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"the right wing papers will use this to once again call him a socialist while still pocketing their subsidy."

Why on earth would right-wing papers get a subsidy? Or, more accurately, why would papers that disagree with whomever controls the pursestrings at the moment get a subsidy? You don't even have to cut off a paper the payer doesn't like, just reduce their payout.

And why wouldn't Obama support it? Why wouldn't any President support it? Taking possession of the fourth branch of government is supposed to not be at all tempting to him? Are you still laboring under the delusion that he's something other than a politician or something? But, hey, even if you still think that's true, Bush III (hopefully only figuratively, but hey, who knows, Jeb's name keeps getting tossed about) or President Palin is only two or six years away from the Presidency, you know. You think they're going to resist this?

That's why this is so dangerous; he who pays the piper calls the tunes, and the tune calling need not be anything so crass as "Play X again"... it can be subtle nodding and gently manipulated suggestions from plants in the crowd. There is absolutely, positively no such thing as a free press sponsored by public funds directed by the government. Yes, I include all current press sponsored by public funds as well.

(Edit: If it makes you feel better, pretend I didn't say that Obama isn't more than a politician. I'm sorry I'm too cynical to believe in the myth; just pat me on the head and move on.)

> There is absolutely, positively no such thing as a free press sponsored by public funds directed by the government.

Care to cite any references? What about the BBC and (Australian) ABC? Both have been huge thorns in the side of their respective governments over the years. In the case of the ABC, they definitely lean towards a liberal editorial view and this was maintained throughout 12 years of the previous conservative government's rule.

If you actually dig into the de facto structure of the government, rather than the de jure, I bet you'd find that the conservatives never actually controlled the purse strings. Remember, there's more to controlling the purse strings that first-order apparent raw voting power. What would it have cost the conservatives to shut off the money flow? If the liberals made it more than the benefits, then regardless of the de jure structure of governmental power, the conservatives never had de facto power to cut the funding off.

He who pays the piper calls the tune. If you think you've found a place where there's an exception, you haven't correctly identified the payer.

That's a false dichotomy; it's not a question of whether specific public broadcasters have or have not been a "thorn in the side" of the governments that sponsor them. And even that is a subjective assessment, since we don't know what hasn't been reported as a result of political influence, or whether intra-governmental conflicts haven't been affected by some factions having more influence over the press than others.

I don't think jerf was making an empirical claim - a "free press" dependent upon political financing and governance is a contradiction in terms.

In Germany, we have had public radio and tv stations for decades, funded by a tax-like mechanism for people owing tv and radio recievers. Since they are public instituions, political influence is obvious.

Contrary to jerf's assertions, however, it seems to work both ways: It provides news that is often carefully balanced and 'factual' and there are also formats that pursue a political agenda and publish inconvinient stuff.

"why wouldn't Obama support it?"

Because America is still a democracy and he would be voted out in the next elections and the guy who promises to end the subsidy would be voted in if the people do not want the newspapers to be subsidies.

I completely agree. The writer makes a big leap equating a dubious "natural monopoly" idea to public support. Is his argument only valid in a small town?

Newspapers started their economic decline well before the Internet. And television, which gave newspapers something called COMPETITION, is the reason.

Now, television is not going to do the job of a great newspaper. But a great newspaper doesn't do the job of a great library. Or a great interconnected electronic mesh of information we all seem to be getting easy access to these days.

Newspapers are nothing special. If people want it, it will be there when then the dust settles.

It's not an editorial, it's an opinion piece, by... some guy. If it were an actual editorial in the WSJ that would be shocking.

It's an opinion piece by the president of Columbia University.

While I wouldn't doubt that excessive debt is bad for any company, I think the recent collapse of advertising and broad decline in circulation are the most proximate causes of newspapers (and lots of other print media outfits) losing money.

A-and I'm not sure there's much the President can do to avoid right wing papers calling him a socialist, subsidy or not, but at least under this scheme a paper's right wing (or left wing) editorial board could then plausibly claim that their opinions reflected a considered take on the news, and that they were paid only (mostly?) by the blind subsidy rather than by some corrupting influence like a right wing (or left wing) political machine.

NPR and PBS seem to have no problem with balanced and insightful journalism, despite being publically funded. Many people accuse public broadcasting of having a liberal bias, but in my years of listening I haven't heard that much if at all. They give fair time to all sides and they rarely favor any administration. I find it very hard to believe that public radio and television are a waste of taxpayer money.

For profit news may be in trouble, but journalism will be okay. Most people don't want informative journalism from foreign bureaus...they want confirmation of their biases from Fox News or MSNBC.

Many people accuse public broadcasting of having a liberal bias, but in my years of listening I haven't heard that much if at all.

The liberal bias of PBS is a matter of what topics they emphasize and which facts they select. One small example of many - Frontline has done several documentaries about atrocities committed by American soldiers. But it has never done a documentary about how ultra-strict (by any standard, of any war, ever) rules of engagement have caused the death of soldiers. I could come up with dozens of similar examples. The only way to realize the extent of PBS's left-wing bias, is to actually read intelligent right wing sources, like Powerline, View from the Right, or Unqualified Reservations. Otherwise you'll never know the stories and facts that you are missing.

This. PBS & NPR's selection bias is much more subtle and well-crafted than FOX's bang-you-on-the-head agenda, but it's there for anyone with a wide range of sources to see.

Personally I've always felt publicly financed media is just a bad idea. The WSJ is just looking for a way to survive, and is willing to throw their supposed libertarian/free-market principles under a bus to do so. Can't blame them given that there's been public funding for liberally-slanted news for decades.

The Wounded Platoon and Behind Taliban Lines both touch on the subject. I agree the engagement rules are worthy of having its own program but bias by admission of coverage is a tricky subject. They only have so many hours of programs they can produce. I can recall in recent months that College, Inc, The Quake, Obama's War and Obama's Deal were critical of the administration at times too.

According to Wikipedia, the PBS Newshour has a 'pro-establishment' bias [1].

[1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS_NewsHour#Criticism]

NPR and PBS are independent nonprofits that get most of their funding from private donations, and are in no way subject to government oversight.

Only a small fraction of NPR's and PBS's funding come from government, and most of that doesn't even come from the government directly, but from another nonprofit, the CPB, which in turn receive federal grants.

Whatever government influence is present in the existing public broadcasters is negligible and is entirely diluted by the influence of civil society in general.

The article is pretty vague as to what it's proposing, but it seems to be suggesting much more direct political funding of the press, and not just broadcasters, but newspapers.

More importantly, the author is suggesting that the government should consider funding the press because without new sources of funding, the established press will become extinct. In other words, he's advocating setting up a system in which the press is dependent upon political funding for its survival. This would be an unprecedented situation, and would generate conflicts of interest unlike anything we have now.

I wonder how much of pre-internet newspaper readership was really attributable to people just using the newspaper as a convenient source for mundane information: stock quotes, sports scores, weather, traffic, movie times, etc.

If newspapers do still provide the highest-quality journalism, despite no longer being the most convenient sources of mundane information, but the end result is that newspapers can no longer sustain their business model, then the value of journalism may be grossly inflated.

If few people actually want newspapers, it's not a significant problem if they go away.

The conflicts of interest for a corporate-owned news outlet are worse than those for a news source that receives some government support.

How's that?

Each country has millions of sources of private-sector income, but only one government. There's the occasional potential for conflict of interest when a news outlet has to report on the doings of its own parent company, but news stories about news companies are quite rare and news stories about the Government happen every day.

That's because news companies are beholden to their advertisers rather than their readership. It's something you can see in (for example) the video games industry where the major magazines often handed out curiously high review scores to games coming from publishers that bought lots of advertising.

Another example would be newspapers which rely upon real estate advertisements for a large portion of their revenue; you won't see an article that's critical of the real estate industry in these papers.

The BBC does a better job at journalism than any US broadcaster or cable network channel. It's also completely funded by taxes.

Not completely accurate... at least not in the sense most Americans think of it. The Beeb is funded almost entirely by TV licenses. True, this is still technically a tax, but it's not like the BBC has a limitless slush fund of income tax to draw upon.

Wikipedia actually has a really great breakdown of the funding.

If the U.S. government wants to have a government-run newspaper corp, then fine. Have it wholly funded by newspaper sales, then I have no problem. But as soon as general tax revenue is used to fund it, then forget it.

I was trying to refute the argument that a government-funded news source is necessarily plagued by conflicts of interests and results in poor journalism.

As to your point about the source of funding... Given that most written news is moving online, would you support a tax on internet service to support written journalism?

I agree with your point, and taxing internet to pay for newspapers would be horrible... but it is the kind of funding scheme I would expect from the U.S. Congress.

NPR is very good.