Supporting the past, ignoring the future
By Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The opinions expressed are his own.
Western media industries are going through a rapid and often painful transformation today with the rise of the Internet and mobile platforms, the erosion of the largest free-to-air broadcast audiences, and the decline of paid print newspaper circulation.
Despite all these changes, the important and sometimes neglected ways in which governments provide support for the media have remained largely unchanged for decades.
There is a real need to reform our 20th century support arrangements to make sure they effectively serve our needs in the 21st century. Public sector support for the media should not be industrial policy, propping up specific ailing incumbents, but democratic policy, aimed at ensuring that timely, accessible news from a diversity of sources is available to the entire population.
Most media companies prefer not to talk about the support they receive from their government, but all developed democracies intervene in media markets in direct and indirect ways to serve a range of public interest goals.
The most important intervention in much of Western Europe is licence fee funding for public service broadcasting, based on what is basically a ring-fenced tax on households that own television or radio receivers. The United States also provides funding for public broadcasting, but on a much more limited scale and through direct federal and state appropriations.
One rule for banks, another for autos
– James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –
There is one law, it appears, for failing U.S. automakers but sadly quite another for similarly failing banks.
The Obama administration has decided to play hardball with auto firms; rejecting recovery plans from General Motors and Chrysler LLC (GM.N) and warning they could be thrown into bankruptcy. Chrysler, which is controlled by Cerberus Capital Management CBS.UL, has 30 days to complete an alliance with Italy’s Fiat SpA (FIA.MI) or face losing its government funding. GM chief executive Rick Wagoner is out at government request, as will be most of his board of directors in coming months.
This is painful and risky but probably for the best; the auto industry has far too much capacity and both firms have blundered repeatedly, avoiding making hard decisions to improve their competitiveness and products. In short, this is what is supposed to happen in capitalism when you fail.
It is also a huge contrast to what is being done for U.S. banks, where management has generally remained entrenched and where Treasury Secretary Geithner and his predecessor have thrown cheap money and other subsidies at doubtful banks in ever more complicated forms. Most recently, going as far as cutting hedge funds and other investors into the deal under the public private partnership in order to create the illusion of a return to market forces.
If the U.S. administration thinks the auto tough love will make them look like they are taking a hard line with highly compensated executives, they could not be more wrong. If anything it will increase the perception of the divide between how Main Street and Wall Street are treated when they come begging at the public trough.
To be fair, the case against the automakers is pretty airtight. Even given a recovery, which is by no means a sure thing, they may not be viable. The best counterargument, that bankruptcy causes rolling failures among suppliers and that consumers will shun automakers which are in bankruptcy. Those possibilities are hard to measure, and even if true, probably not enough to justify keeping the two on life support for what could be an indefinite period.
Talk about euphemisms: “toxic” assets.
There is nothing toxic about “nothing”, because these “assets” are empty, void, worthless.
But “toxic” sounds nicer.
The Banks themselves are dealing with “nothing” with each other, selling good old “snake oil”.
“New” media? The only news sites I read online – and I read a lot of it – are the online versions of print publications: newspapers, or, in the case of Reuters, a company which supplies newspapers. I read the above article without knowing exactly what the writer is advocating, as the article seemed an exercise in beating-around-the-bush; but if the article is aimed at subsidizing people who stumble off sidewalks reading twitter and obtaining their culture through torrents, I’d rather the taxpayer was not further molested.