Interview about government funding for journalism

Interview about government funding for journalism by Mathew Ingram, Columbia Journalism Review, January 23, 2020. https://galley.cjr.org/public/conversations/-LzIH0c50Lza0g3nOFh1 Mathew Ingram Talking with Victor Pickard about government funding of journalism It's not news that most journalistic outlets -- with the exception of a chosen few like The New York Times -- are in the midst of a funding crisis. We've had discussions here on Galley before about a variety of models, including venture capital, nonprofit status, and even experiments with equity co-operative ownership. Another potential option is some form of government funding. In New Jersey, for example, the state has agreed to fund a nonprofit entity called the Civic Information Consortium that will hand out grants to various publishers provided they meet certain tests. And in Canada, the federal government has set aside $600 million for a combination of tax breaks and outright grants. But does government money come with too many strings attached and too many potential conflicts of interest? Or is it better than nothing? These are some of the questions we wanted to work through this week, so we've invited a range of different experts, critics, and observers to join us -- including CUNY journalism professor Jeff Jarvis (whose interview is here: https://galley.cjr.org/public/conversations/...), as well as Molly de Aguiar of the Independence Public Media Foundation (whose interview is here: https://galley.cjr.org/public/conversations/...), Emily Bell of the Tow Center (whose interview is here: https://galley.cjr.org/public/conversations/...) and Mike Rispoli of Free Press in New Jersey, who helped put together a public funding structure that is being funded by the state. His interview is here: https://galley.cjr.org/public/conversations/... Our next guest is Victor Pickard, who is a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication whose research focuses on the history and political economy of media institutions, media activism, and the politics and normative foundations of media policy. Previously, Victor taught at New York University and worked in research at the media reform organization Free Press and the think tank the New America Foundation. He also taught media policy at the University of Virginia and served as a Policy Fellow for Congresswoman Diane Watson. Victor, thanks very much for doing this. I wonder if you could start by giving us a general sense of your thoughts on this question of government funding of journalism. Good idea? Bad idea? There seem to be passionate advocates on both sides of this issue. Victor Pickard 17 hours ago Hi Mathew - thanks so much for inviting me to join this great discussion. I think that in general it is a good idea. Of course, critical details matter a lot here. In my view, the future of journalism depends on public investments, and that the government will have to play a major role in facilitating these investments. But this does not mean that government should directly dictate decisions around content, ideology, etc. Proper safeguards must be in place - these decisions must be made democratically with constant public engagement. The government is involved in our news media all the time - to argue that it isn't is a libertarian fantasy - but the question is *how* government should be involved. Too often the government has aided corporate interests over public interests, but history also tells us that media subsidies are American as apple pie. The government should always have an affirmative duty to maintain the necessary infrastructures and resources that a functional, free press requires--especially when the market fails to support the journalism we need. Our democracy depends on it. Mathew Ingram Thanks, Victor. What kinds of things do you think the government should be doing? Should there be tax breaks for media, for example? Or should the big tech companies be taxed to provide revenue for journalistic endeavours, as Emily Bell and others would argue? Should there be a new PBS-style entity for the digital age? Victor Pickard I think we should be discussing all of the above. Certainly tax incentives could help entice more struggling newspapers to transition into low- or nonprofit status (as we are already seeing with papers like the Salt Lake Tribune). But it is hard to imagine how we can tackle the journalism crisis without a large central public media fund that could address news deserts and various unmet information and communication needs. That is what I think we should focus more attention on - how do we create that fund? Ideally, we would simply massively increase our expenditures on public media full stop. (whether we build on the PBS model or replace it with something else is a open question, but at the very least we would want to structurally reform it to provide for our information needs in the digital age across all types of media and platforms). Maintaining a public media infrastructure is such a priority it should be seen as something that is guaranteed. But failing that, government could help facilitate a number of revenue streams into one large fund. There are a lot of ways we can do this that many of us have been advocating for years. In addition to taxing the platforms (and other information monopolies), we could raise funds from tax vouchers, levees on communication devices, repurposing international broadcasting subsidies, proceeds from spectrum sales, etc. We also could be leveraging already-existing public infrastructures such as post offices, libraries, and public broadcasting stations. Foundations could be pooling their money and incubating a new public media system (as some major foundations did in building American public broadcasting). The ideas are there - from our own history and from the best practices of other democratic nations - but the imagination and political will has been absent. Mathew Ingram Thanks, Victor. I know the BBC model (or a similar one present in other European countries) is often held up as a model, especially since it is funded in one of the ways you describe -- by a tax of sorts on devices -- but there are those like Jeff Jarvis who say this model is critically flawed, and subject to all kinds of pressure from governments and individuals like Boris Johnson. At the extreme, they say, these models lead to the equivalent of state media. What do you think? Victor Pickard Of course I hear that all of the time - especially from people like Jarvis - but these models are certainly less flawed than the commercial model that is currently collapsing in on itself. Strong public media systems continue to operate around the world in countries that are not sliding into totalitarianism. We know from numerous studies that public media often compare favorably to private outlets in terms of independence and critical coverage of governments, and they also correlate positively with strong democracies. In other words, much opposition to public media systems is ideological and not grounded in empirical evidence. Nonetheless, there are legitimate concerns about state capture – just as there should be concerns about commercial capture – and yet many democracies have figured out how to make this work. I'm living in London at the moment and many of my British friends are very critical of the BBC - but they will defend it tooth and nail against any attempt to dismantle it. Nonetheless, I don't think we should simply try to replicate the BBC in the US. It is useful to mention it rhetorically simply to expand Americans' political imagination about what is possible, but any new public media system we build in the US should be truly public -- publicly owned and operated and governed according to democratic decision making with constant community input. Mathew Ingram 17 hours ago Thanks, Victor -- we are just about out of time, so one more question if you don't mind. At the top, I mentioned the Canadian government's journalism fund, which is $300 million or so that is flowing to media outlets based on the recommendations of a group of industry representatives. Do you have any thoughts about that kind of approach? One criticism is that some of the money still winds up going to existing entities whose financial problems may have more to do with bad choices than with industry disruption. Victor Pickard 16 hours ago Yes, I've been trying to follow that case study and I write about it in my recent book. I think there's legitimate criticism that in some cases it helps prop up the very publishers and investors who are complicit in driving journalism into the ground (a somewhat similar criticism has been leveled at what the BBC has done -- allocating resources toward local journalism that ends up subsidizing for-profit news outlets). But I think this is fixable. For example, we could set criteria for such subsidies that they go only to nonprofit entities. Nonetheless, I think the Canadian model, despite its flaws, is an important proof of concept. There is simply no commercial model that will sufficiently provide for the level of journalism that our democracy requires. Given this massive and systemic market failure, government must intervene. I hope to see more governments step up and make the public investments that our news media - and our democratic societies - need to survive. The choice ahead of us is a stark one: either we will make public investments in local journalism, or we must accept a future where entire regions and communities will lack sufficient news media. If we hope to have any semblance of a democratic society, the correct path forward should be obvious. Mathew Ingram Thanks Victor. Appreciate you doing this, and hopefully you can join us for the roundtable on Friday with all our interviewees. Thanks again