I almost choked when I read Lee Bollinger’s op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal advocating public financial support of the mainstream media. This is the Lee Bollinger who is the president of Columbia University and was recently named Deputy Chair of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The article says more about the writer and the mainstream media than does its subject matter. It is unbelievable and irresponsible that anyone in his position could seriously advocate subsidies for the press.
What Professor Bollinger is saying is that he wants us to pay for news from journalists he thinks we should read, not what we think we should read. As a law professor he is an expert in first amendment issues. If he is an expert then he is the exemplar of the problem with scholarship and intellectualism in America today. He obviously distrusts our ability to make choices about the news we wish to read and he is eager to supplant his judgment for ours. If he believes that forcing us to pay for news services we don’t want is the key to Constitutional freedoms and freedom of the press, then we are in trouble because he is in a position to do something about it.
He frames the debate in these terms:
We have entered a momentous period in the history of the American press. The invention of new communications technologies—especially the Internet—is transforming the human capacity to speak, perhaps as monumentally as the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. This is facilitating the largest and fastest expansion of global economic growth in human history. Free speech and a free press are essential to a dynamic economy.
At the same time, however, the financial viability of the U.S. press has been shaken to its core. The proliferation of communications outlets has fractured the base of advertising and readers. Newsrooms have shrunk dramatically and foreign bureaus have been decimated. My best estimate is that there are presently only a few dozen full-time foreign correspondents from the U.S. covering all of China, despite the critical importance of that nation to our future.
Let me translate what he is saying: competition thrives because of new media yet since newspapers and television journalism has failed to innovate and keep up, we must subsidize them because their reporting is (was) better. He cites NPR, PBS, and BBC as the ideals of journalism. The common theme is that these services are all supported by government. Further, he suggests, as an instrument of foreign policy, we need to compete with China’s CCTV and Xinhua news, and Qatar’s Al Jazeera. If the BBC is the standard, then I urge you to actually listen to it as it drones on about what is happening in the UN or Mali today.
Professor Bollinger believes that press freedoms and government support are compatible, not antithetic. If anything in history is so obvious it is the fragility of freedom of the press. Of course this is something Jefferson and Madison fully understood and they thought they nailed down press freedom forever. As we know, the limitations of the Constitution were breached from the very beginning as Federalists sought to centralize power. While Wickard v. Filburn is not the only example, it is one of the most egregious cases that removed the limitations of federal power over almost any commercial activity as the case defined almost anything as “interstate commerce.” It is also settled law that what the government pays for, it can regulate. Subsidies would open the gate wide to assaults on press freedoms.
When you think about Professor Bollinger’s argument, he is turning the Fourth Estate into a public utility, a service deemed good for society that we must subsidize, direct to hire more reporters for foreign bureaus, and be “fair” in its reporting as must broadcast media. This is a phony argument and is a direct assault on freedom of the press. As one wag said in the Journal article’s commentary page, “Article translation: ‘We have to give tax money to CBS to help fight Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.’” And most bloggers. And if you don’t think that is the case, then you better stop reading now.
He proves that the government is out to get the media it doesn’t like. He says:
Both the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are undertaking studies of ways to ensure the steep economic decline faced by newspapers and broadcast news does not deprive Americans of the essential information they need as citizens. One idea under consideration is enhanced public funding for journalism.
If you want to see the integrity of the “mainstream media,” then I urge you to read this post by Cato’s Jim Powell (“Bailouts for Journalists?“). He details the fawning reporting of Progressives, especially from the NY Times, over folks like Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, and Castro. Why would we expect a subsidized press to be any better?
Professor Bollinger is like an artifact left over from the New Deal when centralization of federal control over all aspects of the economy was in vogue (as in the National Recovery Act). He actually seems to despise press freedoms by advocating subsidies for mainstream media which is truly a slippery slope to government regulation. He distrusts market competition and he distrusts you and your ability to make choices about what information you wish to receive. He is a dangerous man.
I think I serve a valuable service by giving my readers a fresh, innovative view of the economy. Don’t I deserve a subsidy, Professor Bollinger?
Who is so wise as to know what is good for all of us?
- public schools
– the Federal Reserve
– science research grants
– “green power”
– FDA, CFTC, FCC, SEC, FTC, ICC, etc.
These and countless other examples come from the same principle. We will take your money, by force, and spend it where we the experts somehow know it will be better than you plebes would otherwise.
Every dollar they took from secretaries who would buy lipstick to fund NASA and its endlessly-repeated invention of Tang and Velcro is an example of this principle.
Since it’s worked so well wherever it’s been tried, why not extend it to the press(!)
Yes!
[...] other people who do their jobs much better than they do. Full stop. I guess I’ll just quote Jeff Harding’s response on The Daily Capitalist: What Professor Bollinger is saying is that he wants us to pay for news from journalists he [...]
The ‘slippery slope’ has become a luge run since 20 January ’09. What’s at the bottom of the hill is anybody’s guess.
[...] Government subsidies for bloggers? I vote “yes” on that and will provide easy instructions for where to send the $1,456,957,345.56 I think my blogging is worth. But, seriously, should we be talking about subsidizing the MSM? [...]
it is hard to have sympathy for the idea of subsidizing the media. In reality, news organizations are “victims” of media LBOs and excess leverage. Even “news print companies” that have not been LBO’d, have leveraged up to make distributions to investors to keep them happy.
I know Jeff will find this hard to believe but I too believe in the “free market.” The reality is that the days of investigative journalism have been dead in the US for more than 30 years. “Reporters” are so anxious to keep access to the Executive Branch, Congress etc… and corporations that there is no in depth work on any issues.
Take for instance the Acorn sham a year ago. Numerous state attorney generals have investigated the tapes shown throughout the media and it has been proven that (1) the “reporters” aka O’Keefe & Co. never dressed as a “pimp and ‘ho” when they went into the Acorn offices and (2) with the most incriminating tape of an Acorn employee asking detailed questions about the “Mexican sex ring”, it was proven that this Acorn employee (in San Diego) was collecting the information to IMMEDIATELY turn it over to the San Diego police. Turning this info over to the police has been documented.
My point in bringing up the Acorn scam is that not one major media outlet (many that are thought of as “liberal”) retracted their story about a “corrupt Acorn,” at least as it related to O’Keefe and the many lies that went into these highly edited tapes. Congress jumped on the bandwagon and Acorn lost all funding and disappeared. See, we do not have a “liberal” media in the US, we have a media scared to death about being called liberal. We also have a media (liberal or conservative) that survives on corporate advertising. News today is run as a profit center. The media LBOs of the last decade have only reinforced this “news as profit center” thinking.
So., between the desire to “keep access” and the need to not step on corporate toes, we have a media today that does no investigative journalism. When people lie about facts, they go unchallenged. This is wrong. We can debate issues, but there is only one set of facts. Reporters of any stripe do NO investigation of facts.
As Jeff said, why should we subsidize print media and think any of this will change? It will not.
Acorn?
“This morning we heard back from Barbara Barrett of McClatchy Newspapers, whose assertion, in a story on the Acorn sex-slavery scandal, that “in many of the offices, ACORN workers kicked the [investigators] out and called police” we questioned on Monday. Barrett acknowledges that “the term ‘many’ was indeed an over-characterization,” and provides us with this clarification that McClatchy sent to its member newspapers:
A McClatchy Newspapers story on the history of ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) that ran Saturday, Sept. 19, mischaracterized the number of times ACORN staffers turned away two young conservative activists and called police. Police were called at two locations, and the activists were asked to leave at a third, according to ACORN.
To tot up what is known so far, out of seven offices, five (71%) offered help to the supposed sex-slavers, two (29%) called police, and one (14%) turned the pair away without getting involved. (These numbers add up to more than 100% because one Acorn office, in National City, Calif., cooperated and later called police.)”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204488304574431070030286050.html
Whatever one thinks of the above episode involving Acorn the fact is they have a long history of attempting to corrupt voter registration roles. Why bother filing tons of phony registrations? In close elections a clear opportunity exists by those who count ballots to ignore suspect registrations in order to meet a preferred outcome. Further, rejecting any registration is fraught with the risk of being deemed “racist” so the organizational imperative is to just let anything marginal slide by. The more phony registrations that clog the system, the higher the probability vote fraud can be accomplished.
Maybe O’Keefe’s actions were dubious. However, the majority of the responses by Acorn fit a pattern of corruption in that organization which are all too well documented.
As to the issue of subsidizing a “free press”, major metropolitan newspapers lost their monopoly profit centers of real estate, auto and other local classified ads when the internet rapidly eclipsed their value. Due to the lucrative advertising monopoly profits, newspapers could afford to be relentlessly liberal and supportive of ever bigger government happy in the knowledge that they had a “bulletproof” stream of monopoly income.
Now, in order to survive, they are actually going to have to serve someone other than the liberal agenda as there aren’t enough paying liberals in any city to support a completely biased media outlet of any kind absent the subsidy of a classified ad monopoly.
And the reason why so little “investigative” journalism has been undertaken is because most local political activity in Boston, New York, LA and Chicago has been controlled by liberal Democrats and the press had no interest in COVERING scandals much less uncovering scandals of their beloved faction.
Jigs up, however. The most value a local press can provide is continuous, hard, scrutiny of local politicians and policies. I suggest if they went back to this field, they’d rebuild their franchises along with their credibility. Someone, eventually, will meet this need, online or in print. However, with newsrooms everywhere so deeply embedded with liberal sensibilities I see the old liberal rags going bankrupt before they ever manage to “investigate” government again, at any level.
The WSJ likely printed Bollinger’s piece knowing it was a ludicrous idea. Better to let a foe hang themselves than to dirty one’s own hands unnecessarily.
Your turn, Carl.
Touche’
Could be that this is another step in our march towards a planned economy, if I’m reading the tea leaves properly.
jag: My point on Acorn was that the story that “did Acorn in” was based on lies and the media that reported the O’Keefe story never rectified the lies. Though I can not dispute the McClatchy findings, I would hardly call McClatchy a major media source–and that is my point, no major media groups corrected what they first reported about O’Keefe’s sham (and if there were corrections, they were not reported as loudly as the first Acorn headlines). Did McClatchy or the WSJ ever report that the issue was not just tape editing, but the whole “pimp/ho” clothing was never worn in any of these Acorn office meetings. O’Keefe dressed like a legitimate business person, not a pimp. It was also proven that O’Keefe dubbed questions on the tape that were not actual parts of the conversation that he had in these Acorn offices. Were these tow facts covered in the “investigation” of the Acorn tapes?
Though McClatchy can quote stats on how many offices turned O’Keefe in or turned him and his friend away (did O’Keefe only go to 7 offices?), there was no evidence that the initial meetings with O’Keefe led to any follow up meetings to complete the process of giving them housing assistance. After the initial meeting with O’Keefe, the request has to be processed . In fact, McClatchy even mentions the one office that met with O’Keefe and then reported him to the police. This whole O’Keefe scam doesn’t claim one office where the housing request ever got processed. Did the O’Keefe tapes show that office workers at Acorn were too willing to listen (remember, O’Keefe and his “ho” walked in wearing normal business/casual attire, they did not wear the pimp-wear in any Acorn office)? Yes. But in the end, these requests have to be processed–and none were.
As to voter registrations, fake registration cards have never led to actual voter fraud. Acorn admitted that paying people for the # of registrations they turned in encouraged this practice of false names turned in. But in the end, there is zero evidence of fake voter registration cards actually turning into votes. This is true of both liberal and conservative voting drives where fake names are turned in (fake names is a common problem when you pay people “based on the # of names turned in)”. The bigger problem with voting comes from election day voter suppression by putting too few voting machines in “certain districts” to create long lines and discourage higher voter turn-out. My point being that vote suppression is much more real than false names ever getting into a voting booth.
To say that “they (Acorn) have a long history of attempting to corrupt voter registration roles” is a fear tactic to connote actual voter fraud. Fake names may clog the registration process, as you say. Fake names is a problem with any organization that pays for names.
But again, this is a tactic to connote fake names = fake votes. Fox News, for one, makes this link, but it has never been proven to be a real issue in any election. Acorn was used in the continuing battle of stoking white fears about minorities. I will not say that Acorn employees were pillars of good behavior, but I do think Acorn did more good for blacks and hispanics. Yes, there were problems in how Acorn delivered services to minorities, but the problems and “fraud” were not as great as conveyed.
With Acorn now gone, what will be the new “Fear tactic” to scare white voters–Shirley Sherrod was the latest attempt at stoking racial fears by conservative media.
As for the evils of liberal media, and saying liberals are the root of no true journalism, there is nothing I can do to convince you that this is another fear that is overblown. With Fox News and so much talk radio (90%) having a clear conservative bias, I never hear any complaints about the bias of these outlets. I agree that traditional revenue sources have disappeared from print media. But you do not think that this makes newspapers more dependent on corporate advertising? Couple this with the fact that evening newscasts are now run as profit centers (as opposed to a loss-leading ratings draw for evening programming) and you can again see how “corporatism” has a major impact on media.
But you go ahead and blame today’s reporting issues on liberal demons. I will not change your mind, nor will you change my mind. So, enjoy the weekend, and life goes on.
“fake registration cards have never led to actual voter fraud”
Carl,
I have a friend who was been registered to vote for about a decade in Boston. They’d applied for a license and, after mistakenly filing a “Motor Voter” registration process (which they didn’t understand they were doing) they were listed on the voting rolls despite being a resident alien. Each year they’d inform Boston officials they weren’t citizens, each year their name would be in the rolls, just below mine.
Now, I can’t dispute your assertion that fake registration cards have “never” led to fraud. Its clear the powers that be have little incentive to police voter rolls anywhere so I wouldn’t be surprised by that possibility. To the contrary, vote officials have every incentive to never question a registration or look for fraud as a single, wrong, investigation could turn into an incident of “racism”. Consequently, there’s little risk to padding the voter roles and, since you can’t ask for id anywhere, there’s virtually no downside to attempting fraud at the voting booth. And what’s to stop someone from filing dozens of absentee votes, knowing that ONLY if the race is close they will be even opened, and then having little risk of discovery if they are further questioned?
The point is, without having voter’s present IDs, the door is wide open for SOME degree of fraud. Everything in the system ENCOURAGES fraudulent efforts and DISCOURAGES investigations of fraud. You seem to believe that an organization such as Acorn goes through these fraudulent practices for benign reasons even though they are a highly partisan actor who receives funding from their politicians who are most likely to benefit from this open door to fraud. I find that reasoning odd and, you’re right, we’ll likely never agree.
As to the liberal media, its just not even close. Surveys clearly indicate the “major” media has been dominated by people who happily describe themselves as liberals. This is a fact that really isn’t in dispute. I was once a liberal by the way. Over time, living in Boston, and relentlessly reading and seeing one (liberal) version of “the truth” that was in complete contradiction to my own eyes I grew skeptical. Yes, Fox News and talk radio have emerged to offset the completely lopsided equation of the last 30 years. One ENTIRE TV news group is conservative versus dozens of reliably liberal TV news outlets. Talk radio does dominate AM radio. Why? Liberal talk radio is brutally condescending and relentlessly unfunny.
I don’t “blame” liberalism for the decline in newspaper’s fortune’s, in fact I note that they were primarily screwed by technology they couldn’t control. However, they don’t help themselves today by virtue of the fact they will not investigate governments that they prefer and this reluctance to actually do THEIR JOB is what will likely doom them completely. In that regard, yes, liberalism will be to blame for their undoing.
Again, I’ve seen this over 30 years in Boston and from, initially, a very liberal perspective. I know I won’t change your mind either. My goal is simply to add some value and some perspective on subjects I believe I have an angle on, particularly when someone circulates something dubious; ie Acorn fraud is benign.