Government has no business trying to ‘save’ journalism 

It seems everybody wants to “save” the journalism industry these days, except for the people who matter most — news consumers.  

Citizens have been turning away from establishment news sources for some time. Audiences no longer trust news outlets to be fair, and this decline in media credibility has caused readers and viewers to disengage from the news. That necessarily leads to lost revenue for news organizations, layoffs of journalists and, ultimately, the closing of news outlets. There is no doubt: the journalism industry is suffering. 

Legislators across the country are hopping on their white horses to ride to the rescue, with several states approving various measures to prop up the news industry with state resources. This all sounds quite noble; after all, journalism helps provide the flow of information that is essential in a functioning democracy. But there is a big problem when governments use taxpayer money to provide content to the citizenry. Any information disseminated with government money is not really “news” — it is spin at best, and propaganda at worst. 

Governments are self-interested. Legislators who want to fund the news aren’t doing so out of purely virtuous motives. They expect something in return. That something might be difficult to ascertain in the lofty rhetoric accompanying these legislative efforts, but the motivations go well beyond the boilerplate rationale about saving the press for democracy’s sake. 

Several states — typically the blue ones — are jumping on this bandwagon. New York, for example, recently included $90 million in its state budget to fund the Local Journalism Sustainability Act. News outlets will receive refundable tax credits to support salaries of journalists. Funds will be distributed by bureaucrats in a department of the governor’s office. 

Illinois’s state legislature is now deliberating proposals to provide tax incentives for certain news publishers and to require state agencies spend portions of their advertising budgets with local news outlets. 

New Jersey was one of the first states to provide state money for journalism grants to local newsrooms. California followed last year with a program to place state-paid cub reporters in various newsrooms around the state. Legislators in Wisconsin proposed a broad-based plan to support local journalism earlier this year, including a provision for state residents to receive a tax break for subscribing to local news outlets. That package stalled but will likely be reintroduced in the next session. 

Solid journalism is, indeed, essential to the functioning of the nation. The constitutional framers knew that well, but they also knew that journalism’s function of watchdogging the government had to be done with independence, completely separate from government strings, financial or otherwise.  

Journalism, as a public good, has lost much support from news consumers, and the free economic market is consequently having difficulty propping it up. Indeed, journalism done by corporate capitalists has and will continue to have many flaws. But to inject taxpayer money into fixing the ails of journalism smacks of proposing solutions without understanding the real problems.

Market-driven news supported by advertising really is a flimsy way to disseminate information to a free society, but the proposed alternatives are likely even worse, although generally well-intentioned.  

Calls for public financing of the media are growing. A case can be made “to unhook journalism from profit imperatives,” according to University of Pennsylvania scholar Victor Pickard. But non-profit news won’t necessarily restore public confidence, as is clear from the recent flap surrounding National Public Radio’s alleged political biases. NPR, of course, is funded partially by federal tax dollars. Further diminishing public confidence were NPR CEO Katherine Maher’s clumsy comments that “there are many different truths” and, “Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction.”

Once government gets its nose in the proverbial tent of the news process, journalism as it has been practiced for decades will cease to exist. Further, government resources can hardly be considered a reliable stream of funding. Politicians come and go, and legislative majorities change.

It is disturbing to think of journalists being put in the position of constantly lobbying the government officials they are supposed to be covering. Saving the journalism industry will take more than exchanging self-interested corporations for self-interested governments. 

Jeffrey M. McCall is a media critic and professor of communication at DePauw University. He has worked as a radio news director, a newspaper reporter and as a political media consultant.