State Run Media: Coming Soon To A Newspaper Near You
Recently the US Senate discussed bailouts for the nation’s newspapers, including the possible creation of a government training program for reporters. In some parts of the country local government is already propping up newspapers in the name of “economic development.” But over in Europe, as usual, they’re way ahead of America when it comes to the audacity of big government.
The Dutch government is actually paying reporters direction, and in France they’re subsidizing demand for newspapers:
The Dutch government is planning to spend 4 million euros (over $5.6 million) to pay the salaries of 60 young journalists to work on otherwise commercially funded regional and national newspapers across the country.
Dutch media minister Ronald Plasterk has outlined a plan to fund two “government journalists” to work on each of the Netherlands’ 30 daily newspapers. ...
The Dutch move follows French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s promise to provide 600 million euros ($850m) in emergency aid to France’s failing newspaper industry and supply every 18-year-old with a year’s free subscription to the paper of their choice in an effort to boost reading habits.
Journalists are important no doubt, as is a free and independent press. But a press corps that is dependent upon the government for aid and subsidy is hardly free and independent. And that’s the problem. A press corps beholden to the government does the public at large little good.
Besides, who said that newspapers were so bloody important that they must be propped up at the public’s expense when the public clearly isn’t buying them? As Thomas Jefferson once said, “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
