The Case For Government-Funded Journalism

By Derek Thompson, an associate editor at The Atlantic, Published in the Washington Post
What should we call dumb news stories that inspire smart debates? Sarah Palin's "death panel" comment was self-refudiating, but it galvanized a fruitful discussion about rationing Medicare spending and end-of-life choices. Rep. Joe Wilson's "you lie" outburst was a silly break in decorum, but it inspired some intelligent takes on the responsibility of government to undocumented immigrants.

You could say the same about the GOP's effort to punish NPR for firing Juan Williams by cutting funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. On the one hand, this is political theater, and it's not a terribly precise performance, at that. (The CPB doesn't directly support NPR. Instead, it funds between 10 and 16 percent of public radio stations that pay NPR for programming.)

On the other hand, maybe we should take this debate seriously. Does it make sense for government to support the news? I lean toward saying yes.
Your first objection might be: Derek, you can't trust government-supported journalism to critically cover government. My answer would be, maybe you can't. But everybody else seems to. Publicly supported media like the BBC, PBS and NPR are more trusted than "independent" news like Fox or MSNBC. If we think publicly supported news is discredited by its relationship to government, we seem to consider privately supported news even more discredited by the race to the bottom to attract an audience for its ads.
Okay, you respond, but that's a cheap response. Capitalism has to allow for winners and losers. We don't bail out florists or hot dog vendors who go bankrupt. What's so special about the news?

Well, news isn't like flowers or sausages. It's more like universities and research, which are publicly supported without much controversy because they're seen as offering wide benefits that cannot be captured in profit. As my friend Conor Clarke put it, "the government can and should close the gap between the individual value and the social value." Articles about cars and celebrities regularly attract more attention with less effort than articles about foreign affairs and public policy. I'm sure Nick Denton could make a compelling argument that each individual viewer is 100% justified in preferring to read about McLarens than Medicare. But is society better off if each individual viewer makes that choice?

It's becoming clear that somebody has to close the gap between the great need and small demand for in-depth reporting. Maybe it's a foundation, maybe it's one rich guy, and maybe it's the government. All of three benefactors could theoretically compromise news-gathering, but I don't see any hard proof that one is so much worse than the others. Convince me otherwise?