U.S. bill seeks to rescue faltering newspapers

From Reuters.com (March 24):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With many U.S. newspapers struggling to survive, a Democratic senator on Tuesday introduced a bill to help them by allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks.

Under this arrangement, newspapers would still be free to report on all issues, including political campaigns. But they would be prohibited from making political endorsements.

Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt, and contributions to support news coverage or operations could be tax deductible. [read more]

Ah, those poor, poor newspapers. It seems the gov't is bailing out every business now--which is what newspapers are. Could it be that people are getting their news online at various news sites for free like I do? If you read one newspaper you are limiting yourself news wise. Newspapers are not making money because they are not getting subscribers and advertisers. Mainly subscribers because advertisers will only advertise if there are enough subscribers to the paper. There has to be someone to see the advertisement or else the ad does not work. Newspapers can do what the New York Times did--find someone to borrow from. New York Times found a wealthy Mexican investor to make it stay afloat. No negative stories about him I guess.

As for the part they will be prohibited from making political endorsements--they'll get around that. They can do that by running stories positive for a politician and throw one or two stories that are negative against the politician for good measure and bury them in the back pages. Or they can have a reporter do a story about a politician and slam him/her then the paper can say the reporter's view is not our own.

Note that newspapers can't endorse a politician but the bill doesn't say anything about endorsing an issue like gun control, etc. I would rather have newspapers be factually accurate as possible. That's more important to me. Being bias one way or another just goes along with the territory.

Again this is not Congress' responsibility. It might even violate the Freedom of the Press right. What is next? Having TV news go nonprofit? NBC News ratings aren't very good. If that happens then Fox News could go nonprofit too. Wouldn't that make the Left happy. I wonder if the bill passes how many newspapers will be nonprofit and have the gov't tell them what they can and can't do.