Future of Media – Technology Liberation Front

Joshua Gans on the economics of information

Jerry Brito — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:00:10 +0000

Joshua Gans, professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and author of the new book Information Wants to be Shared, discusses modern media economics, including how books, movies, music, and news will be supported in the future.

Gans argues that sharing enhances most information’s value. He also explains that the business models of traditional media companies, gatekeepers who have relied on scarcity and control, have collapsed in the face of new technologies. Equally important, he argues that sharing can revive moribund, threatened industries even as he examines platforms that have, almost accidentally, thrived in this new environment.

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Initial Thoughts on the FCC “Future of Media” Report

Adam Thierer — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 18:22:31 +0000

This morning, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released its eagerly-awaited “Future of Media” report. The 475-page final report is entitled, “The Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age.” [Here’s a 2-page summary and the official press release.] The report is a bit overdue; the effort was supposed to be wrapped up late last year. Comments in the proceeding were filed over a year ago. Here are some of the major ones. Also, here is the 80-page monster filing that I submitted with my former PFF colleagues Berin Szoka and Ken Ferree.

Quick refresher… Federal policymakers have been taking a greater interest in the health of media and journalism in recent years. In 2009, the Senate held hearings about “the future of journalism,” and Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) introduced the “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” which would allow newspapers to become tax-exempt non-profits in an effort to help them stay afloat. In 2010, the Federal Trade Commission hosted two workshops asking “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” and also released a staff report on “Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism.” (As I noted here and here, the FTC was blasted for that report and quickly backed off the issue. The agency has since gone radio silent on the issue.) The FCC also launched its “Examination of the Future of Media and Information in a Digital Age” in 2010, and today’s report wraps up their work on this front.

My first reaction after scanning the FCC’s final report is one of relief. For those of us who care about the First Amendment, media freedom, and free-market experimentation with new media business models, it feels like we’ve dodged a major bullet. The report does not recommend sweeping regulatory actions that might have seen Washington inserting itself into the affairs of the press or bailing out dying business models.

By contrast, when the FCC and FTC started their respective proceedings, things looked very grim from a policy perspective. The discussion was being completely dominated by groups like Free Press and their founders, the neo-Marxist media scholar Robert W. McChesney and Nation editor John Nichols. Here are some old essays and papers that summarize the radical “media reform” agenda they set forth over the past few years:

A “Public Option” for Media? The Free Press Plan to Put Journalists on the Public Dole
Free Press, Robert McChesney & the “Struggle” for Media
Socializing Media in Order to Save It
The Wrong Way to Reinvent Media, Part 1: Taxing Devices & Networks to Subsidize Media, by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka, March 24, 2010
The Wrong Way to Reinvent Media, Part 2: Broadcast Spectrum Fees for Public Media, by Adam Thierer, March 29, 2010
The Wrong Way to Reinvent Media, Part 3: Media Vouchers, by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka, April 14, 2010
The Wrong Way to Reinvent Media, Part 4: Expanding Postal Subsidies, by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka, April 20, 2010
The Wrong Way to Reinvent Media, Part 5: Media Bailouts & Welfare for Journalists, by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka, April 30, 2010

To the FCC’s great credit, the agency’s final report didn’t fall for most of these gimmicks or those radical calls for state intervention. The report’s recommendations are actually quite limited in scope and relatively innocuous in nature (although some of them are extremely amorphous and could be open to expansionist interpretations later on). Here are the major recommendations:

Accelerate move from paper to online disclosure. Disclosure information required by the FCC should be moved online from filing cabinets to the Internet so the public can more easily gain access to valuable information. FCC should eliminate burdensome rules and streamline disclosures about local programming by moving files online.
Remove barriers to innovation and online entrepreneurship by pushing for universal broadband deployment and adoption. Achieving this goal would remove cost barriers,strengthen online business models, expand consumer pools and ensure that the news and information landscape serves communities to the maximum possible benefit of citizens.
Target existing federal spending at local media. Existing government advertising spending, such military recruiting and public health ads, should be targeted toward local media whenever possible. Each year, the federal government spends roughly $1 billion in advertising without maximizing potential benefits to local media.
Repeal Fairness Doctrine, terminate localism proceeding and replace “enhanced disclosure” with a new streamlined system of online disclosure. Broadcasters would disclose amount of programming about the community and other important information.
Discourage “pay-for-play” arrangements – in which TV stations allow advertisers to dictate on-air content without disclosing to viewers – by requiring online disclosure of such arrangements.
Re-assess whether the satellite TV’s set-aside for educational programming and cable TV leased access systems are working; put satellite disclosure online.
There should be state-based C-SPAN in every state. Cable and satellite operators, public broadcasters and PEG channels should work toward that goal, and policymakers should consider offering incentives for those media organizations that take such steps, or to those that provide support for local cable news operations.
Re-establish tax certificate program for small businesses including minorities and women.
Policymakers should consider clarifications or changes in tax rules that would make it easier for nonprofit news operations to develop sustainable business models.
Focus on historically underserved when policymakers craft strategies and rules.

While I can’t endorse all of these recommendations — especially those that involve more spending or tax code tinkering — I think most of these policy proposals are relatively unobjectionable. Again, this is pretty far removed from the radical Free Press / McChesney agenda that guided the Federal Trade Commission’s controversial report. I will likely have more to say about the FCC’s specific policy recommendations after getting through the entire 475-page report this weekend.

Even without having finished the entire report, I feel comfortable saying this: The FCC’s “Information Needs of Communities” report is an impressive achievement and will be used as a reference document for decades to come. The report offers an excellent overview of the state of the media marketplace and provides a relatively balanced assessment of both the good and bad trends shaping media and journalism today.

I congratulate Steve Waldman and the entire team experts that the FCC brought together to compile this report. But most of all I am relieved to see that the agency generally restrained itself here and avoided going down the dangerous path I once feared it might.

Finally, I am just a happy camper any day I see the Federal Communications Commission send out a Tweet like this:

Private Media Providers Shouldn’t Be Forced to Fund Public Media

Adam Thierer — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 22:41:35 +0000

I sincerely hope it was a Washington Post editor, and not New America Foundation president Steve Coll, who picked the title for his editorial today, “Why Fox News Should Help Fund NPR.” After all, Coll certainly must be smart enough to know that there is no law or regulation on the books today that gives the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) or any other agency the ability to force private media providers to fund their public media competitors. Moreover, it takes a lot of chutzpah to try to spin NPR’s recent Juan Williams fiasco into an excuse for private media providers like Fox News to fund NPR, but, shockingly, that’s exactly what Coll does. “The Williams imbroglio is teachable, but its lessons actually point in the opposite direction: America’s public media system, including NPR, requires more funding, not less.” Hmm… that’s not exactly the lesson most of the rest of the world took away from this episode!

Coll first argues it makes sense for private media funds to be transferred to NPR becuase “In this time of niche publications and cable networks that thrive on ideological anger, we should be seeking to strengthen NPR’s role as a convener of the public square, a demagogue-free zone where all political and social groups — including conservatives and others opposed to federal funding of public media — should be welcome on equal terms.” This is indicative of the all-too-common “progressive” impulse to force media upon us that we don’t want or even find offensive. To be clear, I am not one of those people who finds NPR to be a hopelessly biased bastion of Leftist thinking. While I think it’s clear to everyone that many of NPR’s stories and reporters do lean that direction, I also think there’s some outstanding reporting to be found there. But if Steve Coll and his colleagues at the New America Foundation want to see NPR get more funding, they should do the same thing I do: Open up their wallets and make the voluntary choice to fund it. To force everyone else to do so is despicable.

Second, Coll wants to pretend he’s doing private media providers a favor by forcing them to fund NPR. “Continuing to force profit-seeking licensees to tack public interest work onto their commercial enterprises is a fool’s errand. It would be far more rational to let commercial enterprises respond to market incentives as they see fit, while leaving the construction of public interest journalism to organizations and leaders who want to do nothing else – among them, NPR.”

How arrogant. Coll is basically saying there’s no other good news out there besides what’s on NPR. Perhaps he’s just not listening to anything else? Moreover, to suggest that private media providers should welcome the opportunity to fund their public media competitors because that will take a burden off their shoulders is absurd. That’s not Steve Coll’s decision to make and it certainly shouldn’t be the government’s either. Whether he feels his preferred mix of views is accurately represented elsewhere is utterly irrelevant. That does not justify forcing those other media providers to fund the one outlet he feels does provide the right mix.

Astonishingly, Coll never addresses the fundamental unfairness of his proposal to private providers. After all, in case he didn’t notice, many private media operators are fighting for their lives right now in the hyper-competitive modern media marketplace. Coll not only ignores that but he then somehow rationalizes what would, in essence, be a new discriminatory media tax that would undercut private media operations at a time when they can ill afford it. This raises fundamental fairness issues. Not only has public broadcasting and non-commercial media been siphoning off more and more market share from private news media in recent years, but, by placing such a tax on private media to fund its competitors, Coll’s proposal would essentially put private operators in double jeopardy. It’s hard to see how that’s in “the public interest.” It’s like the government signing the death warrant for private media.

Elsewhere, I’ve written much more about how such discriminatory private media taxes are seriously misguided. See, for example, this paper I wrote on what’s wrong with using broadcast spectrum fees as a slush fund for public media. Also, similar discriminatory tax and regulatory schemes are critiqued in this 79-page filing that my former colleagues Berin Szoka, Ken Ferree, and I submitted to the FCC as part of its “Future of Media” proceeding.

Needless to say, their won’t be much of a “future of media” — at least for private media providers — if Congress took Steve Coll’s advice and imposed this massive media income redistribution scheme on the market. Again, fund your own media. Make your own choices. Don’t try to impose your choices on others.

The Inherent Paradox in the FCC Media Ownership Rules & Latest NOI

Adam Thierer — Wed, 26 May 2010 17:59:08 +0000

There’s an inherent paradox in the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) media ownership regulations and the new Notice of Inquiry that the agency has just launched looking into those rules. Like everything else the FCC has been doing lately, this NOI poses hundreds of questions about the topic at hand. In this case, the agency is interested in knowing what the impact of its byzantine regulatory regime for media ownership has been. Complicating matters even more is that fact that the FCC wants people to provide detailed answers about the impact of these rules on amorphous values like “diversity” and “localism.” So, the agency asks, what has been the impact of the local TV ownership rule, the local radio ownership rule, the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule, the radio/TV cross-ownership rule, the dual network rule, and so on, on the marketplace, competition, diversity, localism, etc.

But therein lies the fundamental paradox of the FCC’s inquiry and the media ownership regulations in general: So long as the rules are preemptive and prophylactic in character, we will never get clear answers to the questions the agency poses. By definition, the agency’s media ownership rules make experimentation with new business models illegal. It is per se criminal to enter into combinations that the agency has presumptively divined to be counter to “the public interest,” whatever that means. Thus, we can never get definitive answers to the questions the agency poses when “the marketplace” isn’t a truly free marketplace at all. It is a regulatory construct artificially constrained in countless ways.

So, what’s the answer here? In a word: Antitrust. While I’m no fan of over-zealous antitrust regulation, it has one huge advantage over the media ownership regime that the FCC enforces: It doesn’t preemptively seek to determine supposedly sensible market structures or ownership patterns. The threat of antitrust intervention can be a very dangerous thing, and wrecking-ball style antitrust interventions are rarely sensible, but at least the DOJ and FTC aren’t turning the regulatory dials on a massive media marketplace industrial policy the way the Federal Communications Commission does with its media ownership regulations.

The final, and perhaps most insulting paradox within the FCC’s new NOI is the way the agency meticulously documents the troubles that many traditional media operators find themselves in today, especially newspapers and broadcast radio operators. The agency cites a litany of statistics and bad news anecdotes about how these players are losing revenues, advertisers, staff, and readers / listeners at an alarming clip. But never once does the Commission stop to ponder whether it itself is responsible for any of this mess! It would be wrong to suggest that we’d live in some sort of media nirvana if all the media ownership rules went bye-bye. But those rules certainly haven’t helped matters any and, moreover, they come on top of the countless other regulations that the Commission imposes dealing with business practices, technical standards, advertising restrictions, programming mandates, speech controls, etc. etc.

Meanwhile, in a separate proceeding still ongoing, the Commission has been pondering the “Future of Media” and has brought through a parade of “public media” advocates to its workshops on the matter. The majority of the participants have suggested that private media is failing and, you guessed it, lots more public media is the solution. So, with one hand government suffocates private media markets and with the other it begins reaching into our pockets for public media subsidies! What a racket.

List of Major Comments in FCC “Future of Media” Proceeding

Adam Thierer — Tue, 11 May 2010 01:07:18 +0000

I’m keeping tabs on who filed “major” comments (more than a 10-15 pages) in the Federal Communications Commission’s “Future of Media” proceeding (GN Docket No. 10-25). As I noted last week, The Progress & Freedom Foundation submitted almost 80 pages of comments (single-spaced!) in the matter, so it’s something I care deeply about and will be tracking closely going forward.

Incidentally, the general consensus of those who filed (especially if you count “minor” comments) is fairly overwhelming: Bring on Big Government! Seriously, I only found a handful of comments that object strenuously to government meddling in media markets or that raised concerns about the potential for the State’s increasing involvement in the journalism profession. Even many of the affected industries appear to be suffering from a bit of Stockholm syndrome here. Most of them just play up the good things they are doing but barely utter a peep about the dangers of federal encroachment into the affairs of the Press.

Anyway, for those of you who care to track the gradual federalization of media and journalism, I think what you see below is a fairly comprehensive listing of the major filings submitted thus far in the FCC’s “Future of Media” proceeding. I’ll try to add more as I find them. You might also want to track what was filed in the Federal Trade Commission’s workshops on “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age.” Finally, if you care to learn more of this issue, I’m hosting an event on the morning of May 20th to discuss these issues in more detail.

event: May 20th – “Can Government Help Save the Press?”

Adam Thierer — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:00:51 +0000

Thought you all might be interested in this upcoming PFF event on “Can Government Help Save the Press?” It will take place on Thursday, May 20, 2010 from 8:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. in the International Gateway Room, Mezzanine Level of the Ronald Reagan Building on 1300 Pennsylvania Ave, N.W. here in DC. This event will consider the FCC’s “Future of Media” proceeding (comments are due this Friday) and debate what role the government should play (if any) in sustaining struggling media enterprises, “saving journalism,” or promoting more “public media” or “public interest” content. [You can find all our essays about this here.]

The event will feature a keynote address by Ellen P. Goodman of the FCC’s Future of Media team. Ellen is one of the sharpest minds in the media policy universe today, and a real asset to the FCC team. She is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the FCC, a Research Fellow at American University’s Center for Social Media, and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communications. She is also a Professor at Rutgers University School of Law at Camden, specializing in information law and policy. She has spoken before a wide range of audiences around the world on media policy issues, has consulted with the U.S. government on communications policy, and served as an advisor to President Obama’s presidential campaign and transition team.

After Ellen Goodman brings us up to speed with where the FCC’s Future of Media process stands, we’ll hear from a diverse panel of experts that I am still busy assembling. But so far it includes Charlie Firestone of the Aspen Institute, who will be on hand to discuss the work he’s been doing with the Knight Commission on this front. I’ve also invited a rep from the Newspaper Association of America to come and talk about the diversity of new media monetization models that they have been aggregating. (Check out the appendix of their outstanding FTC filing last Nov.) And Kurt Wimmer of Covington & Burling, who represents broadcasters among others, will talk about the need for regulatory flexibility / forbearance, especially on ownership issues. Again, more panelists to come. But please sign up now!

Podcast about Spectrum Taxes as Tool to Subsidize Public Media

Adam Thierer — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:20:06 +0000

In the latest PFF TechCast, I discuss the issues considered in the second essay in our ongoing series, “The Wrong Way to Reinvent Media.” In this 6-minute podcast, PFF’s press director Mike Wendy chats with me about proposals to impose taxes on broadcast spectrum licenses to funnel money to public media or “public interest” content. In my paper and this podcast, I make the case again socially engineering media choices and outcomes through the tax code.

MP3 file: PFF TechCast #2 – Saving the Media Through Broadcast Spectrum Taxes (4/5/2010)

What is a “Trust Fund for Public Media” Doing in the FCC Broadband Plan?

Adam Thierer — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:12:17 +0000

My central lament in everything I have said so far about the Federal Communications Commission’s ambitious new National Broadband Plan is that, well, it’s just too ambitious! The agency has taken an everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink approach to the issue and the sheer scope of their imperial ambitions is breathtaking. I’ve likened it to an industrial policy for the Internet because the agency is essentially trying to centrally plan and engineer from above virtually every aspect of America’s broadband future despite its proclamation that, “Technologies, costs and consumer preferences are changing too quickly in this dynamic part of the economy to make accurate predictions.” But very little humility seems to be on display throughout the 376-page blueprint, which includes dissertations on everything from privacy to child safety issues to set-top box regulation.

And then there’s Chapter 15 on “civic engagement,” which calls for a wide variety of things to “strengthen the citizenry and its government,” and to “build a robust digital media ecosystem.” Although some of the ideas floated in the chapter are harmless enough–and some, like the call for more open and transparent government, would actually be beneficial–for the life of me I don’t understand why any of this needs to be in a plan about broadband deployment and diffusion. Particularly bizarre is the call here for Congress to create “a trust fund for digital public media,” which would fund the “production, distribution, and archiving of digital public media.” It would apparently be funded by “the revenues from a voluntary auction of spectrum licensed to public television.” (see pgs. 303-4)

Look, if the FCC wants Congress to create the equivalent of the PBS on Steroids, fine. Let’s have that debate. (In fact, I thought it was a debate that the FCC was already considering as part of its “Future of Media” effort). But why, again, is this in broadband plan? It’s a serious stretch to claim that this is somehow crucial to the task of getting more broadband out to the masses. Moreover, should our government really be in charge of “building a robust digital media ecosystem”? Here are a few reasons we might want to avoid having the government in the driver’s seat when it comes to charting the future course of America’s media sector.

Would a “Citizenship News Voucher” Get Us More “Broccoli Journalism”?

Adam Thierer — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:51:45 +0000

Can we steer people toward hard news — and get them to financially support it — through the use of “news vouchers” or “public interest vouchers”? That’s the subject of this latest installment in my ongoing series on proposals to have the government play a greater role in the media sector in the name of sustaining struggling enterprises or “saving journalism.”

As I mentioned here previously, last week I testified at the FCC’s first “Future of Media” workshop on “Serving the Public Interest in the Digital Era.” (@3:29 mark of video). It was a great pleasure to testify alongside the all-star cast there that day, which included the always-provocative Jeff Jarvis of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He delivered some very entertaining remarks and vociferously pushed back against many of the ideas that others were suggesting about “saving journalism.” Jeff is a very optimistic guy–far more optimistic than me, in fact–about the prospect that new media and citizen journalism will help fill whatever void is left by the death of many traditional media operators and institutions. He had a lively exchange with Srinandan Kasi, Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of the Associated Press, that is worth watching (somewhere after the 5-hour mark on the video).

Nonetheless, Jarvis is a enough of a realist to know that it has always been difficult to find resources to fund hard news, which he creatively refers to as “broccoli journalism.” This is what is keeping the FCC, the FTC (workshop today), and many media worrywarts up at night; the fear that as traditional financing mechanisms falter (advertising, classifieds, subscription revenues, etc) many traditional news-gathering efforts and institutions will disappear. Of course, while it is certainly true we are in the midst of a gut-wrenching media revolution with a great deal of creative destruction taking place, it is equally true that exciting new media business models and opportunities are developing. We shouldn’t over look that, as I argued here and here.

Anyway, a lot of different proposals are being put forth by scholars and policymakers to find new ways to finance news-gathering or “save journalism.” One of the ideas that has been gaining some steam as of late is the idea of crafting a “public interest voucher” or what Robert W. McChesney & John Nichols, authors of the new book The Death and Life of American Journalism, call a “Citizenship News Voucher.” And McChesney discussed this idea in more detail when he spoke at today’s FTC event on saving journalism. The idea is fairly straightforward: Give every American a voucher (McChesney and Nichols propose $200) to donate money to the non-profit news entity of their choice. The assumption is that this would be an efficient and safe way of channeling money to “broccoli journalism” while avoiding the serious concerns that arise when government officials or agencies are the ones steering the subsidies. McChesney and Nichols go so far as to call the notion “a libertarian’s dream” since “people can support whatever political viewpoint they prefer or do nothing at all.”

Before I critique this notion, let me just reiterate that I am sympathetic to the concern here since I began my life with a journalism degree and I’m a true lover of broccoli journalism. I certainly eat my greens when it comes to news. I’m a National Public Radio supporter and have given $10 per month ($120 per year) to my local NPR affiliate for awhile now. That’s more than I spend on almost any other media product with the exception of my almost two-decade subscription to the Wall Street Journal. And I also subscribe to The Washington Post, National Geographic, and a number of other “broccoli journalism” products. (I gave up my Economist subscription several years ago, which was also quite pricey). I make this investment because I personally love hard news and believe these media entities offer the very best of it.

Nonetheless, the “news voucher” proposal has several problems and is going to fail once implemented anyway.

First, McChesney and Nichols want to sell this scheme as “a libertarian’s dream,” but that’s utter rubbish. I don’t know of any libertarian who dreams of sending more money to the federal government only to win back the right to spend it on “qualifying media entities.” And when they say that “people can support whatever political viewpoint they prefer or do nothing at all,” well, last time I checked people were already free to do whatever they want with their money when it comes to media products! Why do we need to send it to Washington first?

And analogies to educational vouchers don’t work because we long ago decided to treat education as a public good and force everyone to pay for it. Vouchers are only sensible when we absolutely have to force people to spend money on public goods; they help make government spending a tad bit more efficient. While McChesney and Nichols claim in their book that the time has come to treat media as such a public good, most people would not agree, since the private provision of media services has worked quite well for some time—being funded by a mix of advertising and subscription revenues for centuries. They claim that era is over but, as I’ll note below and in a future essay about their book, it is their policies that would end private media by taxing and regulating it to death.

Second, what exactly counts as a “qualifying media entity,” and who makes that call? Can just anybody draw support from this program if they claim to be a “media entity”? Are we going to let people redeem their vouchers on The National Inquirer or People magazine? How about The Onion? Or how about blogs like this one! “This is a risk we are more than willing to take,” McChesney & Nichols say since they are “operating on a gut instinct that people will use their vouchers to fund serious media while reaching into their pockets to pay for copies of The National Inquirer at the supermarket checkout.” (p. 205) Of course, it’s always easier to take such risks when you are playing with other people’s money! But they are fools to believe this idea is going to change the face of journalism in any serious way. The majority of people will spend their vouchers on whatever media outlets and content they are currently consuming, which probably isn’t want McChesney & Nichols (or policymakers) would prefer.

This raises a third concern: How long will it be before government starts attaching more strings to the vouchers? To borrow a headline from The Wall Street Journal from earlier this week, how long will it be before the “Economic Policy ‘Nudge’ Gives Way to a Shove?” This “Nudge” notion is popular in DC these days with the Obama crew thanks to Cass Sunstein’s book of the same name (w/Richard Thaler). But, as I’ve said here before, such “nudging” is rife with elitism since some policymakers imagine they can steer the public’s tastes or behavior in more desirable directions through law. The problem is, some people just don’t much like being nudged by officials from afar and they’ll often take steps to evade it. In this context, there is simply no way to get people to consume what you want it in an age of abundance. I talked about this problem at length in my testimony to the FCC last week. You just can’t make people watch, listen, or read if they don’t want to. As Ellen P. Goodman of the Rutgers-Camden School of Law has noted: “Given the proliferation of consumer filtering and choice, these kinds of interventions are of questionable efficacy. Consumers equipped with digital selection and filtering tools are likely to avoid content they do not demand no matter what the regulatory efforts to force exposure.” Moreover, she rightly argues, “regulation cannot, in a liberal democracy, force viewers to consumer media products they do not think they want in the name of the public interest.” Amen, sister.

So, even though, in theory, the news voucher idea lets consumers figure out how to steer the funds, I sincerely doubt that most of those funds will go toward “broccoli journalism” and other civic-minded content. And once people start redirecting taxpayer dollars to all sorts of silly stuff that the elites and policymakers don’t like, that’s when the nudge will become a shove and more interventions will follow in the form of “voucher guidance and compliance” hearings, rules, etc. In essence, you can file this all under the “if you build it they will come” theory of public policy. But, in this case, it’s all wishful thinking because you simply can’t force people to spend money (or pay attention) to things they don’t want to.

There’s final problematic caveat to the McChesney-Nichols variant of the news voucher idea: They would disallow any copyright protection or advertising support for an entity who receives voucher funds. That’s an effort by the authors to steer even more media activity away from the commercial sphere and toward “the public option” for the press. Let’s not forget that McChesney has argued (during this interview the Canadian-based “Socialist Project”) that “the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists,” and that, “unless you make significant changes in the media, it will be vastly more difficult to have a revolution.” So, it’s important to keep his true intentions in mind when he starts claiming to have found “a libertarian’s dream” of a solution to what ails America’s media sector. [For more details on his intentions, see my essay from last year, “Free Press, Robert McChesney & the “Struggle” for Media.”]

In the meantime, this particular libertarian would like to keep his money and spend it on media as he sees fit, thank you very much!

We’re from Government and We’re Here to Help (Save Journalism)

Adam Thierer — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 20:33:18 +0000

“We’re from government and we’re here to help save journalism.”

That seems to be the hot new meme in media policy circles these days. Last week, it was the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) kicking off their “Future of Media” effort with a workshop on “Serving the Public Interest in the Digital Era.” This week, it’s the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) turn as they host the second in their series of workshops on How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age? Meanwhile, the Senate has already held hearings about “the future of journalism,” and Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) recently introduced the “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” which would allow newspapers to become nonprofit organizations in an effort to help them stay afloat.

I have no doubt that many of the public policymakers behind these efforts have the best of intentions and really are concerned about what many believe to be a crisis in the field of journalism. But here are my three primary concerns with Washington’s sudden interest in “saving journalism”:

Policymakers are largely ignoring the role they played in created the current mess, and they won’t likely be willing to undo the damage. I’m speaking mostly of the myriad ownership restrictions and assorted other “public interest” regulations that have strangled many traditional media operators over the years and limited their ability to respond to marketplace changes. I documented these rules and their anti-innovative impacts in my 2005 book, Media Myths: Making Sense of the Debate over Media Ownership. I fear that they now won’t be willing to loosen those chains that continue to bind the media sector. Moreover, it may already be too late for some of those players.
Many public officials are largely focused on the problems associated with change and are either ignoring–or, through their interventions could thwart–the opportunities associated with change. No doubt, many media operators are struggling. But it is equally true that exciting new media business models and opportunities are developing. As I pointed out in my recent Newseum debate, while we are in a gut-wrenching evolution with a great deal of creative destruction taking place, we should be careful to not to head off potentially advantageous marketplace developments, if even some are highly disruptive.
Increased “assistance” from Washington will likely come with strings attached and raise troubling First Amendment implications. Sen. Cardin’s bill, for example, serves as a good example of what makes me so nervous about Washington’s growing interest in “saving journalism.” As a condition of any any media entity receiving non-profit tax status, the bill would disallow political endorsements on newspaper editorial pages–which, like campaign finance restrictions, would be a boon for incumbents. That should serve as fair warning to journalists about the sort of strings lawmakers will attach to press-welfare efforts going forward. What else might subsidized media entities have to put up with? Free campaign ads for politicians? Fairness Doctrine or mandatory right of reply for printed editorials? Censorship for “negative” political satire or comics? Moreover, how do we define a “media entity” or “journalist” in terms of how is eligible for support? Taken together, these considerations raise some rather profound First Amendment questions.

Stay tuned because this debate is just getting started. I suspect that policymakers will significantly step up their interest in the issue as more traditional media entities begin failing. What will be interesting is the extent to which some policymakers begin to embrace the “media reformista” agenda of greater public control that some fringe groups like Free Press favor. I’ve documented their radical agenda here before in my essays:

And I’m currently finishing up the new book by Robert McChesney & John Nichols, The Death and Life of American Journalism, which is a blueprint for how to convert media into wards of the State. As part of their effort to create a massive “public works” program for the press, they advocate that public subsidies for media be funded by everything from a 5% tax on consumer electronics to a 3% tax on monthly ISP & cell phone bills to taxes on commercial advertising. Truly frightening stuff. Anyway, I’ll have a complete review done shortly.

Further reading:

summary of remarks at “Crisis in Journalism” event, by Adam Thierer, Feb. 2010
Public Option for Press Should Get the Red Pen, by Adam Thierer, The Daily Caller, Jan. 2010
A “Public Option” for Media? The Free Press Plan to Put Journalists on the Public Dole, by Adam Thierer, Nov. 2009
Free Press, Robert McChesney & the “Struggle” for Media, by Adam Thierer, Aug. 2009
What the Media Reformistas Really Want, by Adam Thierer, Aug. 2008
Socializing Media in Order to Save It, by Adam Thierer, City Journal, March 2009
Obama Should Just Say No To Newspaper Bailouts, Adam Thierer, Sept. 2009
The Dangers of Government-Subsidized News, by Adam Thierer, Oct. 2009
A Bailout For The First Amendment?, by Wayne Crews, Aug. 2009
testimony at FCC’s Hearing on “Serving the Public Interest in the Digital Era”, by Adam Thierer, March 2010
A Manifesto for Media Freedom, by Adam Thierer and Brian Anderson, 2008
Chairman Leibowitz’s Disconnect on Privacy Regulation & the Future of News, by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka, Progress Snapshot 6.1, January 13, 2010
Media Ownership Proceedings, by W. Kenneth Ferree, Testimony before the Federal Communications Commission, November 3, 2009
Media Myths: Making Sense of the Debate over Media Ownership, by Adam Thierer, June 2005