RSS 2.0 FeedYet another blithering idiot reporter calls for a newspaper bailout
by Stephen Gordon
Some day, I'm expecting a cry from the loony left to bail out corpulent prostitutes. After all, they are certainly "too big to fail."
I certainly disagree with former-Washington-Times-Assistant-National-Editor-turned-freelancer-and-new-media-personality-father-and-personal-friend Robert Stacy McCain from time to time. One thing noteworthy about him is that he’s constantly begging for donations to support his online writing habits. It’s hard to find a post on his personal blog where he doesn’t directly ask folks to hit his tip jar.
At the same time, the cries from dying newspaper companies for a taxpayer-funded bailout continue to increase both in frequency and shrillness. This time the offending piece of journalistic excrement graces the opinion column of the LA Times. To be sure, this page of their paper is far too soiled to be used even as toilet paper.
“It’s time for a government bailout of journalism, ” Rosa Brooks writes.
“If we’re willing to use taxpayer money to build roads, pay teachers and maintain a military; if we’re willing to bail out banks and insurance companies and failing automakers, we should be willing to part with some public funds to keep journalism alive too,” Brooks continued, apparently to add insult to injury.
The first thing I want to know is who in the hell is this “we” Ms. Brooks describes. I’m not willing to bail out banks, insurance companies, automakers, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or even fanny packs. The money is being taken from me, by force, to give to others who did not earn it.
Anyone who has heard the term “Tea Party” lately must be well aware of the fact that millions and millions of Americans are incredibly irate over the recent plethora of federal bailouts. Being as she’s a journalist and all, surely Ms. Brooks has heard of this by now. If she is so certain that “we” want to bail all of these failing institutions, perhaps she’ll be willing to stand on the stage at some Tea Party event and repeat what she wrote in the Times.
If she will be so kind as to pick her favorite city, I’ll be happy to talk with the event organizer about it. However, I have no intention of working on her security detail — people wanted to string up the Governor at the last major Tea Party event I attended.
The woman who wants to use government force to steal my hard-earned money concluded:
The problem is that many of these subsidies are currently structured in ways that have actually contributed to the decline of high-quality journalism by enabling monopolies, freezing out smaller and locally controlled media outlets and encouraging large corporations to treat the news as just another product, no different from video games or sports teams.
Years of foolish policies have left us with a choice: We can bail out journalism, using tax dollars and granting licenses in ways that encourage robust and independent reporting and commentary, or we can watch, wringing our hands, as more and more top journalists are laid off or bail out, leaving us with nothing in our newspapers but ads, entertainment features and crossword puzzles.
The news is just another product, like video games or sports teams. In the real world, consumers decide the viability of a product or service. Video game producers don’t demand taxpayer dollars. If their product doesn’t sell, they enhance it or come up with a new one. Why the hell should we pay for newspapers which aren’t selling?
One wonders if Ms. Brooks has ever stopped to consider that once a newspaper has taken federal dollars, then the federal government will control the policy of the paper. If they can tell General Motors and Chrysler what sorts of cars to build, then they’ll likely tell newspapers what sorts of articles to publish. I’m sure this won’t bother Ms. Brooks for the next four years, as she’s heading off to the Pentagon to work her Messiah. However, I’d like for Ms. Brooks to ponder this one for a minute: Would you wish to be working at a newspaper where George W. Bush (or his newspaper czar Karl Rove) called the shots?
Like a plague, bailout fever has spread from one industry to another to another. Some day, I’m expecting a cry from the loony left to bail out corpulent prostitutes. After all, they are certainly “too big to fail.”
In the meantime, mostly in response to this ludicrous LA Times article, I just canceled my last subscription to a print publication and left a few bucks in Robert Stacy McCain’s tip jar.
That’s just plain sick. Disgusting. Appropriate.
Comment by RandRoid — April 9, 2009 @ 8:32 pmI have learned long ago that when folks demanding government intervention complain about A, the real problem is likely not-A, or the opposite of A.
Take this call for a media bailout. Almost every such article is built around a story line that the problem with media is too concentrated and monopolized *cough* Rupert Murdoch *cough*.
This is hilarious. The problem the print media in particular is facing is not that they are being monopolized, but in fact that their traditional monopoly is in the process of being broken. Their problem is not too little competition but too much. Their problem is not high barriers to entry but quite low ones. All courtesy of the Internet.
You can tell that the fact of too much competition (rather than too little) is their true concern the moment they pull out licensing. Licensing in every industry in which it exists is an age-old guild tactic to limit competition. License boards, often enforced by the government but controlled by the incumbents in the industry, primarily exist to limit new competition, and thereby keep prices and salaries high and protect current market shares. License boards will claim to be all about the consumer and quality, but in fact they are a media tool to enforce a monopoly. Seriously, do you see any consumers of media demanding such limits?
Comment by Coyote — April 9, 2009 @ 8:47 pmCoyote — you jut the nail squarely on the head with that observation.
Comment by Stephen Gordon — April 9, 2009 @ 8:50 pmMy buggy whip company also needs a bailout.
Comment by Akston — April 9, 2009 @ 10:47 pmMy buggy whip company also needs a bailout.
Comment by Akston — April 10, 2009 @ 1:45 amOops…forgot to say great post! Looking forward to your next one.
Does anyone really doubt that had we subsidized town criers and scribes the media world would not be a much better industry today…???
I mean do we not all secretly wish we had sudsizized and saved leaded gasoline, polyester jump suits, polio and wooden teeth for posterity?
Should we have subsidized Nazi death camps? Did not closing them down cost jobs???
Where would we be without the penny subsidy without which our government mint could not afford the 3-4 cents it costs to make the 1 cent piece of currency no one even wants ?
Comment by Persnickety curmudgeon — April 10, 2009 @ 12:14 pm