Tag: freedom of the press

Obamacrats Eye Bailout of Print Media

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France, the model upon which Obama is reshaping America into mediocracy and public obeisance to government, has already decided that its print media are ailing and needing of a bailout, so the government is injecting millions of Euros into the industry’s advertising pages.

Poor print media. Hit on one flank by the cyber-reality of free competition and the concomitant loss of paying readers, and on the other by the flight of classified advertisers to free sources like Craigslist and display advertisers to online resources, they hardly know what to do. Why not turn to the guy whose elected they mandated through their pages?

Obama, of course, is more than willing to oblige. He’s having trouble silencing Fox News and other critics through the traditional Democratic devices of mockery and demonization, so why not own a few newspapers and magazines here and there, at least figuratively speaking? (Probably a waste of money, though, since the traditional media are already his lapdogs.)

Argentina has a long history of supporting its print media through the purchase of advertising. Problem is, as government ad dollars rise, the print media’s watchdog goes to sleep and critical stories recede from the pages of the newspapers. This is what a study by the Neiman Journalism Lab showed:

Their analysis found a ‘huge correlation’ between, in any given month, how much money went to a newspaper and how much corruption coverage appeared on its front page. For example, if the government ad revenue in a month increased by one standard deviation — around $70,000 U.S. — corruption coverage would decrease by roughly half of a front page.

Many people today probably take newspapers for granted, but it was once again Thomas Jefferson who summed up the correlation between press and freedom best: "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."

Of course, it was also Jefferson who foresaw our nation’s eventual Frenchification: "When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe."

Sacre bleu!