FTC news business workshops: Government intrusion on journalism?

The Federal Trade Commission will hold a series of workshops Dec. 1 and 2 themed on the topic "From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?" The workshops were originally scheduled for September. An agenda is forthcoming.  The official release said,

“The workshops will consider a wide range of issues, including: the economics of journalism and how those economics are playing out on the Internet and in print; the wide variety of new business and non-profit models for journalism online; factors relevant to the new economic realities for news organizations, such as behavioral and other targeted online advertising, online news aggregators, and bloggers; and the variety of governmental policies – including antitrust, copyright, and tax policy – that have been raised as possible means of finding new ways for journalism to thrive. Witnesses will include journalists and other representatives of news organizations, privacy experts, direct marketers, online advertisers, academics, new media representatives (such as bloggers and local news Web sites), and consumer advocates.”

Sounds more like a platform for a conference put on by a pro journalism organization.

It is obvious President Barack Obama’s administration will be more engaged with media issues. One example is offered in Chris Carter’s column about Mark Lloyd, the Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer for the Federal Communications Commission. Judging from his past writings, Lloyd wants to make talk radio more liberal, under the guise of making community broadcasts more (of course) diverse.

I find this strange. During the presidential campaigns, Democrats didn’t appear to be concerned when TV1, with a 93 percent black audience, promoted and aired the Democratic Party national convention but ignored the Republican national convention. Conservatives said nothing because that decision was both expected and quite in keeping with the network’s right to air what it wants to. But if it’s real diversity you’re after, you’d think there would be a willingness to listen to more than one political platform. Thus I conclude TV1 is not interested in diversity and that is their business and their viewers'.

As branded media fail, and newspapers struggle with declining ad revenue, Dan Rather issued a public call for a “White House Commission to help save the press.”

Such a commission would so flagrantly fly in the face of the US Constitution, one would hope the constitutional tramplers in Washington would not take Rather’s request seriously. Then again, where there's a Nanny State, there's a vested government interest in everything.

That the Federal Trade Commission is intruding into journalism is troublesome. There may be slim grounds for consumer information about bloggers’ disclosure—for instance, a blogger writes a post praising a new gadget, takes money from the gadget vendor and doesn’t disclose the payment to readers. Those are the only grounds I can come up with that come close to justifying the FTC workshops, and if this is the premise, the workshops would be more appropriately directed to informing the consumer in keeping with the FTC's mission. Why taxpayer money should be used to boost journalism in anyway is impossible to justify, but then, we are seeing cronyism in government much like the years when Franklin Delano Roosevelt managed to tank the US economy.

It’s my opinion the government should stay away from journalism as much as possible. The profession has hit rock bottom in many ways, but where there is freedom there will be whistle blowers. Whether the chirping comes from a statist newspaper like The New York Times or your neighbor the carpet- commuting blogger makes no difference.

The New York Times said the chairman of the FTC is married to an op ed writer at The Washington Post. That in itself is a questionable state of affairs. After all, in July, the WaPo publisher engaged in a commerce model offering politicians for sale. Politico said,

“[F]or as much as $250,000, the Post offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record access to ‘those powerful few’— Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and even the paper’s own reporters and editors.”

The event was appropriately cancelled.

FTC’s workshop moniker might change to, “How will journalism survive politics?”

And of course all this begs the question, "How will the US survive government?"

[Commentary by Kay B. Day]