In a new interview with
Rolling Stone magazine, President Obama
admits that media bias is a problem. “The golden age of an
objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our
history.”
Obama was addressing a question about Fox News, but it’s
the rest of the old media that are the problem. And that problem
begins even before journalists get out of school. Since so many in
the media have supported the president, perhaps they will heed his
complaint and learn from it.
Columbia University President Lee Bollinger’s
July 14 commentary in the Wall Street
Journal is a classic example of how bad things have gotten in
journalism. Bollinger actually confused freedom of the press with
freedom to oppress. The man who heads up a college with one of the
most well-known journalism schools actually argued against freedom
of the press.
A free press is a foundation of a free society. For any
university president to argue against it would seem unusual. When
it’s also the head of the Columbia School of Journalism, then
people on both left and the right have reason to scratch their
heads in bewilderment.
Bollinger has called for federal funding of the media in a
piece with the terrifying headline: “Journalism Needs Government
Help.” He advocates for the creation of an “American World Service
that can compete with the BBC and other global broadcasters.” And
he wants government to pay for it.
This is not just a bad idea, it’s a dangerous one.
Bollinger naively thinks that government can serve the roles of
guardian and supporter of the free press without endangering the
very freedom he claims to regard.
To make his case that the U.S. needs to “strengthen our
public broadcasting role in the global arena,” Bollinger cites
state-run operations in Communist China, Qatar’s al Jazeera and the
BBC, all with their own biases. State control, propaganda and spin
are the new models for American journalism according to the man in
charge of one of the most prestigious journalism schools in the
United States.
But Bollinger’s commentary piece was only a hint at his
disturbing agenda for the news. His book
Uninhibited, Robust, and
Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New
Century is actually far more alarming. It is a
treatise on how government should control media. That’s a position
also embraced by the current administration, from the FCC to
looking at the future of the entire news industry.
In furtherance of a “free press,” the book calls for an
“end to the regulation of ‘indecent’ languages and images in
broadcast programming.” He is a social libertine, perfectly
comfortable to have full nudity or foul language at any time on the
broadcast networks with millions of children in the audience. The
overwhelming majority of parents object to this smut on the
airwaves they own. Bollinger wants the networks to be free… of the
public.
At the same time he wants to end regulation that protects
families, especially children, Bollinger calls for the Fairness
Doctrine to be restored. Any attempts to resurrect that failed and
censorial doctrine should offend a press advocate like Bollinger.
But his intent is clearly designed to inhibit speech with which he
doesn’t agree. He adds that “we need a renewed national debate
about how to help make broadcasting more of a medium for meaningful
public discussion.” Apparently, talk radio and TV aren’t performing
to the Bollinger standard. Radio especially is driven entirely by
public demands, and public tastes. These, however, are not
“meaningful” enough. So again: The public be damned.
His book goes further into governmental control of
content, adding that “the FCC should now also require or encourage
broadcasters to cover international and global issues.” It’s up to
the FCC to tell ABC, CBS and NBC or even cable TV and radio
networks what news they need to cover? In the old Soviet Union
perhaps — but not here.
That’s where Bollinger truly goes off the tracks —
government control. Along with content control, he wants government
to have funding authority over the media. “First and foremost, we
must develop a better system of public funding of the press,” he
wrote. Then Bollinger chastises journalists for daring to oppose
such a plan:
[T]here is a perception that the press is not publicly
funded and, at least among print journalists, a sense that
government funding is antithetical to the spirit of an independent
press. This view needs to change…
He wants government “to create public funding grants to
help finance the operations of foreign bureaus.” Those grants would
be so extensive, they’d even include money for security.
To keep the tradition of separation between the business
side and news alive, he proposes the possibility of a “system for
peer review.” The same peers who have guided journalism down a path
of economic disaster would get to decide on billions of dollars in
new taxpayer funding. The public’s voice is no longer important. It
is what this Star Chamber of “peer review” elites deem to be
important. It is the antithesis of a free press.
Instead of being laughed out of the industry, Bollinger
has proven support. Top people in the media are increasing calls to
have government bail them out because “the financial viability of
the U.S. press has been shaken to its core,” to use Bollinger’s
words. In other words, when journalism enterprises fail because of
a lack of public support, they need to be rescued — by taking the
public’s money through forced taxation.
Groups like Free Press on the left give strong support to
that cause because it isn’t just about money, it’s about control
and their liberal agenda. Two of their leading lights, Robert
McChesney and John Nichols, want to “save” journalism and have
tried to rationalize an annual $35 billion — yes billion
— budget for government-funded media.
All policy roads lead to Washington. In recent months, the
Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission,
and both houses of Congress have held hearings on the future of
journalism. Such hearings include the occasional bright light like
media author Jeff Jarvis, who told the government to “get off my
lawn.” But rational minds are few and far between.
At the heart of the debate, some of the most well-known
names in the news business are pushing for government intervention
in the press. Bollinger serves as a director for The Washington
Post Company and as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board. Former
Washington Post editor Len Downie, now a vice president
with the paper, sounded like Bollinger in his call for
direct
government funding for journalism. Downie
hasn’t just proposed “A national Fund for Local News,” he’s
proposed taxation (fees) on “telecom users, broadcast licensees or
Internet service providers.” That’s a perpetual bailout.
The Knight Commission issued a report
with similar conclusions and ambitious goals. Its
recommendations included: government funding national broadband, a
potentially $350 billion cost, as well as tax breaks, legal
benefits and more for journalists. An “Executive Director’s Memo”
held out its hand for cash as a “potential action item.” “Authorize
increased support for public media, including increases for news
and information at the local level,” read the report.
That commission was filled with a powerful mix of
political and media figures. It was co-chaired by former Bush
Solicitor General Ted Olson and Marissa Mayer of Google. Others
members included NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous, former
Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun Editor John
Carroll and former FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell. Another 80
“informal advisors” show the reach of the commission across all
types of media, journalism organizations and schools, as well as
those from Free Press.
That is the makings of a lobby powerful enough to balloon
the $420 million the Corporation for Public Broadcasting received
this year into something truly monstrous. Even before they rake in
the new government cheese, NPR and PBS have proven themselves
consistently left-wing, pro-government operations — and they are
cited by Bollinger as his examples of a “free press.”
PBS and NPR are filled with liberals like Bonnie Erbe,
Gwen Ifill, and Diane Rehm and the programs filled with criticisms
of conservatives, biased election coverage, and anti-family
stories. Would giving them more money make those networks even the
slightest bit more neutral? It would accomplish the
opposite.
No one is disputing the huge problems the news media now
face. Perhaps if publishers had invested in new models instead of
taking 20-30 percent profits for years, that would not be the case.
There are other solutions. Non-profit journalism, foundations, new
web start-ups, local news and more are all being pursued with an
entrepreneurial fervor. The worst possible “solution” would be to
surrender our free press to government control.
Journalists could take a lesson from a great president and
stop following the lead of those who would destroy their profession
in an attempt to save it. Ronald Reagan understood the danger of
government trying to help and said the scariest words in the
English language are: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to
help.” The kind of “help” Bollinger and his supporters propose
would not only destroy American journalism, it would take down
democracy at the same time.
