Bringing their national civics lesson to Loyola Marymount University’s Forum on Media Ethics and Social Responsibility, Robert McChesney and John Nichols found a receptive audience for their “radical and yet traditional idea” – that government must subsidize journalism.
McChesney and Nichols , authors of “The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution That Will Begin the World Again,” told the audience in Ahmanson Auditorium that the loss of serious journalism is threatening democracy. They pointed out that in the past two years newspapers in major cities — Seattle, Denver, Albuquerque, Ann Arbor, Cincinnati — have shut and more than 30,000 journalists have been laid off nationwide. News by press release has blossomed as TV and newspapers turn away from time-consuming, shoe-leather reporting and investigations, instead relying increasingly on canned information.
They argued that without government support of journalism, U.S. voters will not get the information necessary to make informed decisions about their government.
The concept of subsidizing a free press is not novel, McChesney said. It is in use throughout Europe today, and was a key component of the American republic for our first 100 years. The early federal government provided “massive postal subsidies” to newspapers by letting them send their product through the U.S. mail for almost nothing, said McChesney, who is the Gutgsell Professor of Communication at the University of Illinois.
As a percentage of GDP, the equivalent subsidy today would be $30 billion, he said.
Democracies – including Japan, Britain, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Denmark and Switzerland —heavily subsidize public media, while the U.S. spends just $400 million on public broadcasting. An equivalent per capita expenditure in the United States would be in the $20 billion to $35 billion range, said McChesney.
“Journalism is a classic public good,” he said. “It is something we need and something that the free market does not provide.”
More important is the issue of whether journalism today is serving its vital function in a democracy, said Nichols, who is Washington correspondent for The Nation. “Are the people getting the information they need to be their own governor?” he asked, while quipping that these days Americans often know more about Tiger Woods’ mistresses than the Iraq war.
The Founding Fathers knew that information was essential to a democracy, said Nichols. He quoted a letter by James Madison, the fourth president : “A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both.”
The authors were brought to campus by Lawrence Wenner, the Von der Ahe Professor of Communication and Ethics. Some students and faculty bought copies of the book for autographs from Nichols and McChesney.
The authors acknowledged that the tour has gone beyond selling books. “It ceased to be a book tour a long time ago,” said Nichols. “Our purpose is to implant an idea.”
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