Media Activists: Gov?t. Should Fund Local Coverage by Public Media

In a policy paper to be released Tuesday, the self-described media reform group Free Press calls for government funding of public broadcasting and other non-commercial media to beef up their coverage of newspapers’ traditional franchise: local news.

“We believe local news reporting should become one of public media’s top priorities,” Free Press Managing Director Craig Aaron, one of the paper’s co-authors, said in a statement. “We should redeploy and redouble our resources to keep a watchful eye on the powerful and to reliably examine the vital issues that most Americans can’t follow closely on their own.”

The paper, “New Public Media: A Plan for Action,” proposes the creation of a trust fund with a substantial endowment to supplement annual congressional  appropriations. Free Press envisions the fund ultimately becoming “completely self-sufficient.”

Among its proposal to fund the trust are fees on spectrum, a spectrum auction, “a small tax on advertising, changes to the way advertising is treated in the tax code, or a small assessment on consumer electronic devices,” Free Press said.

According to the paper, the United States spends $1.43 per person in federal money on public media, which it said is a small fraction of the expenditures of other developed nations.

“Increasing funding for public media is critical, but we also need a series of reforms that will prevent undue political influence over content and ensure that public media are well run, more diverse and worthy of greater support,” said another co-author of the paper, Candace Clement. “Any of these changes will require going outside the Beltway and actually engaging local communities.”

In its May print edition, E&P reports on an initiative by the Corporation of Public Broadcasting to create "Local Journalism Centers" nationwide to report on local issues. The public broadcaster said it was motivated by cutbacks in newspaper newsrooms that has left a void in some local reporting.

The Free Press paper can be read here.

The paper was to be officially released Tuesday at the Free Press Policy Summit at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.