'Reinventing Journalism,' Courtesy Of the Censors' Cabal, Part One

The slings and arrows of outrageous legislation, proposed and enacted, fly at you in fusillades from every direction. The enemy lurches towards you, massive, determined, unstoppable. The cavalry you expected to throw him back in confusion has decided to sit this one out. Betrayed, you’re on your own.

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In this case, it is the National Rifle Association that has literally decided to sit this one out. After swearing that the freedom and right to bear arms is also dependent on the freedom of speech, it has decided to recuse itself from the First Amendment objections in exchange for a protected status. It will not oppose H.R. 1575, the Disclose Act, sponsored by Maryland Democrat Christopher Van Hollen. The purpose of this legislation is to counter the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case, which freed corporations and non-profits from many of the restrictive speech provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. It was a qualified victory for the First Amendment.

The NRA’s first obligation must be to its members and to its most ardent defense of firearms freedom for America’s lawful gun owners….The NRA will continue to fight for its right to speak out in defense of the Second Amendment. Any efforts to silence the political speech of NRA members will, as has been the case in the past, be met with strong opposition.

The rest of you can pound sand.

The first evidence of this administration’s true intentions was the overt but clumsy invitation to Americans last summer to report via email to the White House any “fishy”anti-administration talk by other Americans. Obama received a stinging, well-deserved rebuke, one delivered chiefly in the Internet’s blogosphere and which spread like slow molasses to the mainstream media, which did not welcome a scolding of their copacetic favorite and sometime messiah.

President Barack Obama and Company haven’t given up. They and Congress believe their “business” is to “run” the country, and that includes filtering and censoring what Americans read, think, and say. Negative portrayals of Obama and his administration and his ilk in Congress are considered to be destructive, abrasive and secularly “blasphemous.”

The FTC has searched for the means to “save” journalism — that is, the journalism it approves of. That is, the Commission is searching for a justification for meddling. It concedes that Internet journalism exists, but by implication discounts it as “true” journalism. After all, it isn’t regulated or subsidized by the government; ergo, its news is highly suspect.

One of those means is to tax the blogosphere and force it to subsidize its competitors. Another is to establish a “public fund” to subsidize newspapers, other approved media, and journalists’ salaries by taxing the broadcast spectrum, consumer electronics, commercial advertising, and cell phone ISPs. Still another is to rewrite IRS rules to better protect newspapers and broadcast stations from the Internet.



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Nine pages of The Federal Trade Commission Staff Discussion Draft of Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism (the Draft are devoted to how the IRS can further perpetuate “traditional” journalism (pp. 21-29).

Indeed, the IRS plays a heavy-handed role in what may be defined as public interest-oriented news and mere “commercial” news. If The New York Times, for example, claims that it is chiefly a “public service” and can prove it caters to the “public interest,” while editorializing is just a sideline, then it qualifies for tax exemptions or credits (in other words, a subsidy or tax break enjoyed by few other papers). If a newspaper’s chief purpose is to promulgate an ideology and is not published by a certified non-profit organization (and it’s the IRS that decides what is a “non-profit” organization), then it gets no exemptions or credits.

The FTC Draft is essentially a 47-page excursion into fantasyland. Journalism has already “reinvented” itself without any government support. How many newspapers, for example, do not now have free or advertiser-paid or subscriber-paid online daily editions? The only “support” the government can legitimately provide is to stay out of it.

The FTC staff discussions, however, created a smorgasbord of policy options to recommend (to whom? Congress? The White House? Cass Sunstein? Henry Waxman?). All of them require government action. Besides, the Draft assures the public, the report only seeks

… to prompt discussion of whether to recommend policy changes to support the ongoing “reinvention” of journalism, and, if so, which specific proposals appear most useful, feasible, platform-neutral, resistant to bias, and unlikely to cause unintended consequences in addressing emerging gaps in news coverage.

The FTC has only discussed “suggestions,” not concrete plans of action.

“These are nothing more or less than information gathering meetings,” says FTC spokesman Peter Kaplan, who adds that the agency has no current plans other than to publish the hearing results this fall. Beyond that, points out Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, protestations aside, government has played a role in encouraging a healthy press from the dawn of the republic.

“First, we had an ink subsidy and then we had a postal subsidy both of which helped a free press to flourish,” she says.

Yes, the government played a role in encouraging the press — by largely not meddling in it except for the “ink subsidy” and the postal subsidy. I could find no reference anywhere about an “ink subsidy,” unless Graves was referring to a tax break on printer’s ink purchases or to a tariff or excise tax break on its importation.

More tomorrow…

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