One model for funding journalism is to fund independent, government-sponsored news agencies, such as PBS, NPR, BBC in Britain, and NHK in Japan.
This is not a suggestion for "single payer" journalism. Private media companies would continue to operate. We'd just be setting up a complementary and competing "public option", similar to the public option for health care.
The hybrid option
Another option is to fund not a monolithic national news source, like the BBC, but rather multiple competing news sources. Two analogues are public financing for campaigns, in which any candidate with sufficient support obtains government funding, and Medicare: public funding with private delivery. Similarly, under the hybrid approach, a producer of investigative journalism could obtain government funding, via grants or tax benefits, provided it demonstrates sufficient professionalism and endorsement by consumers.
President Obama recently expressed openness to a bailout of struggling news organizations. He said he might support tax breaks to news organizations willing to restructure as nonprofits.
Compared to the public option, the hybrid option has the advantage of promoting a greater diversity of viewpoints. It also builds on the expertise and infrastructure of existing media outlets.
Libertarian qualms, progressive responses
A libertarian would argue as follows: Government is inefficient, and it's usually corrupted by special interests. Furthermore, if there is demand for news and investigative journalism, people will be willing to pay for it. Indeed, Americans donated over a billion dollars for the 2008 elections. So why don't people just pay, or donate, to the news sources which best match their political persuasions and self-interests?
First of all, it's worth repeating: a strong independent press is a public good, like the police, and unless people are forced to pay, via taxes, they will freeload on others.
Second, people don't always act in their self-interest, especially when the benefits are neither immediate nor concrete. In fact, many people don't realize that journalism matters.
Third, I question whether government is necessarily or usually less efficient than private corporations. Government-funded health care in many industrialized countries is both cheaper and more effective than America's market-based system. Medicare in the US has lower overheads than private insurance, and VA health care is excellent. Nor are private companies immune to corruption, waste, and incompetence; consider Enron, AIG, GM, Wall Street, banks, and the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.
For example, a former Editor in Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, writes of the pharmaceutical industry: "Instead of being an engine of innovation, it is a vast marketing machine. Instead of being a free market success story, it lives off government-funded research and monopoly rights." See The Horrifying Hidden Story Behind Drug Company Profits and The Truth about the Drug Companies. The insurance companies are no better.
Americans need to stop believing conservative talking points about the inevitable inefficiency and corruption of government. Besides, from 2000 until 2006, when conservatives controlled Congress and the White House, inefficiency and corruption flourished. (Indeed, the mismanagement was in many cases intentional.) In any case, the fact that government is sometimes corrupt and inefficient is no reason to minimize government, any more than the fact that people misuse medicines is in itself sufficient reason to eliminate medicines.
Or, dear conservative friend, how about guns? People sometimes use guns to kill innocents, just as government sometimes is corrupt and inefficient. Shouldn't we then, by your logic, minimize the availability of guns?
Government is often corrupted by private corporations. Why not then eliminate private corporations?
We need to fix government, not minimize it.
