Michael Copps, a Federal Communications Commissioner, warns that if you propose government funding for newspapers, then “[s]ome guy is probably going to be on cable screaming up and down saying you’re Mao Zedong.” He seems to be scoffing at the notion that such funding is akin to a totalitarian effort at thought control. But should he be so sure? Copps himself cites the ideas of Robert McChesney, a professor at the University of Illinois and founder of the group Free Press. Randolph May writes about McChesney at the Free State Foundation blog, noting some quotes …
With the advent of new technology, newspapers are being threatened. Many are expected to go out of business, and the rest will have to change substantially. Many observers fear that journalism will become too driven by speed, and that judgment and deliberation will be lost. Others said that news reporting would be devalued and only those providing analysis and opinion would survive. Worst of all, worries that the new technology will lead to a monopoly over information. A description of the dire situation faced by newspapers today as they face …
If you liked how the government shoved its nose into high finance, “green” energy, automaking and health care, you’re gonna love what it does with your local news. That’s the prospect opened by a new study from an old-line bastion of objectivity, the Columbia School of Journalism, on how the storied trade of news reporting won’t survive unless Team Obama comes to the rescue. Now “at risk,” former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. and Columbia communication professor Michael Schudson melodramatically declare in an op-ed in today’s Post, is …
