A Free Press Infrastructure Project

The May Media Rants column summarizes Bob McChesney and John Nichols' proposal to save American Journalism. Here it is:

A Free Press Infrastructure Project

Media Rants

By

Tony Palmeri

President Obama’s “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009” allocates over $80 billion to creating what he calls a “21st century infrastructure.” The money will be used mostly to repair crumbling roads and bridges, invest in rail and other transportation initiatives, increase support for public housing projects, and clean up our environment. With hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money already wasted on Wall St. bailouts, Obama deserves credit for channeling some support down to Main St.

But if the president truly wants a 21st century infrastructure, he’ll have to broaden his scope. The nation’s information infrastructure, especially newspapers, appears ready to go the route of Minneapolis’ late Mississippi River Bridge: Complete Collapse. Democracy’s cracked foundation, a critical footing of which is a free press, desperately needs rebuilding.

Obama and a bipartisan majority in Congress argue that federal government intervention is necessary and appropriate to rescue banks and build roads. Does it then follow that similar assistance ought to go toward saving American journalism?

Bob McChesney and John Nichols (MN) think so. Founders of the media reform outfit Free Press and authors of numerous works on media, MN will in the fall release a new book called Saving Journalism: The Soul of Democracy (New Press). MN summarize the book’s key concerns and proposals in the March 18, 2009 edition of The Nation Magazine (in an essay called “The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers”).

The kind of government assistance for journalism advocated by MN does NOT include bailouts for corporate media giants akin to what Congress did for the banks. Nor do they support loosening regulatory rules to allow for easier consolidation. Indeed, corporate media’s addiction to the Wall St. model, more than any other single factor, created today’s journalism crisis.
MN instead argue for government intervention to save American journalism that would lead the way toward guaranteeing the survival of quality, independent, hard-hitting newspapers in every city, town, village, and hamlet in America. You know, the kind of publication vital for democracy, yet largely dismantled by a corporate press willing to sacrifice civic and citizenship values for the profit values of shock and schlock.

MN outline four major parts of a “journalism economic stimulus, to be revisited after three years,” and which they estimate would cost $60 billion. They are:

1. Eliminate postal rates for periodicals that garner less than 20 percent of their revenues from advertising. High postal rates deter small publications, yet MN argue correctly that “it is these publications that often do investigative, cutting-edge, politically provocative journalism.” In 2007 a coalition of small magazines from the political left to right banded together to fight postal rate increases. With all other costs associated with publishing on the rise, for small publications the elimination of postal rates is needed literally in order to survive. Such a policy might have the added benefit of allowing independent papers like The Scene to expand their reach.

2. Give all Americans an annual tax credit for the first $200 they spend on daily newspapers. This would help halt the trend of daily newspapers going to online only formats or ceasing publication altogether. In return for the tax credit policy, “The newspapers would have to publish at least five times per week and maintain a substantial ‘news hole,’ say at least twenty-four broad pages each day, with less than 50 percent advertising.” Legitimate concerns could be raised about the potential for such a policy to induce self-censorship if, for example, newsroom personnel felt that a tough editorial stance on a particular issue might jeopardize the continuation of the tax credit. On the other hand, after Rod Blagojevich it’s hard to imagine an elected official being stupid enough to threaten to take away a paper’s subsidy because of editorial criticism.

3. Have the government allocate funds so every middle school, high school and college has a well-funded student newspaper and a low-power FM radio station, all of them with substantial websites. Probably the most important of all the proposals. According to MN, “We need to get young people accustomed to producing journalism and to appreciating what differentiates good journalism from the other stuff.” It’s no exaggeration to say that producing critical young journalists is essential not only to media survival, but to the survival of democratic processes.

4. Expansion of funding for public and community broadcasting, with the requirement that most of the funds be used for journalism, especially at the local level, and that all programming be available for free online. Compared to other industrialized nations, the United States spends a pittance on public and community broadcasting. Consequently, those nations produce “dramatically more detailed and incisive international reporting, as well as programming to serve young people, women, linguistic and ethnic minorities and regions that might otherwise be neglected by for-profit media.” Continuing to ignore and underfund community broadcasting in an age of mainstream media sensationalism is misguided and irresponsible.

McChesney and Nichols argue that their plan should be thought of as a “free press ‘infrastructure project’ that is necessary to maintain an informed citizenry, and democracy itself.” What’s appealing about their plan is that it seeks to rescue journalism, not media corporations. For more information, visit http://www.freepress.net/.