Via Photoshop Bandit.

ITS NOT ENOUGH THAT THE MEDIA IS GOV'T DIRECTED....

It needs to be government owned too.

Faced with its financial plumet, due in large part to the public's dislike of pure, one-sided propaganda, Henry Waxman has a plan:

The newspaper industry is suffering "market failure" and the government will need to help preserve serious journalism essential to democracy, an influential US congressman said Wednesday.

"The newspapers my generation has taken for granted are facing a structural threat to the business model that has sustained them," said Representative Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California.

"The loss of revenue has spurred a vicious cycle with thousands of journalists losing their jobs," he told a meeting on journalism in the Internet age hosted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Waxman, who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has jurisdiction over the FTC, said the "depression in the media sector is not cyclical, it is structural."

"While this has implications for the media it also has implications for democracy," he added. "A vigorous free press and vigorous democracy have been inextricably linked.

To review: Government ownership of the media promotes a "vigorous democracy."

You know, just like weakness promotes strenth and rising unemployment means the economy is getting better.

All they have to do it tell us this and we'll buy it because we are too stupid to care about what the truth is. At least that's what they believe.

From Hot Air:

Waxman exposes his own thinking here in proposing a bailout for a structural problem. Previous bailouts acted on the conclusion that the financial problems they solved were cyclical in nature, not structural, and that taxpayers would get repaid once the cycle turned upward. A structural problem would not get solved by a bailout anyway. It requires a structural reform or an overhaul, which a bailout would delay. A financial crisis should accelerate structural reform, as long as no one intervenes to delay it by subsidizing a failed business model.

What Waxman wants is control. The founders put the press and the government at odds in the First Amendment for a reason. They discovered first-hand how oppressive a government could be when it controlled the media, and they endeavored to avoid exactly what Waxman proposes. Once government funds newspapers, it can easily dictate content, make editorial decisions, and essentially protect itself from any sense of accountability. That kind of control doesn’t even have to come directly; all it takes is a threat to remove the subsidies that other papers receive, and editors and publishers concerned about making a living will eventually comply.

But don't call him un-American.