FTC Proposes Taxpayer Bailout of Mainstream Media

As if the loss of market share by the mainstream media wasn't a good thing in its entirety, the Federal Trade Commission is apparently getting a little misty-eyed and is suggesting that perhaps a little bailout money might make things right.

Jeff Jarvis, at BusinessInsider.com, does a great job describing and lampooning their efforts.

"The Federal Trade Commission has been nosing around how to save journalism and in its just-posted "staff discussion draft" on “potential policy recommendations to support the reinvention of journalism,” it makes its bias clear: The FTC defines journalism as what newspapers do and aligns itself with protecting the old power structure of media.

The document, like good government work, does a superb job of trying very hard to say very little. From its hearings and research, the staff outlines proposals I find frightening, but many of them as politically absurd as they are impossible — e.g., what I’ll dub the iPad tax to put a 5% surcharge on consumer electronics to raise $4 billion for public funding of news — and the document doesn’t endorse them."

The last thing the federal government needs to do is burden Americans with more borrowing and more taxes, in order to subsidize a mismanaged, unprofitable dinosaur that market forces are already taking care of. We've already been down this road with General Motors, AIG, etc.

Of a much greater concern is the fact that the unelected hacks at the FTC are even suggesting that a possible solution for reviving the dying newspaper industry is to increase taxes on consumers across the US.

Although one might not fault the FTC for thinking that just one more, copycat tax-raising proposal being floated would not be considered out-of-bounds, proposals to raise taxes should certainly not be the knee-jerk reaction of a government wing that otherwise has no power to tax.