Should The Free Press Be Bailed Out?

Some journalists, free press, and constitutional activists are very concerned.

A while back we mentioned some news that newspapers are increasingly filing bankruptcy.

Why is there no clamor to bail them out? Can government even do that?

Perhaps the government would be better off if some of the free press went away?

Are some banks we are bailing out more valuable than the free press?

One thing is for certain, John Nichols & Robert W. McChesney are concerned:

Journalism is collapsing, and with it comes the most serious threat in our lifetimes to self-government and the rule of law as it has been understood here in the United States.

After years of neglecting signs of trouble, elite opinion-makers have begun in recent months to recognize that things have gone horribly awry. Journals ranging from Time, The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The New Republic to the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times concur on the diagnosis: newspapers, as we have known them, are disintegrating and are possibly on the verge of extinction.

(The Nation, emphasis added). Alarming words to say the least.

But are newspapers any more sacrosanct than the internet blogs and internet news sources are?

We criticized Obama for thinking blogs are misleading when it comes to economics, because he hinted that other news sources were not.

Banks do not have protection from the first amendment like the newspapers and the blogs do.

Protecting the free press, then, is more constitutional than protecting the banks, isn't it?