Journalism Needs Government Help

Opinion Journal (WSJ) ^ | July 14, 2010 | Lee Bollinger

[Jim Noble]

We have entered a momentous period in the history of the American press. The invention of new communications technologies—especially the Internet—is transforming the human capacity to speak, perhaps as monumentally as the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. This is facilitating the largest and fastest expansion of global economic growth in human history. Free speech and a free press are essential to a dynamic economy.

At the same time, however, the financial viability of the U.S. press has been shaken to its core. The proliferation of communications outlets has fractured the base of advertising and readers. Newsrooms have shrunk dramatically and foreign bureaus have been decimated. My best estimate is that there are presently only a few dozen full-time foreign correspondents from the U.S. covering all of China, despite the critical importance of that nation to our future...

This system needs to be revised and its resources consolidated and augmented with those of NPR and PBS to create an American World Service that can compete with the BBC and other global broadcasters. The goal would be an American broadcasting system with full journalistic independence that can provide the news we need. Let's demonstrate great journalism's essential role in a free and dynamic society.

Mr. Bollinger is president of Columbia University and author of "Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century" (Oxford, 2010).

[Jim Noble]

The only question is whether to call it Pravda...or Isvestia

[Mere Survival]

Danger! Communications are concentrated in a different way than they used to be and advertising dollars go to people other than me and my employer. This is a CRISES.

/sarc

/snort

/extends middle f******

[ClearCase_guy]

All industries are being nationalized. This process will continue until we rise up and stop it.

[Westbrook]

> The only question is whether to call it Pravda...or Isvestia

Pravda means Truth, and Isvestia means News.

During the Soviet era, Russian folk (proletariat rabble to their Soviet overlords) had a PUN using the names of these “news” agencies.

“In the Truth there is no News and in the News there is no Truth”.

[Psalm 144]

This system needs to be revised and its resources consolidated and augmented with those of NPR and PBS to create an American World Service that can compete with the BBC and other global broadcasters.

**********

No. Just die, you bloodsucking bed of parasites.

[benewton]

On the other hand, they can save a great deal of money.

After all, since nobody will read them, they can save the printing costs, as well as the cost of a web site.

Of course, they could do that now...

[Zakeet]

Both the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are undertaking studies of ways to ensure the steep economic decline faced by newspapers and broadcast news does not deprive Americans of the essential information they need as citizens. One idea under consideration is enhanced public funding for journalism.

Essential information = Wee Wee, Muzzies, government, Rats, welfare, homosexuals and liberalism good ... Conservatives, Christians, traditional families, guns and freedom bad.

I learned this from publicly funded NPR and from my NEA operated Skool.

[SueRae]

or Al-Jazeera.

Columbia University? feh.

[FreedomPoster]

Lee Bollinger, s**** you and the horse you rode in on.

Columbia has been a hotbed of Leftist journalism since dirt. This is one of Obama’s alma maters, don’t forget. Among their other, numerous flaws, their journalism school is the group that gave the supposedly-prestigious Bancroft Prize to at-the-time Emory professor Michael A. Bellesiles for Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, despite the fact that Clayton Cramer and others had completely destroyed this work of fiction. The book basically claimed that not very many Americans during the founding and early years owned guns. This book was based on a pack of lies, and ultimately Bellesiles was booted from Emory, but Columbia never rescinded the Bancroft Prize.

These are Leftist ideologues looking to spread their message on your dime, plain and simple.

[abb]

This is really not new. In my ongoing study of the history of communications and newsgathering, I am in the middle of this book.

A History of Broadcasting in the United States: Volume 2: The Golden Web ...
By Erik Barnouw

http://books.google.com/books?id=UzVDHPsJ6AoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=eric+barnouw+history+of+broadcasting+golden+web&source=bl&ots=UD4Uc-sIZ7&sig=NoN0y6YyP3hNbqcdYxxdqKvoJyk&hl=en&ei=hJQ9TPfEEMGB8gaC2ainBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Back in the late 20s and early 30s, the same people were hysterical that radio was going to be used for delivering commercial advertising, instead of reserved for “the greater good.” They wanted government-operated networks and airwaves.

The FCC was their compromise.

I’m optimistic they won’t be able to get their arms around the interweb thingy. It’s too spread out.

[ash-housewares]

Journalism is now the secular priesthood

[rhombus]

There are examples of other institutions in the U.S. where state support does not translate into official control. The most compelling are our public universities and our federal programs for dispensing billions of dollars annually for research.

hahahah, stop, you're killing me. This stuff should be a skit on the comedy channel. This one is pretty good too.

Yet—through a carefully designed system with peer review of grant-making, a strong culture of independence, and the protections afforded by the First Amendment—there have been strikingly few instances of government abuse.

Peer review? good one. How about "group think"? Here's my reply, hopefully it will be peer reviewed. Nyet, nyet and triple nyet!

[rhombus]

I’m optimistic they won’t be able to get their arms around the interweb thingy. It’s too spread out.

I don't share your optimism. All they have to do is nationalize the internet service providers under the guise of free internet for all and wham... lots of sites blocked. If there's ways around that let us all know before it's to late and.... (404 error - sound of crickets chirping)

[olezip]

This system needs to be revised and its resources consolidated and augmented with those of NPR and PBS to create an American World Service that can compete with the BBC and other global broadcasters.

I disagree. The "system" is revising itself. Journalism with substance is flourishing. Yellow journalism is failing as more and more people become aware that they are being manipulated.

Let free enterprise reconfigure the system.

[nathanbedford]

The author as president of Columbia University stands on the shoulders of some very great men like Dwight Eisenhower. Mr. Bullinger, however, does not seem to think as clearly as poor old Ike did even as he was reviled by the left for being stupid. The author conflates the need for information with the need for an establishment press. Yes, the author says:

Free speech and a free press are essential to a dynamic economy.

And in this he is indisputably correct. However, the author plays a trick, because, by his lights there are not enough foreign correspondents covering China, he says Americans do not get the information he thinks they ought to have. So, in a triumph of tautology, he cites the government making a case for government intervention to support his notions of government intervention:

Both the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are undertaking studies of ways to ensure the steep economic decline faced by newspapers and broadcast news does not deprive Americans of the essential information they need as citizens. One idea under consideration is enhanced public funding for journalism.

The problem with the author's syllogism is that when Americans want information they get it. If they want pornography, they get it in abundance. If they want financial information about markets in China or anywhere for that matter, they can find it as easily as mashing Google. When Americans want information bad enough they will pay for. The two places where one can most easily make money on the Internet is with pornography and financial information. It appears that Americans are reluctant to pay much for information about Lindsay Lohan's fingernails.

All liberals always want to substitute their judgment about what is good for society for the judgment of society itself as expressed in the free marketplace. In my lifetime it goes back to, The Affluent Society published at the end of the Eisenhower administration which served up the rationale for The Great Society by telling us Americans were too stupid to control their own money because they squandered it on fins for cars when they should be spending it on day care. Now, we are being told by Tom Friedman that we are too stupid to manage our own money because were the World Is Flat and so, evidently according to Mr. Friedman, is our IQ. In every instance the God Playing leftist wants to substitute his version of what is needful for yours and mine.

The author has written a book, "Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century," in which he is proposing to replace that which is already "uninhibited", "very robust," and certainly "wide-open," with something which is government regulated and narrowed by a Bernoulli tube of establishment gatekeepers. The bankruptcy of those gate keepers who have mismanaged the current system does not equate with the constitutional breakdown of free speech and a free press. A subsidized press by definition cannot be a Free Press anymore than a subsidized university, the author to the contrary notwithstanding, can be a free University. If you think universities are free, try unburdening yourself of some politically incorrect speech on one of them. You might ask Larry Summers how free our leading university really is. Better yet, ask Ann Coulter, she is much more attractive and more worthy of your time and, not incidentally, more likely to give you an informed and honest answer.

The Constitution does not provide a guarantee that a press will be successful only that it will be free of government control. It is always extraordinary to contemplate how liberals can take the very essence of our First Amendment-or any other part of the Constitution for that matter-and stand it directly on its head and make it mean precisely the opposite of what it says. The author wants to make the government the guarantor of the financial success of the press, the inevitable cost of which is what the Constitution seeks to protect-it's freedom, and ours.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Such news comes to us courtesy of British citizens who pay a TV license fee to support the BBC and taxes to support the World Service. The reliable public funding structure, as well as a set of professional norms that protect editorial freedom, has yielded a highly respected and globally powerful journalistic institution.

There are examples of other institutions in the U.S. where state support does not translate into official control. The most compelling are our public universities and our federal programs for dispensing billions of dollars annually for research. Those of us in public and private research universities care every bit as much about academic freedom as journalists care about a free press.

. . . which, patently, is very little indeed when journalists are willing to feed at the government's teat. But then, considering that McCain-Feingold proclaims that journalists have rights to be denied to the people, and that journalists were the primary supporters of McCain-Feingold, we should have known long ago. Freedom of the press is the right of the people to spend their own money to promote their own opinions.

The privilege of certain people to get government pay for promoting their own opinions is the very antithesis of the freedom of the people which the mission statement of the US Constitution

secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity

charges the government to protect.

The U.S. government's international broadcasters, like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, were developed during the Cold War as tools of our anticommunist foreign policy. In a sign of how anachronistic our system is in a digital age, these broadcasters are legally forbidden from airing within the U.S.

This system needs to be revised and its resources consolidated and augmented with those of NPR and PBS to create an American World Service that can compete with the BBC and other global broadcasters. The goal would be an American broadcasting system with full journalistic independence that can provide the news we need. Let's demonstrate great journalism's essential role in a free and dynamic society.

The planted axiom in all of which being the assumption of journalistic objectivity.

News flash!!

"Arguing from the assumption of your own objectivity" is a perfect definition subjectivity.

The writer is so overwhelmingly biased that he has no idea that he is not even attempting to actually be objective.

[thecabal]

Even if I didn’t believe that the mainstream media were ideological whores for the socialist government complex, what sane person would believe that a media financed by the government would be anything but a lapdog of the government? Would the jourbalists bite the hand that feeds them? Of course not.

[thecabal]

And another thing... /wagging finger

Don't these people have the least bit of pride in their work, or any shame at all? Apparently not, as they would rather be kept whores than be independent and competitive.

[mo]

i can’t imagine anybody complaining to Thomas Jefferson, in 1800, that America did’nt have enough journalists in London!!!

[Thrownatbirth]

American World Service

Sounds like a great idea - a leftist, US-bashing propaganda tool on steroids run by unemployed MSM hacks.

[NativeNewYorker]

Mr. Bollinger is president of Columbia University and author of...

He wants our money for his personal enterprises, that's all. Recall Columbia recently won an eminent domain scam, seizing a huge tract of very valuable Manhattan property, with the govt's consent.

Right now, that faction controls the laws, the courts and "legit" use of force. Is it reasonable to expect them to stop grabbing and grabbing?

[LibLieSlayer]

I have a better idea... when the revolution starts... we shoot ALL leftist academons and state run media wh0res.

LLS

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Nice discussion.

The author wants to make the government the guarantor of the financial success of the press, the inevitable cost of which is what the Constitution seeks to protect-it's freedom, and ours.

Not only does "the press" claim to be apart from the people and essentially an unconstitutional title of nobility, "the press" is a singular entity because wire service journalism imposes a financial imperative to go along and get along with the herd. The financial value of the expensive wire service depending as it does on the assumption that the reporter on the other end of the wire is objective . . .

Ping to my #16.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[Da Coyote]

Create a number that represents belief in White House statements.

Divide this number by 1,000.

This now represents belief in statements coming from the GPC (Government Propaganda Corporation).

[tnlibertarian]

So let me get this straight. He is saying that because of all the information out there, people aren't buying HIS information, so the government needs to give him money so that HIS information can compete with all the other information or else there will be no information. Kind of like Yogi Berra saying that downtown (or someplace) is so crowded that no one goes there anymore.

Dude, your business model is no longer viable. Adapt or die.

[9YearLurker]

Bollinger is undoubtedly the most embarrassing of our Ivy League presidents—and that’s saying something!

[DEADROCK]

It is also imperative that the government subsidize the dying combustion-engine car industry because it is being crushed by all those electric cars.

[DEADROCK]

/s

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Blacksmiths, carriage makers, corset manufacturers, paddle wheel ship makers, and of course buggy whip purveyors - all need help too. Help is on the way!

[RoadTest]

Another fox would be given the key to yet another chicken coupe.

[VRW Conspirator]

One idea under consideration is enhanced public funding for journalism.

Perhaps we should enhance public funding of horse whips, 8-track tapes, steam locomotives and leather-bound books also.

One idea under consideration is enhanced public funding for journalism.

Why dance around the message? Just ssy it. This is the only idea he truly favors. BTW, when he states "under consideration"? By whom?

One idea under consideration is enhanced public funding for journalism.

Thomas Paine had to have a network of distributors willing to distribute his words. Today, the internet can distribute for any aspiring Thomas Paine. Why alter it?

[Niteranger68]

Lee...you dumbass. What you are seeking is not called “journalism”, it's called “marketing”. You're in the wrong business.

[PGalt]

Thanks very much for the ping; post; thread. Neo-totalitarianism at work.

OUTSTANDING comments directed toward Lee “Bullinger” (thanks nathanbedford).

BTTT!

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Yet—through a carefully designed system with peer review of grant-making, a strong culture of independence, and the protections afforded by the First Amendment—there have been strikingly few instances of government abuse.

Try to get a grant if your research contradicts global-warming/climate-change dogma.

I dare you.

Same thing will happen to any news organization that doesn't toe the government line.

[DUMBGRUNT]

If Mr. Bollinger would like to preserve or expand the existing system he should promote yellow journalism. Peak sales and the yellow press, better then no sales with the off white press.

Pure news by humans would violate the Turing test. There will always be bias so put it out front! Say it and say it proud!

Green Left Weekly is taken http://www.greenleft.org.au/.

[NY.SS-Bar9]

I always remembered it as TASS and Pravda equating to: “Truth” and “News”

[NY.SS-Bar9]

You have competition and your product sucks.

Change or die.

Any questions?

[Westbrook]

Nope, Isvestia means “News”.

TASS is actually an acronym, in cyrillic TACC, in transliterated Russian, “Telegrafnoye Agentstvo Sovetskovo Soyuza”, which means, in English, “Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union.”

[ForGod'sSake]

Wow, with guys like this running our universities it's no wonder their graduates don't know c'mere from sic'em when they hit the streets. You'd think this guy would have gotten something right in his avalanche of words but he didn't -- zip, zilch, nada! A more complete idiot I've not run across since stumbling across DU some years back. Maybe he's angling for a position in the current administration where he would no doubt feel right at home.

Since we have Government Education and Government Motors, not to mention a blizzard of regulation on just about every other sector of our lives; why not Government Media??? Truth be known, we've been there for decades in practice if not in fact.

[FreedomFlyer]

The Bancroft Prize was awarded in April 2001 by the Trustees of Columbia on the recommendation of a committee of 3 historians, chaired by a Columbia historian.

The Trustees revoked the Bancroft Prize in Dec. 2002 and asked for its $4,000 back.

[FreedomPoster]

I stand corrected on that aspect.

The entire episode was a sad statement on the condition of history scholarship in the U.S.A., and on Columbia. It took them quite a while to rescind the prize, when Clayton Cramer’s proof of out and out lying and deception by Bellesiles was ironclad from the very beginning.

There is substantial real info on the issue at his site.

http://www.claytoncramer.com/unpublished/unpublished.htm