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Actually, this looks like a really great idea to me. Five percent isn't all that much - sure, on a $1000 widescreen TV it is, but in my understanding most consumer electronics don't go for nearly as much, and if you've got that $1k the extra $50 wouldn't make that much of a difference - and with the projected revenues, that could go a long way towards supporting the cost of those subsidies. | |
First they want us to pay to read online and now this? Things must be bad for them | |
Sorry, but I don't want to support a medium that refuses to evolve. There is a place for professional journalism in the digital age, but they haven't found it yet because they're trying to stick to their old guns. The average person still values reputable news sources over the run-of-the-mill blog, so it's not like professional news services are just going to go away. If they come up a better idea, then great. If they don't, the old guard will fade away and be replaced by a new iteration of digital, professional journalism. This is how progress works. Out with the old (or at least evolve the old), in with the new. | |
This defines irony. So the medium which brought about the end of printed media is now potentially being forced to pay a tax to keep aforementioned media source on life support. I don't pay a tax for driving a front wheel drive car because it is more expensive to produce a rear wheel drive car. If perhaps printed media didn't fall prey to evolution, there would be no problem. I can't see any government passing such a ridiculous tax such as this. It is just a waste of money and time. Almost every newspaper has its own website already, and offers to give you SMS of news stories. So either stick firmly to your medium, or stop complaining that technology is screwing you over when YOU YOURSELVES take advantage of it. What do you want to bet that newspaper companies won't be subject to the tax they impose? | |
I had another thought... you know, the post office never had the balls to even suggest such a thing. They just jack up the cost of stamps and shipping charges to penalize people who use email to send messages and Amazon to buy goods. If the post office couldn't pull this off, how do newspaper companies think they are more important than them? | |
Eh. Nothing certain in life but death and taxes, I guess. Seems kinda backwards though. If traditional media are failing, is it really such a good idea to artificially keep them alive with bigger subsidies, while at the same time taxing the growth of new media? To me it would seem like a far brighter idea to stimulate the quality and reliability of the new media than desperately clinging onto something that's reaching the end of its dominance. | |
This is insane! I will not pay an extra tax because the newspaper publishers didn't see the digital age coming! If they can't change over into digital and see that the newspaper industry as it exist today is dead than they need to go out of business!! Not my fault they had no plans for the future. | |
From the snippet, the subsidies would be covering the ad shortfall resulting from a move from print media to digital (the implication being, I think, that restricting access to digital news media is a temporary salve, at best). This isn't a bad - or crazy - idea. NPR is (minimally) funded by the US government and does a pretty decent job (relative to the infotainment industry at the big broadcast networks). Real reporting, as opposed to talking out of one's ass (e.g., Fox News; most op-eds), costs money. Reporters need to travel places to interview people - probably greasing some palms on the way to get the real story (and keep themselves safe). I don't think that can be done on $0.01/click. The bigger question is, does journalism contribute to the commonweal in such a way as to qualify as a public good (like education, for instance). My take is that it does - keeping in mind, again, that what passes for news these days is a sad shadow of real journalism. Since that decline is partly due to the need to chase advertiser dollars and not offend consumers/corporations, subsidies seem sensible. Should taxes on electronics fund these subsidies? That's a fair question that isn't addressed in the news update here - there are lots of things one could tax to pay for this, although taxing of 'luxury' items is usually easier for the public to stomach. | |
Huh? I thought America supported Capitalism. First they bail out the corrupt casino banks rather than let them go to the wall and be replaced through strong economic need by new ones with no bad debts. Second they take one of the few remaining successful economic sectors of the economy (i.e. gizmos) and plan on unfair stealth taxation. These journalists need to make their work available for a fee via electronic media and offer something better than a blogger can for free. Steve Jobs spoke about this commodification of the web at D8 with Walt Mossberg, he's all for the iPad having electronic newspapers like the Wall St. Journal and Washington Post which are cheap enough that a market emerges for them where one currently doesn't exist. If you say "why pay?" then you could just as easily asked that question when Jobs started selling .aac files from the iTunes Store whilst a huge number of people ripped and P2P'd .mp3s, history has proven that there was money to be made that way from legitimate consumers who did not want the illegality or just plain hassle of torrents, etc. Jobs made the point that these newspapers would have to sell for less than the physical printed version (on subscription, presumably) due to the fact that they weren't paying for their physical printing or distribution - just content creation (i.e. journalists in foreign countries, etc.). Obviously, there will be shrinkage and consolidation in the number of newspaper publishers as more people shift to electronic media and benefit from the immediacy of TV, the depth of comment and analysis of a broadsheet and the portability of a tabloid. However, tax should not be used to prop up these institutions otherwise their journalistic independence can be called into question. Some alternative may lie in the relative success of free newspapers funded by advertising, such as The Evening Standard in London; which was until recently a paper you had to pay for. | |
So they want to cut the growth of a new sector in order to keep an old one on life support that is being directly replaced by the aforementioned? That's something out of an Ayn Rand novel. | |
OK I read this and I don't understand the link between "consumer electronics" and "reinventing Journalism". I know they want money to help them, but why electronics. And why would government expect tax payers to pay for private businesses. | |
I am kind of split on this issue. The capatalist in me says there is no such thing as "Too big to fail," but the historian in me says, if we get rid of print media then what will there be as physical proof of what things actually happened. How much more history will be lost do to electronic media? 100 years from now will all the news from today be stored and reformated to what ever medium is used? Print media last much longer then electronic. It takes a news paper a lot longer to degrade to the point that it falls apart, then it takes data to corrupt. So yeah it really is a tough call for me to say which side I would go with on this situation. | |
Substitute old media? Adapt or die. | |
Fuck NO! Taxing one product to support the failing product that it is replacing is absolutely ludicrous. Electronics users should not be punished or taxed for preferring the bountiful new mediums technology has given them. If newspapers and other such dated sources are in trouble, maybe it's just time to pull the plug and let them pass peacefully. After all, the consumer has no obligation to buy a newspaper. Why then should he supplement that industry when they lose business to a competitor? A tax for not buying a product is the most absurd thing I've heard all year. | |
Tax to not have health insurance? :P | |
The difference is the newspaper is a not needed choice, but the health insurance tax is there to save lives. | |
That's a great idea, tax everything new so they can pay to force obsolete forms of media back on the market. Why didn't I think of this? It's a great way to force people to pay money to REVERSE TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS. I only wish things like this were done long before now, if only we had a high tax on running water, we could have used it to pay for the return of wells These guys must be geniuses. | |
Health insurance is a matter of life and death, this is about having people pay to support an obsolete product. | |
If this type of journalism can't find a way to be profitable, that means it is obsolete. It's not our job to help it out. | |
UGH! Okay, if you're not completely torn on this, you're simply not seeing the entire issue. Fox news completely murdered objective journalism and adds three pounds of shit to its grave for every dollar it profits. The idea of a journalistic entity that can actually be objective, without having to dumb itself down to the average person to remain in business, would be a godsend to the entire profession. The problem is it would be completely beholden to the government. Thus it would eventually become as pointless as the BBC or as biased as fox news. Not to mention, if tax supported journalism ever criticized the government (read: objectively analyzed it's actions), every monkey on fox news would start flinging hundreds of pounds of shit. O'Reily: WHY SHOULD YOUR TAX DOLLARS GO TO SUPPORT A BODY THAT HATES FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY | |
This baffles me, why spend money to save a medium of writing that is not only obsolete but its disappearance would relieve a burden on the environment? However, it's only a point of discussion in a much larger topic the FTC is talking about so I can't fault them for simply analyzing all the options. | |
Um no. I do not want to subsidize something i don't use or involves me in anyway. Explain to me why i have to pay to keep something that is fast becoming antiquated? if i dont get a good reason i would be oppose to this if it were to even be mentioned seriously. | |
No it isn't, before the Healthcare bill went through Massachusetts enforced income tax fines for anyone who did not have health care for the entire year. They would tax you as punishment for not having health insurance. They tax us because they can, they couldn't care less about saving lives. This is typical government interference bullshit. If print media is dying, then it means that the majority of the general public is not interested in it. How the hell does that justify taxing the media that the general public is interested in? Whoever said 5% isn't that much, it will be in addition to any sales tax. In my case, living in Massachusetts, I would be paying 11.25% tax on any consumer electronics I buy. | |
And you see nothing bad about the government paying (off) reporters and news agencies? | |
How about... industry learns to change with technology? You know, instead of punishing the consumer for keeping up? | |
If the industry can't keep up, it should die off. Natural selection. Adapt or die. | |
Yeah, these businesses should just figure out a way to survive without revenue. I hope to work in the dead tree media in the future, but I don't think this is the way to go about it. Journalism is a public good with few peers, but I really feel like the industry needs to find a solution on its own instead of relying on government subsidies to perform CPR on a dying industry. | |
This isn't about journalism per se, it's about advertising. I think what's happening is that advertising segment of the economy is looking over a cliff. It's not just journalism, it's any kind of professionally produced content that require old media advertising to work. That means anything you watched on televison in addition to print media. What's happening is the advertisers are seeing all of the money they can't make on the internet that they used to make with Newspaper and TV ads. It's similar to how the video game industry sees all of the lost sales due to piracy and the used gaming market. I seriously doubt it will happen though. No Congressman in their right mind would risk the backlash that would result. What's going to happen is the advertising market will collaspe and then you're going to see people scrambling to make whatever money they can. | |
Why not? Paper journalism is dying...The Digital Age is fully engaged. | |
I for one enjoy the paper, and am 18 years old. And yeah, the industry is hurting. But my local paper cut costs by a huge amount by MAILING the paper to people rather than deliver it themselves. But I have no respect for a lot of the non-newspaper journalistic outlets. Television news, video news, frankly disgust me. Biased and shitty, doing anything for a story. I don't want to support that, and I never will. THIS is why digital news is failing, there is no morals in it anymore. This is why I will support the newspaper until the last one comes off the press. Don't tax my stuff I worked for, to support something I couldn't possibly care less about. Government needs to take their hands out of my fucking wallet. | |
But it's the other way around. They are taxing digital media in order to subsidize print media, which is dying. | |
Cough... cough cough. I don't know who posted that, but he sure looks like a jackass : D | |
Print media had its time. Digital media is the same game step-up that we got from going from print to radio, or radio to TV. Media, news, how we get it and how fast, these all evolve and grow and speed up. Honestly, it's amazing print lasted this long, and I give those in charge credit for keeping it alive in this form all this time. But it's almost over. Let it go. Print media won't die, per say, but it will need to evolve and accept that it's shrinking because it's been strongly replaced. Some folks'll still want their newspapers and print magazines, but those people dwindle year after year. If these companies don't look to the future and what they can do to step up, then all the taxes in the world won't save them. Because unless the government is willing to basically take over readership numbers, they're just going to be producing product for a small clinetelle. When you're selling papers for a quarter and magazines for a couple bucks, that's not a strategy for profit. | |
No, no, NO. All paper comes from tree farms. Sapplings and young trees produce the most oxygen per acre. Tree farms plot trends and plan growth 20 to 30 years in advance. Thus, if you want more trees/oxygen, use more paper. Also, if the internet has proven anything, then its proven we desperately need someone operating on a level beyond what is popular and profitable. | |
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FTC Suggests Tax on Consumer Electronics to "Reinvent Journalism"
As newspapers and other forms of old media continue to struggle in the digital age, the Federal Trade Commission has suggested that a new five percent tax be applied to consumer electronics in order to subsidize the "reinvention of journalism."
The suggestion is part of an FTC discussion draft on "Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism" and, for the record, not something that's currently being considered for implementation. The paper is "solely for the purposes of discussions" and includes numerous proposals for adapting to the rapidly-changing face of journalism.
Print media revenues have crashed over the past decade as online news has become increasingly prevalent, yet in the case of newspapers, revenues from online components still account for only a small amount of total income. According to the report, "it appears unlikely that online advertising revenues will ever be sufficient to replace the print advertising revenues that newspapers previously received." One possible solution is increased government funding, but of course all that money has to come from somewhere. Where, you ask?
From you, of course! "Spectrum auction" and advertising taxes would target businesses, but consumers are also being eyeballed: A five percent tax on consumer electronics would generate $4 billion annually, while a proposed "ISP-cell phone tax" that would charge "a small tax on their monthly ISP-cell phone bills to fund content they access on their digital service," suggested in the range of three percent, would add up to $6 billion each year.
The total cost of the proposed subsidies could run as high as $35 billion annually, a hefty chunk of change in today's economy. "Although [the proposal's authors] recognize that convincing the government to allocate this amount of money to journalism and the news media would be extremely difficult, they argue 'this level of spending would be similar to the U.S. government's commitment to subsidizing journalism in the first half of the 19th century,' and the government should be willing to allocate funds to journalism as a public good," the report says.
What exactly would constitute "consumer electronics" isn't specified but it's a safe bet that whatever it is you're reading this on would qualify. So would your 360, your PS3, the hi-def LCD you've got them hooked to, your iPod, iPad, iPhone and all sorts of other little twiddydinkes we've all come to take for granted in our daily lives. The idea of propping up "dead tree media," to borrow a phrase, with yet another tax on new technologies is foolish and futile, but the examination of the future of journalism is definitely worthwhile. The report is a bit thick in places but provides an interesting perspective on what could become a very sticky issue in the future. Give it a read (and then give it some thought) at ftc.gov. (PDF format)
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