Last month, the Star Tribune‘s mascot Stribby the Gray Duck was at the Capitol “lobbying in support of local news.” I have not seen Stribby on the register of lobbyists, but it’s a while since I’ve looked.
Stribby was lobbying in favor of HF 4072 and SF 4183, bills which would give $500,000 of Minnesotan taxpayer’s money to the Minnesota News Media Institute (MNMI), a nonprofit arm of the Minnesota Newspaper Association (MNA), which is “the voluntary trade association of all general-interest newspapers in the State of Minnesota, acting on behalf of the newspaper press of the state.”
News isn’t a “public good”
This is one of several measures, along with “media literacy incentives” and tax credits for newsroom staff being pushed by the True North News Alliance, a newly formed group of news and civic organizations. Advocates argue that news is a “public good” which should be financed by taxation. “Healthy communities require healthy local news,” they argue. “Not as a luxury, not as a legacy product, but as essential civil infrastructure, and infrastructure just as critical as roads, schools, public safety and public health.”
Even if we leave aside, for the moment, the fact that schools and roads exist which are not taxpayer funded, newspapers or news websites do not fit the definition of a public good. “In the jargon,” as I’ve explained previously:
…these are goods or services which have the characteristics of being both non-rivalrous (my consumption of it does not leave less for you to consume) and non-excludable (if I pay for it, it still benefits you whether you pay or not).
A newspaper might be “non-rivalrous” in that if I buy it, you can’t, but a news website clearly isn’t; if I’m looking at the Minn Post site there isn’t less of if it for you to look at. But both are clearly excludable; you have to pay for the newspaper or to access the website and cannot read either if you do not. There is no “free rider” problem, it is simply the case that fewer people are willing to pay for the product. Even in basic terms, then, “news” is not a public good, and this argument cannot be used to justify taxpayer support.
News and opinion
There is a deeper argument against taxpayer financing of news reporting. The Lafayette Bridge takes you from one side of the Mississippi to the other. There is no chance of you ever entering the bridge heading south and exiting it in Ouagadougou.
The news isn’t like that. An event can be covered in a number of ways, some valid, some not, all, possibly, even containing a degree of validity; think of Rashomon. The validity might be in the eye of the beholder, and, in that case, it isn’t clear why he or she ought to be forced to fund something they view as invalid.
MPR, for example, touted its impartiality in defense of its taxpayer funding. Nobody seriously believed this, but those who thought it was all nonsense had to pay for it anyway. The Star Tribune is now published by a former member of the governor’s cabinet and has been found collaborating with that government and publishing bogus information to aid that government. If the Strib wants to produce yet another DFL press release masquerading as journalism, they have a First Amendment right to do so, but there is no duty for the average Minnesota taxpayer to finance it, nor should there be.
The market for news
Since 2018, 97 local news outlets have closed across Minnesota, but does this mean that Minnesotans have less information than they did eight years ago?
An increasing number of Minnesotans hear about school board meetings, planning applications, local elections, or upcoming roadworks through Facebook groups or Nextdoor. Social media has, to a large extent, replaced old media. This is a trend often bewailed on the grounds that, now, you or I or the guy in the bar can spread information on the same basis as someone who spent four years getting a degree in Journalism, but during the 2020 riots, for example, the real time reporting on Twitter was much more useful than the TV bulletin every few hours, or the newspaper once a day.
Having seen the output of some of those with such degrees, I’d hesitate to take them more seriously than Dale from the bar. There is a market for both, and government — and taxpayer’s money — shouldn’t be in it.
