The government bailout of the floundering left-wing print media begins. Yesterday Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) introduced the Newspaper Revitalization Act, which will allow obsolete newspapers to evade taxes by restructuring as "nonprofits."
This will cause the overwhelmingly left-leaning newspaper business to magically become nonpartisan:
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.
If nonprofit newspapers fail to be objective — as liberal bureaucrats define the term — they will lose their tax-exempt status and promptly collapse. Alternatively, the government can arbitrarily nationalize them, as it is aggressively proposing to do with banks and insurance companies. The infinitely deep pockets of a government that prints money with no regard for the future ought to help "level the playing field" with nonobjective — i.e., not statist — sources of information that compete on the free market by meeting public needs.
Next will come the silencing of conservative radio and political regulation of the Internet. I hope you like NPR and PBS; soon it will be the only point of view available.
But, wait, isn’t there something about the press in the Constitution?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
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