U.S. senator touts newspaper non-profit bill
Here’s another one that you can loosely file under “Government aid to newspapers,” even though there’s no money that taxpayers would fork over to newspapers. Maryland Democratic Senator Benjamin Cardin introduced a bill on Tuesday to allow newspapers to become non-profit organizations to help them survive.
Cardin points out that this wouldn’t help big chains facing bankruptcy, falling advertising revenue or some combination of the two. Instead, it’s designed to let the little guys — the community newspapers — survive, he says.
SENATOR CARDIN INTRODUCES BILL THAT WOULD ALLOW AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS TO OPERATE AS NON-PROFITS
His Goal is to Help the Newspaper Industry Survive
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), today introduced legislation that would allow newspapers to become non-profit organizations in an effort to help the faltering industry survive.
In recent months, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Rocky Mountain News, the Baltimore Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle, among others, have either ceased daily publication or announced that they may have to stop publishing. A number of other publications, including newspapers owned by the Tribune Company, owners of The Baltimore Sun, have filed for bankruptcy or have had to institute severe cutbacks that have impacted news coverage.
The Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as non-profits, if they choose, under 501(c)(3) status for educational purposes, similar to public broadcasting. Under this arrangement, newspapers would not be allowed to make political endorsements, but would be allowed to freely report on all issues, including political campaigns. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt and contributions to support coverage or operations could be tax deductible.
“Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed–and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment–the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution–not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply “give the public what it wants”–but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion…
. . . It was early in the Seventeenth Century that Francis Bacon remarked on three recent inventions already transforming the world: the compass, gunpowder and the printing press. Now the links between the nations first forged by the compass have made us all citizens of the world, the hopes and threats of one becoming the hopes and threats of us all. In that one world’s efforts to live together, the evolution of gunpowder to its ultimate limit has warned mankind of the terrible consequences of failure.
And so it is to the printing press–to the recorder of man’s deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news–that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.”
-John F. Kennedy
excerpt from ‘The President and the Press’
P.S. I am not political. I just think these words are very relevant to the issue of informing the public. I also have “complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed.”