Friday, June 19, 2009Subsidize the News
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News organizations are in trouble, but no one knows quite what to do about it. What everyone does know is that it isn't the government's role to step in and save the day. After all, the press is supposed to be a check on government -- so why on Earth would we trust government to pick the industry's winners and losers?
Indeed, most people are willing to countenance only those measures that will help the industry solve its own problems -- like laws allowing newspapers to obtain nonprofit status or a temporary antitrust exemption.
But there is one kind of subsidy the government can provide. Actually, it's a subsidy the United States government has already been providing for the past 43 years: free information. The Freedom of Information Act requires federal agencies to make public government data and documents that do not violate national security or citizen privacy. No one really thinks about this as a subsidy for the news industry, but it is. FOIA and laws like it lower the cost of gathering news about the government. When the government makes data about national security or the budget easier to obtain, it gives news organizations an incentive to write about those issues rather than Britney Spears’s hair or Michelle Obama’s arms. And I’m of the opinion that society should care more about national security than the first lady’s biceps.
What’s more, lowering the cost of information about the government is as close to politically neutral as a news subsidy can be. My colleague Michael Kinsley argued a couple months ago that propping up the news industry offends a basic American political principle -- it smacks of “establishing speech,” analogous to the First Amendment-prohibited establishment of religion. But FOIA doesn’t “establish” anything. The Daily Worker, The Weekly Standard, and The Atlantic Monthly all get the same benefit, if they want it.
So if we want to give the news industry a lift, why not start by expanding and enforcing FOIA, and thus lowering the price of information? A 2008 study by the National Security Archive at George Washington University found that only 21 percent of federal agencies were complying with FOIA’s online-disclosure requirements. This wasn’t controversial national-security stuff; it was just basic information about policies and guidelines that agencies were failing to post.
Widening the access to that information won’t solve the economic woes of newspapers, sure. (At the margin, it will help.) But no one thinks of a thriving news industry -- much less a particular vehicle for delivering the news – as a good unto itself. We care about these things because they provide information that improves public welfare and allows for more effective democratic decision-making. Why not make it easier for the news business to do its job?
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Comments (2)
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Not a bad idea, but I've got a better idea.
Trim salaried staff. Sure, this might be a gross overgeneralization (and if so someone please correct my a$$), but why keep a big newsroom? You want a story? Put it out to bid to a variety of "prequalified" contract writers. Hell, there's so much content (and content providers/creators) out there people'll be volunteering to write for peanuts!
I recognize that for traditional journalists, this may not be a very attractive solution, but its one that recognizes the supply/demand dynamics of the industry, which it seems have been largely unaddressed thus far.
A corollary to the FOIA observation is that there is no copyright on any federal government document produced by the government printing office, thus allowing writers to freely reproduce content in reporting a story.