In May, the New York State government agreed to subsidize news media.
This from reason.com.
Fewer people seeking news reports has encouraged those on the Left to call on government to Do Something to prop up outlets failing to win enough public support to keep the lights on.
That ‘something’ comes in the form of money—unlikely to win back an indifferent public, rather to stabilize employment prospects for reporters.
The result may be that journalists will cater to state
officials rather than woo readers and viewers.
State Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal (C/G–Manhattan) announced:
With the passage of this bill, New York is now the first state in the nation to incentivize hiring and retaining local journalists.
NOTE: This initiative was proposed as separate legislation until it was incorporated into the state’s massive 2025 budget.
The legislation allows tax credits
for up to half of journalists’ salaries.
Cameron Joseph of the Columbia Journalism Review reported:
The Local Journalism Sustainability Act was included in New York’s recently passed state budget, setting aside $90 million to subsidize local news for the next three years.
Eligible outlets can apply to receive a refundable tax credit of up to $25,000 for the first $50,000 worth of employees’ salaries, with a per-company cap of $300,000.
That’s a lot of money for a small newsroom, and could help stave off further layoffs and outlet closures.
According to Jon Campbell of Gothamist:
The law doesn’t try to police the viewpoints of eligible media outlets.
But the law allows the state’s economic development agency to ‘list certain types of establishments as ineligible’—a broad phrasing that gives the agency a huge amount of leeway as it crafts regulations in the coming months.
This could be a problem if it turns into an overt effort to regulate media content at a time when governments have tried to penalize political foes and suppress dissenting views. But using tax dollars to underwrite media operations that are shedding readers and viewers is a problem as well.
If a massive chunk of journalists’ income comes from one reliable source—government coffers—they’ll inevitably treat government as the audience to please rather than locals who’ve proven difficult to court and who distrust the press.
Under such subsidies, the future of local media could be one of well-funded media outlets ignored by their nominal communities as they produce reports tailored for the tastes of bureaucrats with funding power. This has been an ongoing problem with publicly funded journalism.
And New York is not alone. Last year, Catherine Buni of NiemanReports found:
[S]tate-level experiments designed to support local journalism as a crucial public service are expanding, from New Jersey to California, New Mexico to Wisconsin, Illinois to Washington, and beyond.
None are yet as ambitious as the New York effort, but:
[A]ll represent a move toward divorcing
journalism outlets from a need to serve readers
and listeners to remain financially afloat.
Final thoughts: We the People have been fleeing mass propaganda media over trust issues and concerns about bias. Concern over loss of readers and viewers may soon not be an issue for those companies pushing out fake news.
Subsidies for journalism will divorce reporters from the need to even try to win readers and viewers.
