought out. The public’s desire for information and ability to find it are growing, and this will help drive innovation as much as anything else. Government subsidy will indeed hamper the progress.
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There are many reasons not to subsidize journalism and many reasons why it is necessary. The idea itself is a good one. Like most things, however, the devil is in the detail. This should not stand in the way of seeking a workable solution. Limiting subsidization to journalism that can show it is performing expressly in the public interest (similar to that currently undertaken by voiceofsandiego.org) would be a good first step.
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