In How to Save Journalism John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney write , "Perhaps the strongest contemporary case for journalism subsidies is provided by other democracies. The evidence shows that subsidies do not infringe on liberty or justice; they correlate with the indicators of a good society. In The Economist 's annual Democracy Index, which evaluates nations on the basis of the functioning of government, civic participation, civil liberties, political culture and pluralism, the six top-ranked nations maintain some of the most generous journalism subsidies on the planet.... Freedom House ranks the heavy subsidizing nations of Northern Europe in the top six spots on its 2008 list of nations with the freest news media. The United States ties for twenty-first."
In reality, any wall separating a publicly subsidized press from political interference must be porous: we mustn't fund traitors who support Al Qaeda or crackpots who promote Holocaust denial theories. But the risks of interference are overstated, and the alternative to government funding seems dire: news and opinion increasingly sold to the highest bidder or omitted entirely in favor of speculation, hearsay, spin, and entertainment.
America under-funds public broadcasting
According to a report by the Center for American Progress, Germany and Great Britain spend over $80 per capita on public broadcasting annually; Canada and Australia spend $28; the US spends a measly $1.70. In 2007 the U.S. spent about $480 million in total on public broadcasting. That's about the same as what it costs the military to occupy Iraq for two and a half days and a small fraction of the funds used to bailout banks and Wall Street. Yet for years Republicans have been trying to cut even that funding.
Nichols and McChesney report that America's founders understood the vital importance of the press and gave large subsidies to newspapers and magazines in the form of reduced postal rates. Nichols and McChesney write, "If, for example, the United States had devoted the same percentage of its GDP to journalism subsidies in 2009 as it did in the 1840s, we calculate that the allocation would have been $30 billion. In contrast, the federal subsidy last year for all of public broadcasting, not just journalism, was around $400 million.... Only an extreme libertarian or a nihilist would argue to end all public support of higher education to eliminate the threat of [political interference by educators]... Likewise, the government does not tax church property or income, which is in effect a massive subsidy of organized religion. Yet the government has not favored particular religions or required people to hold religious views."
There are several ways to finance journalism from public funds.
The public option
One model for funding journalism is to fund independent, government-sponsored news agencies, such as PBS, NPR, BBC in Britain, and NHK in Japan.
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