Thread: Obama 0pen to Newspaper Bailout ?

Obama open to newspaper bailout bill
By Michael O'Brien - 09/20/09 04:24 PM ET

The president said he is "happy to look at" bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses.

"I haven't seen detailed proposals yet, but I'll be happy to look at them," Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade in an interview.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, the so-called "Newspaper Revitalization Act," that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations. That bill has so far attracted one cosponsor, Cardin's Maryland colleague Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D).

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had played down the possibility of government assistance for news organizations, which have been hit by an economic downturn and dwindling ad revenue.

In early May, Gibbs said that while he hadn't asked the president specifically about bailout options for newspapers, "I don't know what, in all honesty, government can do about it."

Obama said that good journalism is "critical to the health of our democracy," but expressed concern toward growing tends in reporting -- especially on political blogs, from which a groundswell of support for his campaign emerged during the presidential election.

"I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding," he said.

The Hill

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... ilout-bill
Link to Bill
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/032 ... inbill.pdf

Of course Obama wants to own the newspapers and all of the media......

We found out that the American public massively opposes any form of bail out for the newspapers when they first brought this up months ago.

The politicians stopped talking about it after the backlash.

W

Rasmussen polls show the large majority of likely voters opposed to any more bailouts period. That goes for any business. With regard to newspapers becoming non-profit, it looks like most of them already are.