"Government Coming to the Aid of Journalism - A Bad Idea"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“Government Coming to the Aid of Journalism – A Bad Idea”

July 22, 2010

Lee Bollinger, the President of Columbia University (and recently named to head the New York Federal Reserve), wrote an op-ed in the July 14th issue of the Wall Street Journal, in which he argued the need for traditional media to have access to public funds. In addition to being president, as a First Amendment scholar, he teaches a course at Columbia, “Freedom of Speech and Press”. His op-ed, therefore, struck me as bizarre.

His argument is predicated on the concept, as he wrote: “The proliferation of communication outlets has fractured the base of advertising and readers. Newsrooms have shrunk dramatically and foreign [news] bureaus have been decimated.” His concern is that the internet is having as transformational an impact on communication as did the printing press in the middle of the 15th century. Being a skilled lawyer, he lays out the fear that many have about the public funding of a free press. He writes: “Can it be trusted when the state helps pay for it?”

His view is yes. For supporting evidence, he refers to the billions of dollars dispensed by federal research programs to public and private universities, and that academic freedom is every bit as important to those in education as a free press is to journalists. Mr. Bollinger discusses the irony that our traditional press has become increasingly dependent on international news services, many of which are state supported: the BBC, China’s CCTV, Xinhua news and Qatar’s Al Jazeera. He writes: “We should think about American journalism as a mixed system, where the mission is to get the balance right.” But he provides no clue as to how to get the balance right, or who would make such a determination. Does Mr. Bollinger really expect the reader to believe these foreign news agencies do not have biases? Do NPR and PBS conform to his opinions to such an extent that he cannot see the bias in their reporting? As for the state assuming some of the costs, Mr. Bollinger neglects to tell us how, once the nose of the camel is under the tent, we prevent the rest of the body from following.

He concludes his essay with a grand and idealistic statement with which no one could disagree: “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.” Grandiloquent words, but empty.

Even more than bizarre, I found Mr. Bollinger’s comments chilling. It is as though George Orwell’s “Big Brother” walked out of the pages of Nineteen Eighty-Four and onto the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. He has spent most of his career within the cocoons of universities and comes across as a man unaware that millions of people may legitimately disagree with him and his ideas. His analogy with university funding is telling and unsurprising, as colleges are overwhelmingly dominated by liberals.

However to my mind, the principal problem is that his argument is based on a false premise. He suggests [though he is too circumspect to use such a term] that the news has become contaminated by the opinions of hundreds of thousands of bloggers and cable operators, many of whom, most likely, have opinions at odds with his own. Of course they have opinions and are not shy about voicing them. Such has always been the case. All news is biased, even that that pretends not to be. Readers and viewers must be skeptical and need to read a number of sources to acquire informed opinions. Skepticism should be nurtured in universities like Columbia, so that the views of professors are not accepted as dogma. Universities, as a group, offer far less diversity than is available on the internet. Does Mr. Bollinger truly believe that the New York Times or CBS are not prejudiced? Of course they are. The history of newspapers includes the history of muckraking. It is inherent to our democracy. The internet is a relatively new medium and people are learning their way around it. In many respects it is chaotic. But thanks to search sites such as Google and Microsoft’s Bing, research has become noticeably easier. The internet can be used to gain knowledge. It can reinforce one’s opinions, or can be used to question long-held beliefs. The pamphleteers who wrote in the early days of our democracy were a precursor to today’s blogs, multiplied millions of times.

Traditional news sources would be far better off adapting to new technologies, than looking for subsidies. If they are unable to adapt, should it be the responsibility of taxpayers to save them? Joseph Schumpeter’s doctrine of creative destruction may be outmoded in today’s environment, but it is the way capitalism has developed and worked with enormous success over the years. Rupert Murdoch, in a December interview in the Guardian, noted that the Wall Street Journal has a million paying subscribers to their on-line paper. He believes that internet users will pay for content. If people won’t pay for content from the New York Times, and I have no reason to believe that they will not, isn’t that a message? Today there are 134,000 apps (many of which are news related) available for the I-phone, with an average cost of $1.56. People are paying for content.

The brokerage industry went through a dynamic and trying time in 1975 when fixed commissions were eliminated as of May 1st of that year. Quite properly, no subsidies were made available to stock brokers. Some failed; a few thrived. As for journalism today, there is no dearth of news; in fact there is a surfeit. It may be opinionated, but as I mentioned before, all news is edited. The news may not conform to what Mr. Bollinger feels is appropriate, but the American public has never before had the opportunity to be so well informed. And that is due to the proliferation of cable shows and the ubiquity of the internet, all of which are surviving without any help from Uncle Sam.