{"id":553509,"date":"2021-06-05T10:06:19","date_gmt":"2021-06-05T14:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=553509"},"modified":"2021-06-05T10:06:22","modified_gmt":"2021-06-05T14:06:22","slug":"graham-the-media-proclaim-themselves-infrastructure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/graham-the-media-proclaim-themselves-infrastructure\/","title":{"rendered":"GRAHAM: The Media Proclaim Themselves \u2018Infrastructure\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">12<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fgraham-the-media-proclaim-themselves-infrastructure%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=553509&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/80209642-B1FC-46E8-BBE0-A4A68F504D52-1200x800-1.jpeg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Long before the pandemic, the local news business had been in a tailspin. Newspapers across the country lost classified advertising revenue thanks to internet sites like Craigslist. Terrestrial radio stations lost their audience to iTunes \u2014 and then Spotify. Most commercial radio stations don\u2019t offer news anymore. Most Americans under 35 think of newspapers and radio news as odd products their parents consume, like Spam and Velveeta.<\/p>\n<p>As a college kid in Viroqua, Wisconsin, I covered local news in the summers for our local radio station and called in freelance articles on the city council or school board decisions to the LaCrosse Tribune. The matters discussed were probably uninteresting to most. I learned what a \u201cproperty easement\u201d was, and reported on the debate over how to dispose of old railroad ties. I didn\u2019t find it scintillating.<\/p>\n<p>The nagging question for journalism: Can you get anyone to read or click on decisions this \u201csmall\u201d? In late 2018, 71% of Americans told the Pew Research Center they thought their local news media was doing well financially, even though only 14% said they had paid for local news in the past year.<\/p>\n<p>Liberal journalists look at this problem with the usual liberal eyes. \u201cThe market has failed,\u201d they proclaim, and the obvious answer is government intervention. In the 1960s, this logic of a lack of community service in broadcasting led to the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, and the creation of the PBS and NPR networks.<\/p>\n<p>You can see exactly what liberals like about their \u201ccorrection\u201d to the \u201cmarket failure.\u201d What we have now is an extremely well-funded network of liberal propaganda. So it\u2019s appropriate to be concerned when they\u2019re now pouncing on the idea of massive government subsidies for local news.<\/p>\n<p>CNN\u2019s Brian Stelter is an unsurprising champion of local news as \u201ccivic infrastructure\u201d that should get billions in the \u201cinfrastructure\u201d bill. \u201cWith Democrats controlling the levers of power in Congress, these ideas will at least get a hearing,\u201d he writes. \u201cMaria Cantwell, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said earlier this spring that local news, \u2018frayed beyond belief,\u2019 should be treated as \u2018critical infrastructure\u2019 that \u2018needs to be preserved.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As for critics? Stelter writes: \u201cBillions in funding for local news?! I can hear the bad-faith mockery on Fox News at the same time I type these words.\u201d Stelter is so unsubtle that every conservative critique of the liberal media is a \u201cbad-faith mockery.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One problem, say the liberals, is \u201cless local news meant more polarization\u201d in communities. But anyone can see that hot issues like transgender \u201cgirls\u201d in school sports or teaching \u201ccritical race theory\u201d are inherently polarizing on a local level, and, in each case, the Left sees only one \u201ccivic\u201d opinion worth hearing. The other should be discouraged if not crushed.<\/p>\n<p>Does anyone think Stelter\u2019s CNN demonstrates a concern about \u201cpolarization\u201d in its national product? Does it offer conservatives a \u201cgood-faith\u201d platform for discussion?<\/p>\n<p>It should seem obvious in looking at NPR and PBS today, including their local news, that their solution to \u201cpolarization\u201d is to provide the liberal opinion almost exclusively and leave the \u201cpolarizing\u201d conservative or Republican counterpoint in the trash.<\/p>\n<p>They then call this \u201ccivic infrastructure.\u201d This somehow empowers \u201cdemocracy,\u201d leaving half of the argument out or fiercely challenging it as anti-democracy. Liberals don\u2019t believe it\u2019s unfair that conservatives subsidize news organizations that don\u2019t let them speak and disparage them as vicious racists and worse.<\/p>\n<p>Republicans never have any success in reducing funding for NPR or PBS. If they let the liberals start funding these local news properties, the same inevitable government-subsidized propaganda will result.<\/p>\n<p><em>The views expressed in this piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><i>Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Long before the pandemic, the local news business had been in a tailspin. Newspapers across the country lost classified advertising revenue thanks to internet sites like Craigslist. Terrestrial radio stations &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1890051,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-553509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1890051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}