He who pays the piper calls the tune, and more so with the media. Not surprisingly, after taking over the banks, the automakers, and attempting to take over 17% of the economy with the healthcare bill, now comes this:
Obama open to newspaper bailout bill
The president said he is “happy to look at” bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses.
“I haven’t seen detailed proposals yet, but I’ll be happy to look at them,” Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade in an interview.
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, the so-called “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations. That bill has so far attracted one cosponsor, Cardin’s Maryland colleague Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D)/
Which in plain English means that the newspapers would incorporate as non-profits, as if they were NGOs, only under the government teat.
Obama’s “concerned” about the blogosphere:
Obama said that good journalism is “critical to the health of our democracy,” but expressed concern toward growing tends in reporting — especially on political blogs, from which a groundswell of support for his campaign emerged during the presidential election.
“I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding,” he said.
Owning the press will certainly come in handy during election season.
What next?
God forbid that Pinch and Maureen should have to cut back on power lunches.
This is one of the scariest things to come out of Washington in one hell of a long time.
Papers don’t employ many people, and their bias is so palpable, you could cut it in millions of fairly thick slices. Come election time, this alone could permanently tip the scales to the socialists. Does that sound like I have a fairly low regard for the average Joe? If they live in an urban area the answer has to be an unqualified YES!
Great post Fausta.
It seems the description of the internet is somewhat lacking as there research is actually being carried out. While the newspapers are the ones shouting into the void and are finding that less are listening.
Who would bail us out dear,the common man