Who Will Pay the Messengers?
by Adam | November 13, 2009 | KLAMP | Comments Off
Josh Silver – Executive Director of Free Press (organization has been around for 7 years)
Involve the public in very important public policy debates – commercial media is abysmal
The reliance on coveted advertisers can skew the content and get them to shy away from some very important topics.
Reference to Vanity Fair article that Reality programming has cheapened the networks. There is a constant quest for ever-cheaper content.
When we look at this public media question, there is a really simple question
If you look at the divorce of news content and advertising, which has many factors on top of the digital revolution, the question is whether there is sufficient revenue sources (including advertising) to support meaningful national and international newsgathering? Absolutely not!
No matter what, you will lose the majority of professional journalists in this country? Thus we have to look at the public sector as a necessary evil. He uses this term because people generally don’t like the idea of government money funding media. It is sort of like trying to get your kid to eat asparagus. It may not be the desired source but it is the necessary one.
Over the past couple of months, there have been two really good reports that have come out, especially the Knight Commission Report headed by Peter Shane.
In general, across the board, we have to broaden the debate. We need a real movement across this country that really understands how vital journalism is – likens it to the women’s suffrage and Civil Rights movements.
Friendly: “If Public Broadcasting is reliant on an annual appropriation from Congress, it will be a disaster.” And in fact, it has been a disaster.
We have one of the lowest per capita funding of public broadcasting in the developing world.
It is 1/30th or even less of what AIG got in its bailout. A real populist.
If we are going to do this, it has to be non-ideological – conservatives and liberals who can work together in support of an emboldened public media.
Yet there is no explanation of how to make that happen – especially how to get conservatives on board!
The Carnegie Commission had a “we can” and “must do” attitude. History is repeating itself and we must work together to replicate that success.
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