Waxman Wants A Media Bailout
December 2, 2009 / 1:48 pm • By Dr. Melissa ClouthierFrom Accuracy In Media’s Danny Glover:
The California Democrat, who chairs the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, didn’t say it quite so bluntly, but his point was clear. “Government’s going to have to be involved, in one way or the other,” to save journalism from an ongoing “market failure” that will only worsen without intervention, Waxman said.
He spoke at the second day of an FTC workshop on how journalism can survive in the Internet era.
Waxman bemoaned the demise of newspapers across the country, including in Denver and Seattle, and warned that the troubling media trends will continue. “This recent depression in the media sector is not cyclical,” Waxman said. “It is structural.”
“Congress can’t impose a solution” to that structural problem, he said. But the government should partner with the media industry to ensure a sound future for journalism. Waxman praised the record of “independent” reporting in U.S. history and said it has implications for democracy.
“There needs to be a consensus within the media industry and the larger community it serves” before the government acts, Waxman said. “We have to figure out together how to preserve that kind of reporting.”
How are all these bailouts not takeovers turning the country into a socialist state where even the newspapers are owned by the government?
2 Responses to “Waxman Wants A Media Bailout”
December 2 2009 / 6:29 pm
Reply
> Waxman praised the record of “independent” reporting in U.S. history and said it has implications for democracy.
The mantle of independent reporting in the USA isn’t carried by corporate media giants — it’s carried by bloggers.
Which of these two more closely resembles Ben Franklin and his journalistic peers — The (New York Times Corporation), or (Dr. Clothier, No Oil For Pacifists, Dr. Sanity, and Fausta)??
Crap, even include garbage like The Daily Kos and Firedoglake if you want in the latter. It’s still the heritage of independent thought and action, rather than a top-down enforced heirarchy of edited positions.
December 3 2009 / 2:08 pm
Reply
If they want to bail out “journalism” the Breitbart, Ms. Giles, Beck, Mrs. Clouthier, et al should be getting all the money. THEY are doing what all the big newspapers USED to do.
But then that’s not what Wax-me-man is talking about, now is it?