Information wants to be free, reporters want to be paid, Part 35

Here comes another ivory tower type with the solution to our problem with declining journalism profits.

In today’s Wall Street Journal Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, adds his voice to those who think it is just fine to have the federal government subsidize news gathering and dissemination.

Bollinger has written extensively on free speech and press. His books include: "Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century;” “Eternally Vigilant: Free Speech in the Modern Era; Images of a Free Press;” and “The Tolerant Society: Freedom of Speech and Extremist Speech in America.” He teaches an undergraduate course, “Freedom of Speech and Press,” at Columbia.

He’s got credentials. But one of his chief arguments for how the press can take handouts from government without being cowed reveals a fundamentally flawed analogy.

“There are examples of other institutions in the U.S. where state support does not translate into official control,” Bollinger claims. “The most compelling are our public universities and our federal programs for dispensing billions of dollars annually for research. Those of us in public and private research universities care every bit as much about academic freedom as journalists care about a free press.

“Yet — through a carefully designed system with peer review of grant-making, a strong culture of independence, and the protections afforded by the First Amendment — there have been strikingly few instances of government abuse. …”

To which I say: East Anglia. The so-called “Climategate” was not so much about academics cooking the books to satisfy the prejudices and bias of their government funding sources as a recognition of the fact that a finding that everything is just fine and there is no need to send us more money to research this compelling and potent problem would have cut off the money spigot.

Can you image any bureaucracy, academic or journalistic, that would bite the hand that feeds it — twice?

As for Bollinger’s citing of BBC and NPR and PBS, one cannot find three more staunch bastions of blatant liberalism.

Before selling out for a government handout, those in the journalism business must explore all the market-based models for the sake of freedom and liberty and an open society.