Mark Tapscott’s latest column warns us of a new publication from the Federal Trade Commission proposing to “reinvent journalism”. The FTC notes that the news industry is in trouble (no argument there) and looks for ways to save it.
The document gives away the game on page 4, where it claims that news is a public good. There are two problems with this:
The first problem is it just isn’t true. The definition of a public good is a good that is non-rivalrous (one person consuming it doesn’t reduce its availability to others) and non-excludable (no one can be excluded from consuming the good). Public goods are interesting because they suffer from the free-rider problem in which they are underprovided because no one will pay for them. One solution to the problem is for the government to pay for the good.
The non-rivalry condition applies, but the non-excludability condition does not. A journalist who gathers news and writes a story can sell it only to those who pay for it. No one else can sell the same story without infringing the author’s copyright. It’s true that someone else can read the story and incorporate its facts into a new story, but second-hand reporting is a very different (and less valuable) product than first-hand reporting.
The second problem is what it implies. When the government calls something a public good, it does so to lay the foundation for government taking charge of that good. And the FTC certainly does propose to take charge of journalism. Here are a few of things they propose:
- “Hot news” protection: A journalist who discovers a fact is given a property right in that fact itself and not just on his story reporting it. Other journalists would be barred from reporting that fact for a time.
- Limiting fair use.
- Licensing the news: The media would not sell stories but license them, using a restrictive license to limit what the consumer could do with them (as is commonly done with software licenses).
- Remove anti-trust restrictions and allow the media to engage in anti-competitive practices. (Yes, this is the FTC talking!)
- And of course, the one you’ve been waiting for: direct government funding of the press.
To be fair, they also include a few proposals that are non-horrifying, but these are enough. Any one of these would severely damage our free and independent press. If most or all were implemented, we would be left with a government-funded (and therefore government-controlled) media cartel controlling all discussion of the news.
The good news is this is just a discussion draft. It specifically disclaims being the position of the FTC or any FTC commissioner. So there’s still time to nip this thing in the bud.
Internet Scofflaw 
Nice job with your article. I am amazed at how little attention this has been given. I spent several days going through this document and wrote up a synopsis (a little less concise than yours.)
Supposedly, there will be a webcast of the National Press Club round-table on June 15. It will “interesting” to see what recommendations for regulations come out of this. I’d think that some of the things that they proposed in this document would require legislation – e.g. the new taxes and tracking.
I suspect there is another article to be written by just looking at the source of some of these suggestions in the footnotes.
P.S. Great blog, if it’s ok, I’d like to add to link to your site.
I guess I could leave a link to the analysis done at whatwouldthefoundersthink.com. :-)