Executive, Legislative, Judicial…and News?

These are economic times when you need to be either creating something, selling something or maybe establishing new channels for something to be sold.  In my industry, that means you’re either writing software, selling software or building a new channel for more software to be sold.  Everything else is a bit expendable.

I think this is the crux of the problem with News Media.  The News is reported as a service to consumers, who are all then supposed to gather around a piece of paper which includes ads sold by someone else.  The news was the content that only had as much economic value as the advertiser’s need to communicate with consumers on the paper the news was printed.  This is a problem because the societal value of good news reporting greatly exceeds the apparent current economic value.

For years, there was an uneasy alliance between news reporting and ad sales.  The Journalist reports the news and hopefully does so in a way that is not compromised by the ad sales guy’s need to impress his advertising clients.  These types of uneasy alliances were found in other industries as well.  For example, before the Bubble, there was a supposed “chinese wall” between Analysts reporting on business financial information and bankers trying to win opportunities to serve those same companies with lucrative services.  For a long time, we believed the banks when they said the two functions of the same Bank didn’t influence each other….then we found out that wasn’t necessarily true.

But back to the news business.  We’ve believed the News Media in its assertion that the Revenue side was not compromising the Reporting side.  Well, different industries have different cultures, and I think the News industry’s culture may have lent itself to at least a better attempt than the I-Banking industry to keep this assertion true.

Regardless, the ad sales side has now disappeared.  It’s been assimilated into the financials of Google for big Publishers and Craigslist for small.

So now, we have this decoupling of the economic value of News from the the societal value News provides.

Hard core tech industry people think Blogs will evolve into the new journalism.  I’m skeptical.  And I’m not even a Journalist.

Regardless, be it that the News comes from Bloggers or Journalists, how are we going to pay for truthful News?

Well, given that the News has greater societal value than economic, maybe it’s something the government should operate…kinda like Education  (or Healthcare)

Whoa…hold on there!  The government?!?  What about the fact that we depend on the Journalist to make sure the politician is held accountable…those rascals!?  Well, I’m not sure the uneasy alliance that would be held between politicians and Journalists, would be any different than the uneasy alliance between Journalists and Advertisers.  A politician’s goal is to maintain or grow their personal power.  An Advertiser’s job is to convince us to buy stuff we may not necessarily know we need or even really need at all.

I dunno.  I do suspect, however, that without Journalism entirely, we’re in for more rascally politicians than even if the politicians are the ones hiring the Journalists.

Maybe we establish a fourth Branch of government.  Something like the Judicial Branch that is theoretically less impacted by the constantly changing political winds that so directly affect the Executive and Legislative Branches.  The News Branch of government can have life terms appointed by Executive branch representatives, but be subject to the same process a judge goes through in being appointed to any local or federal bench.

Now that would be interesting to explore.  It accepts the fundamental value to our society that truthful News reporting is supposed to provide while establishing a mechanism for managing Journalists with enough insulation from the Politicians to allow them to truly seek the truth.

But I guess we’d need another tax to pay for it all….that would suck.  But I’ think there’s still some rich people in America….let’s tax them!