FTC and Journalism

We have discussed the proposals of having Government support journalism before, several times over the past year. Recently the FTC issued a paper suggesting a tax on Internet journalists to support the existing but decaying journalists.

The FTC has announced a meeting on June 15 to review and expand their proposals. They state:

The Federal Trade Commission will hold its third and final workshop on the future of journalism at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on June 15, 2010. Information about the series of workshops can be found at http://www.ftc.gov/opp/workshops/news/index.shtml. An agenda for this third workshop will be posted at a later date.

Consumers are increasingly turning to the Internet for news and information. Advertisers are moving ads to online sites and scaling back on ad buys as a result of the recession, and news organizations are struggling with large debts they took on during better times. As a result, some are questioning how journalism can survive and thrive in the future.

At the June 15 workshop, a small group of experienced journalists, publishers, academics, economists, and other policy experts will compare, contrast, and evaluate the ideas for sustaining journalism that have been set forth in two previous FTC workshops and in a wide variety of reports and conferences. This discussion will help inform potential recommendations to be contained in a report the FTC will release later this fall.

A staff discussion draft that briefly summarizes the state of journalism today, and sets forth the various proposals raised to date, has been posted on the FTC’s website. Through this document, the FTC staff seeks to prompt discussion of whether to recommend policy changes, and, if so, which specific proposals would be most useful, feasible, platform-neutral, resistant to bias, and unlikely to cause unintended consequences in addressing emerging gaps in news coverage. FTC staff anticipates that different workshop participants will criticize or improve some or all proposals, and add ideas of their own. The purpose of the staff discussion draft is precisely to encourage such additional analyses and brainstorming.

This is a highly inappropriate use of Government resources. It is akin to supporting buggy whips when the auto was introduced. It is even worse because it sets the Government up as the supporter of the Press, which can only lead to control.