You say you want a revolution?
Well, this just might be the spark that ignites a conflagration:
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his duty. But others think he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome precedent for government involvement in the U.S. press.
Nicastro and fellow legislators want the papers to survive, and petitioned the state government to do something about it. “The media is a vitally important part of America,” he said, particularly local papers that cover news ignored by big papers and television and radio stations.
To some experts, that sounds like a bailout, a word that resurfaced this year after the U.S. government agreed to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the automobile and financial sectors.
Relying on government help raises ethical questions for the press, whose traditional role has been to operate free from government influence as it tries to hold Republican politicians accountable to the people who elected them.
Okay, I’ll confess I added a word in there. But admit it, you really couldn’t tell at first. Certainly, it made the story more accurate.
And truth to tell, I’m not entirely opposed to the government bailing out and taking over the liberal dead-tree media. It just might clarify things for some people out there, and forever define those papers as the propaganda outlets they’ve truly been for so long.
(Via Malkin)
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