Menu

Argument: Government should not preserve newspapers that fail in markets

Issue Report: Should governments bailout journalism?

Support

Ken McIntyre, a media and public policy fellow at the Heritage Foundation, was quoted in an April 16, 2009 Fox News article: “Licensing is a simplistic solution for historic trends battering the traditional newspaper industry.” He continued that the government should not “preserve businesses that free enterprise and competition marked for failure — or a transition into something else.”[1]

Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, testified at an April 2009 Congressional hearing against any government bailout of journalism: “It is especially important to resist the temptation of bailouts because the first papers to fail will be those who least deserve a bailout. Those are the papers whose own business decisions placed them under a crushing debt-load in pursuit of consolidated ownership and short-term gains. Few could welcome handing Sam Zell a fat check from the Treasury after his ill-fated adventure with the Tribune Company. That’s not to say we should let the journalism or the journalists fade away. But there are other ways to preserve those critical elements that do not involve bailouts.”[2]