McChesney and Nichols, News and democracy, 19 April 2010
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McChesney and Nichols, News and democracy, 19 April 2010.
Introductions (Kaplan, FP board member)
FreePress.org, co-founders
- McChesney, R. Comm prof at UI/Urbana
- Nichols, J. assoc editor Capitol Times, Madison, WI
- The death and life of american journalism
Nichols
- DC "knows there is a crisis", but "does anyone in America care"?
- Journalism, "essential craft of the American experiment ... the only one outlined in the Constitution"
- American journalism "is in complete meltdown" ("no debate among citizens")
- re: Annie Hall joke of food portions/quality
140 newspapers closed last year
- Major dailies in Seattle, Denver, Tucson, Ann Arbor (after 150 years!), etc.
Why newspapers?
- No one ever gave them feedback that radio/TV gives them sufficient journalistic coverage
- Either of national or local
- Not a fetish but an institution, structure
- Accountability
- Responsibility to a community
ASNE
- Recent report,
- Last year: 5800 newspaper ppl lost their jobs
- Good news! This year, only 5300!
Why does this matter?
- Conversation often shifts to national/global coverage
- But journalism ought to be in touch w ppl "where they live"
- This is where the collapse is most devastating
- The conversation is not about journalism as an industry
- It is about democracy
- Of which journalism is an essential component
"[For ppl to be free, they have to be in access of a great deal of journalism, information, popularly accessible. If not, democratic experiment will degenerate into tragedy or farce or both]" -- Madison
What is happening at a local, micro level? (Baltimore)
- Baltimore Sun is a "great local daily"
- Panalopy of various ethnic/interest papers
- Good number of TV/radio stations
- Rich "news ecology" of bloggers
Pew study of Baltimore
- From where do the news stories originate?
- Overwhelmingly from "old media", "traditional media"
- Sun being the primary source
- But Sun was producing
- 33% fewer stories than 10 years ago, and
- 73% fewer than 20 years ago
- Can Internet "fill the void"?
- 96% of original new stories began in newspaper, tv, radio
- 4% originate in new media (including "police tweets")
- Where do the stories come from?
- Citizen tips off the professional journalist
- "Power decides what it wants you to talk about"
- President, CEO, wealthiest person in town, etc. "frame the discussion"
- 86% of the "original new stories" began with "power speaking down"
- 14% came from citizens
Relationship of power to news
- 4 public relations people to 1 journalist
- Journalism is leaving, creating a void
- New media is not filling that void
- Powerful interests (and celebrity news) are filling that void
- 24/7 news programming has very little information
- "you are watching big brother"
- Discussion is "defined so overwhelmingly that there is no discussion"
- Result, "Mass ignorance" and "mass disengagement"
- "Underpinning of democratic discourse is being kicked out from under us"
Crisis?
"A moment of crisis is a moment of opportunity." -- Thomas Paine
- "We have to move quickly, intelligently ... to save democracy"
McChesney
Why write the book?
- Lots of concern
- Despondency
- Wishful thinking ("faith-based solutions"):
- Tech
- Market
Ignorance of our own history
- Solution to the problem: large public subsidies
- People don't accept because they believe that the press has always been subject to the free market
- "Is that how they talked about it back in 1779?"
Myth: journalism is a market enterprise
- Journalism is a "public good" in strict economic terms
- Other public good: defense, public ed, park
- Public goods are things that cannot be provided adequately by the market
- Another example: basic research
- "Digital revolution, internet would not exist without public interest"
- Market is great at "applied research" ("pushing it over the goal line")
- But basic research gets you to the 2 yard line
Anomalous era of ad-supported journalism is ending
- Purely coincidence that classified ads supported journalism
- Once a 20b$ industry
- Advertising only came into the system between mid 19th and mid 20th c.
Go to the origins of journalism
- 1790 - 1870, no advertising, but a rich journalism
- "Extraordinarily massive public subsidies"
Two components to free press
Gov't shouldn't interfere with the product
- No censorship
- No registration
First duty is to ensure that the 4th estate exists
- There must be a press there or else the right to free press is a meaningless right
- "You must create a free press in order to have a free press"
Subsidies
Post office subsidy
- Post office established 1790
- Job of the post office was to be distribution network for the press
- 80% of all fed employees
- 95% of all material were newspapers
- What should we charge the newspapers?
- One extreme position: very minimum, flat charge. $0.01 per paper to anywhere in the country.
- Another extreme position: free of charge. Any charge would be a kind of censorship. (Madison)
- Position 1 won the debate
- One exception: weekly newspapers got free postage in their counties
- Abolitionist newspapers benefited and the movement was supported by this subsidy
What would this cost today?
- Building off of research in the 1840s
- U.S. would have to spend 30b$ to equal the 1840s press subsidy
- Presently spending 400m$ on public broadcasting
What has SCOTUS said on this matter?
- Landmark cases
- AP, 1945
- Pentagon paper, 1971
- "Free press is a structural requirement"
Is this totalitarianism?
- If the gov't contributes materially to the press, won't it compromise press freedom?
- How does this work in .ca, .ie., .uk, .jp, etc.?
- Massive public subsidies for journalism
- To match this, we'd spend 8-10b$/year
Are these countries democratic?
- Economist evaluates countires every year, Annual Democracy Index
- The top countries every year have the largest public subsidies
- Freedom House, anti-censorship, pro-privacy, very sensitive to government to intervention
- Even sensitive to chilling effects
- Most free press is the same list as in the Economist
- On both indexes, the U.S. is quite low
This is a solvable problem
- Look at our history
- Consider press as a public good
- Not easy but not lost
- Greater awareness that gov't subsidies for press are something "not to fear but to embrace"
Where do we get the money?
- Commercial entities get monopoly licenses from FCC because they have public responsibilities
- Industry estimates 10b$ in public interest broadcasting
- Could the government ask for 5b$ to support local journalism and tell the industry to keep the 5b$?
Threat
- Losing all your journalism is every bit as dangerous as a military attack
Q&A
Is FP asking for a "bail out" for millionaire owners of newspapers?
- Cannot give money to existing media owners
- Spending money on programs like "Write for America", young journalism program
- Entertain the notion of "paying them to leave"
How would the money be distributed?
- Transparent system with an objective standard
- Compare w post office subsidy
- Abolitionist papers and pro-slavery papers alike qualified
- Holland has 5 separate public broadcasting stations
Is this only a "lovely dream" given the political circumstances?
- Is there no hope for democracy in America?
- Citizens United ruling
- Comcast ruling
- Not spending any more money
- Shifting spending from existing comm budget
- Could you change "The Voice of America"? Have it begin to broadcast in the U.S.?
- Considerable amount of money spent on govt PR?
Jump offs
- Rod Benson, NYU, subsidies empower journalism to be critical
- Henry Waxman, "very good on this issue"
- Republican congresspeople interested in postage for periodicals to rural communities
