We’ve talked a lot on this show about the problems that news deserts, misinformation, and information silos present to democracy. Our guest this week says these things are all downstream from a much more fundamental disconnect between the need for a free press in a democracy and the models the United States has set up to make it happen.

Victor Pickard is the C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Democracy Without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation Society. We discuss the history of market failures and policy choices that led to the decline of local journalism and the spread of misinformation.

Victor walks us through his vision for what a re-imagined public media ecosystem in the United States might look like and what it will take to get there. Examples like WBEZ’s recent acquisition of the Chicago Sun-Times provide examples of what’s possible. Candis and Chris discuss how Victor’s arguments about the assault on public media are similar to what we heard from Derek W. Black about public education last year.

Additional Information

Democracy Without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation Society

WBEZ acquires the Chicago Sun-Times

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Episode Transcript

Chris Beem
From the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University, I’m Chris Beem.

Candis Watts Smith 
I’m Candis Watts Smith.

Jenna Spinelle
I’m Jenna Spinelle and welcome to Democracy Works. This week, we are talking with Victor Picard, the C. Edwin Baker, professor of Media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of the book democracy without journalism confronting the misinformation society. And you know, we’ve talked before on the show about the problems of misinformation and all of the issues facing local news and the decline of local news. And I think Victor’s work and his arguments in the book, and in this interview, really go a few levels higher than that or look at some of the root causes that lead to some of these more concrete issues like a lack of local news and the problems of misinformation.

Chris Beem
I think that’s right, I think his question is just more fundamental, right? What is journalism for? And what is the role of journalism in a democracy? And once we answer that question, how do we achieve that goal? Right, how do we answer that question? And his argument is that if you see this as a problem associated with, I don’t know, the price of, you know, newsprint or, you know, Craigslist, or, or whatever else, state news bureaus, you’re missing the bigger question. And the bigger question is, how does journalism perform its role on a democracy, when it is beholden to commercial forces when it is constrained to make a profit?

Candis Watts Smith 
So I think that the question about what is the press for is really a fundamental one that in some ways, we take the answer for granted, it’s as if we already know the answer. And yet, it seems that, you know, maybe if we kind of dig down into it, we might find that we’re actually farther away from what the ideal situation is, I think that one of the things that Victor’s work really kind of highlights is, we need to go back to remembering why we have the press and why we have the journalism in the first place and what its role is in democracy. And when we do that, we realize that the way that systems of the media are set up, which are all basically, on the free market, we are going to run into some troubles not just for the existence of a free press, the larger ramifications for citizen knowledge and information

Chris Beem
Is the model we have now able to achieve the ends that account for the First Amendment in the first place. Right. And so he does this really good job of going through. And I really learned a lot going through not just the founders and Jefferson and Madison, but also this important debate between right around, you know, the 20s 30s, John Dewey, and Walter Lippmann, and then you know, Franklin Roosevelt gets involved. And there is this question about is the quality of journalism in America right now serving the ends of democracy. And, and his argument is that the good guys lost that debate in the 40s. And the model for basically from that point on was commercial, that the journalism in America could have its cake and eat it too. It could serve the ends of democracy and create a profit. And for a while, you know, that was at least operative?

Candis Watts Smith 
Yeah, I mean, the thing that is important, also, just what you bring up is about the history. And you know, Americans aren’t really lovers of history, and nor do they consistently expose themselves to the way that other democracies do things, right. Our gut instinct is that the way that things are done, are done, because that’s what they that’s how they should be done. And that if we, you know, if it’s all about, like advertising dollars, or people paying or which making the most money, right, then we feel like okay, well, that is what that’s what it must be in that outcome is probably derived from a path of progress.

Chris Beem
I think there is a presumption that if other countries don’t do it that bespeaks a problem with other countries, right? Even though these are all democracies, and they all argue that it is a problem to make journalists entirely beholden to a for profit model, simply because it does not serve the ends of democracy. And the other thing that I thought about that, which I don’t think Americans really, really understand, but when you go out into the world democracies, you see it, it’s impossible to avoid just how libertarian Our nation is just how much we put everything into the mind. market, we assume that the market is going to solve problems. We’re very reluctant to address the market failures around public goods. And we’re all kind of looking out for our number one. And we’re just hoping that the invisible hand is going to solve all these social problems. But no matter how you understand the success of that model, it doesn’t matter, because that model is dead, as opposed. And so now we have to go back and look at these questions and try to come up with different model.

Jenna Spinelle
Well, I think that’s a great transition into the interviewer Victor and I talk a lot about what some of those other models might look like, as well as some of the ways as you were saying that the US differs from other countries, other democracies in terms of how its media is funded. So let’s go now to the interview with Victor Pickard.

Jenna Spinelle
Victor Pickard, welcome to Democracy Works. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Victor Pickard
Thank you, Jenna. It’s great to be here.

Jenna Spinelle
So you know, Victor, there’s there’s a lot of talk these days about how do we fix the problem of news deserts or decreasing trust in the media or misinformation, all of these sorts of things, as I understand it, those issues and others like them are all kind of in your thinking downstream from a larger disconnect or larger conflict between the role of journalism in a democracy and the way that the media system has evolved financially in the US. Is that a fair characterization?

Victor Pickard
Yes, it is, you pretty much just beautifully summarize my entire book. So if we’re done then yes, we can. We can declare victory. But no, you’re absolutely right. So all those problems that you just mentioned, misinformation, news, deserts, just general problems about what’s often referred to as district misinformation, I would refer to it as just low quality information that pervades so much of our news media system. In the United States, I would, I would argue that these are actually symptoms of deeper structural pathologies. And what I try to do in my work is penetrate to those root causes what I think we need to address in order to change these things that, as you noted, are downstream from these core problems.

Jenna Spinelle
And in your book, democracy without journalism, you I think, wrap a lot of this up in the notion of corporate libertarianism in media, can you tell us more about what that entails?

Victor Pickard
So I see this as a kind of libertarian project, where it’s assumed that government has no legitimate role in our media system. And that basically, we should just leave everything up to market driven mechanisms. And that’s largely what we do here in the United States, which is fairly unique compared to media systems and policy regimes around the world. So I’m really trying to flesh out that what I refer to as American media exceptionalism, in argue that that’s what we need to change first, before we can even begin to change the policies of the media system itself.

Jenna Spinelle
And it does does this idea of, you know, the government not interfering with the media. I mean, that’s sort of tied to the First Amendment in some people’s minds, right? Or how do those two things kind of become conflated?

Victor Pickard
Yes, so typically, what happens is, at least in the US context, is that as soon as we consider or propose a policy intervention, and especially where government would do something in terms of regulating immediate system or in place in the public interest, protection, and you know, we can think of anything from Fairness Doctrine, which is something that your listeners have probably at least heard of before, or net neutrality, these are these are different kinds of policies that, that the government has tried at various points to impose upon aspects of our media system. The corporate libertarian reaction to that would be number one, again, as already noted that there really is no legitimate role for such government intervention into our news and information systems. And number two, that the First Amendment forbids any kind of intervention. These are sort of the two knee jerk reactions that I typically deal with all the time, whenever I tried to propose some of my recommendations for how we can democratize our news information systems. And unfortunately, both of these assumptions are very a historical me they, you know, going back to the dawn of the US Republic, it’s always been understood, or at least it used to be understood that we should never leave our information and communication systems entirely dependent on the market, that the market alone cannot provide for our information needs as a democratic society. And number two, that there has always been this positive have sides to the First Amendment, so oftentimes is thought of as like a negative protection. So that government, you know, Congress shall make no law that keeps government offer backs out of our business. But if you think about freedom of the press, that whole freedom would be rendered meaningless if there was not a press system. So there’s always been this implication that there’s actually an affirmative duty for government to ensure that we have a functional press system, we all learned in school that democracy requires freedom of the press, and by implication, a functional press system. So this is what I’m trying to draw, bring into focus and show that really, these kinds of policy interventions are as American as apple pie.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, and you talk in your book as well, the founders had some of these things in mind when they were thinking about things like the post office, right, which was how information was was disseminated, and still is today, but much, much differently. And, you know, I guess I’m wondering, as you think back over this history, where do things start to go off the rails? Or, you know, where do we start to lose some of that notion about what government and really means in a democracy,

Victor Pickard
In my mind, all roads lead back to the 1940s. And maybe we could hedge a bit and say it started in the 1930s. But it’s really around that time, when there was a huge battle over American broadcasting over like the basic contours of what that system would look like. And unlike every other democracy on the planet, we ended up with a predominantly commercial system, you know, most other countries had robust public broadcasting systems, we did not develop a relatively weak public broadcasting system until the late 60s, early 70s. So we started out and there was a real battle, there’s often this kind of lazy historical narrative that we hear today that, you know, we just, we just do things differently here, the United States, we wanted more freedom, and therefore, we just left it up to the market, it was laissez faire, we just let what really ended up being a duopoly or an oligopoly of just a handful of major corporations, media companies to take over the public airwaves. And that’s how we ended up with what we have today. And I really tried to show really try to denaturalize that and show that actually, there was a lot of conflict that led to this, there were a lot of people who thought we should not hand over the public airwaves to a handful of media firms. And so by recovering that earlier, contingency, to show that things could have developed differently, it wasn’t inevitable, it then regains this possibility, this potential that we actually could have something different here in the United States. And so So yeah, that was a very long winded answer to your to your great question. But I would say it was in the 40s, when we really started to go down a different path for print media. Just to tack on one last piece to this for newspapers and print media in general, I would probably pinpoint more in the late 1800s, when it became so heavily commercialized and dependent on advertising revenue. And that’s that is what eventually led us to where we are today in terms of the implosion of the commercial press.

Jenna Spinelle
And let’s take a step outside the US for a minute. And you hinted at this earlier, but kind of comparing just how different America is when looking at other media systems around the world. I think we can all think of examples like like the BBC, for example. But your work really highlights how government spending on media vary so much when you look at the US compared to other democracies, other other established democracies in particular,

Victor Pickard
Yes, in I could actually mesh this question within with an earlier question where you mentioned the postal system, right? So again, going back to the very beginnings of of the United States Foundation, and certainly not to romanticize the founders there, they had plenty of flaws. And I don’t think we should overlook those. But one thing that they did understand was that it required government intervention to maintain the news and information infrastructures that that democracy requires, and especially the postal system, which at that time, was primarily a newspaper delivery infrastructure, up to 95% of the weight of the post was it writing letters home, it was sending newspapers through the mails, and to ensure that this was done either in a highly subsidized manner, or in some cases entirely free for the publishers. So this was a massive subsidy. That is the equivalent to 10s of billions of dollars in today’s spending. Now, the federal government no longer spends anything like that towards us media. And in fact, when we look at our Public Broadcasting System, which again, was only founded here decades, After many countries that establish their own public broadcasting systems, we are almost literally off the chart for how little we spend towards our public broadcasting compared to democracies around the world we spend, it comes out to at the federal level, it comes out to about a buck 40 per person per year towards our public media. If you throw in local and state level subsidies, you get it up to about $3.15. Compare that to the UK, which is upwards, close to $100 per person per year they spend for the BBC, if you look at Northern European countries, it gets up to close to $200 per person per year. And it really shows I mean, not only do they have very strong, robust public broadcasting systems that puts ours to shame. And I should be clear, I like NPR, PBS. I like Big Bird, although Sesame Street has been leased off to HBO, of course. So it’s been it’s gone corporate, it’s been privatized. But you know, we have to be we have to look at the the real structural difference. And another key point here is that, you know, oftentimes there’s a kind of libertarian reaction. When we talk about public spending towards our media in the United States, it’s assumed that this will lead to totalitarianism, you know that any sort of publicly financed media system will become a mouthpiece of the state. But actually study after study, including one that I just co authored with Timothy net shows that strong public broadcasting systems positively correlate with strong democracies. In fact, the strongest democracies on the planet have the strongest Public Broadcasting System, so they are not sliding towards totalitarianism. And this is one of the reasons why I advocate for more public spending for own news media system here in the United States, especially as a commercial press continues to structurally collapse.

Jenna Spinelle
Sure. So can you say more about that relationship between strong public media and strong democracies? Are there more specifics that we know about certain behaviors or certain actions that that robust public media might inspire among news consumers,

Victor Pickard
There’s always going to be a very legitimate debate about how do we maintain independence, for Public Broadcasting, making sure that it doesn’t come under undue influence from whatever government whatever regime happens to be in power. And we can certainly point to problems around the world, Hungary, Turkey, Poland, there are many countries where their public broadcasting system, I shouldn’t say many, but there are some notable examples where they succumb to a kind of state capture, and that’s something that we must remain vigilant against. So that’s I don’t want to poopoo all those concerns. But on the other hand, we have all this growing empirical evidence to show that those democratic countries that do maintain independent, well resourced public broadcasting systems tend to have much higher levels of political knowledge, especially around international public affairs, they tend to see less extremism, more open mindedness towards immigrants, immigrant communities, more pluralism, what we what Europeans call media pluralism, we would call media diversity, but just in terms of diversity of views and voices. And of course, what are the key differences between a public system and a commercial system is that a public system is committed to a universal service mission. I mean, it will make sure that all all minority groups will have access to a baseline level of news and information. And that’s something that a commercial system simply can never do. I mean, they will. And I’m not you know, they’re very many they’re well, meaning people in the commercial media sphere and commercial news organizations, commercial outlets produce wonderful content, but they’re always going to have to privilege particular audiences over others, it’s just never going to be economically rational for them to try to reach the most far flung communities or to reach audiences that that advertisers are not as keen to reach.

Jenna Spinelle
So we do have, as you said, and your public media outlets both at the national level of PBS and PR and their their state and local affiliates. I really found it interesting. In your book, you go through some of the history of the Public Broadcasting Act, and when LBJ signed it in 1967, I believe it was he compares it to the Morrill Act, which created land grant universities, and he gives us big sweeping speech. And I mean, he really had a big vision for what this could be. Was it in line with some of the things that that you’ve been describing or that that we’ve been talking about?

Victor Pickard
Yes, absolutely. Although, I mean, we should be clear that in many ways, our Public Broadcasting System United States was set up to not achieve these grand visions and you know, I don’t wish to psychologize LBJ and try to determine was he was this just rhetoric? Or did he really mean this, but I do think many people really hoped for that sort of grand vision really saw it as a massive public investment for future generations for the health of our of our democratic society. But unfortunately, for that vision to be realized, it really is predicated on adequate resources so that it can be guaranteed, not just Well, first and foremost, economic independence, so that it could then be politically independent. And instead, it was always set up so that our public broadcasting system would be dependent on individual donations, but also what’s euphemistically referred to as enhanced underwriting, which in many cases comes from corporations and it comes from foundations as well. But anyone who any casual viewer listener that sits through PBS or NPR, I mean, the difference is the distinction between commercial and public broadcasting really becomes blurred when you’re listening, you know, from commercial after commercial is being aired on the on the public airwaves. Yeah,

Jenna Spinelle
And then I there’s also I think, the lack of support or kind of the evolution in the the financial models toward more of that subscriber and and foundation or in some cases, corporate support, also influences the content that we see on public media, you write that in the beginning, you know, it was some might have considered it radical, you know, Ralph Nader Studs Terkel, even Sesame Street, which, which we mentioned had a much more multicultural perspective on on American life than other media at the time. And now, you know, public media has been criticized for just the opposite, you know, giving ken burns too much of a platform and not being inclusive enough or not, not doing enough to engage with communities of color, and you know, millennials and Gen Z and all the, all the rest of it. So can you just talk a little bit about some of the pressures that public media has faced and how we might have gotten to some of these places as far as how the content has evolved?

Victor Pickard
Yes, you’re absolutely right. I love that. You mentioned Sesame Street, because people don’t realize that your Sesame Street started out is very progressive, even radical. And so it’s I mean, Pete Seeger was one of the main, you know, most popular guests, the first couple years of Sesame Street’s history. So in certainly for those times, I mean, they were very much trying to project a vision of a multiracial, democratic society, and they were very sensitive to issues related to not just race, but also class and gender related issues. I mean, they were very progressive. And you know, I think they’ve maintained some of that I haven’t I haven’t watched it in years. And I think it’s since it’s gone to HBO, it’s changed a bit. But you know, I do think the vision was there. And what you see today, what you’ve seen over the decades that because it has been designed in a way where it has to chase after individual donations and listener support, they’re going to have to cater more to higher socio economic groups, I mean, that they’re just going to even subconsciously, perhaps, but that’s going to be sort of the the gravitational pool, that they’re not going to be completely beholding to that public service mission that I mentioned earlier, even though again, I think many people try to do that. And if you listen to NPR today, and then listen to a commercial, a typical commercial outlet, there is stark difference. So I don’t want to pretend that that that they’re not doing a better job and covering a lot of issues. But still, they have been kept very politically meek and timid, every you know, every especially every Republican administration that’s come in, has gone after public broadcasting. And so they’ve really been cowed, in many ways to be too confrontational to those in power to adversarial so they have to keep it to this very polite, you know, maybe just barely left of center on some issues, but they can’t go too far.

Jenna Spinelle
As you think about what a broader scale kind of revision or you know, really rebuilding America’s media infrastructure in a public way from the ground up. I mean, how useful Do you see NPR, PBS these these types of things? Or is it better perhaps as as we’re trying to get our minds around? What this could really look like in the US? It’s better to look to some of the other countries you mentioned for for examples of where we might go from here.

Victor Pickard
Yes, that that’s that’s a really daunting question, because that we could go in so many different ways. But my first reaction to the question is simply that it’s all the above. I mean, I do think we need to constantly look at what other democratic countries are doing especially those mean now, to be clear, I should have mentioned earlier the US according to the democracy index is now considered a free Law democracy. I mean, we’ve been slowly dipping down on the on all the charts. And these are, you know, very mainstream reputable surveys come out every year sort of, you know, positioning countries and where they are the democratic spectrum and we’re not doing well. So I think we should be humbled by this and looked to other countries to try to gather best practices. But really my first instinct when I’m thinking about the future, and creating the kind of news media infrastructure that democracy requires here in the US, I would prefer to build on already existing public infrastructure. So my hope is that we wouldn’t have to dismantle you know, in my utopian vision of what we need to do, I’d like to see a way where we restructure and repurpose and give the resources that our public broadcasting system requires so that they can live up to some of those expectations. But I think it would also be naive to assume that if we just throw more money at it, it will automatically become better. I think, in tandem with putting more public resources towards our media infrastructures, we also have to democratize them. And we also have to take existing struggling commercial outlets like newspapers, for example, which still even in their beleaguered state are producing most of the original reporting in this country, we need as much as possible to remove them from the market. So D commercialize and democratize. Those are the two main thrusts of the the project that I’m envisioning, and, and promoting.

Jenna Spinelle
And just recently, we saw WBEZ, the the public radio station in Chicago, acquire the Chicago Sun Times one of the city’s long standing newspapers, is that type of model? Does that fit into the vision that you have when you think about these things?

Victor Pickard
Absolutely. I think that is actually a rare glimmer of hope within an otherwise very dismal media landscape. And I’d like to see I mean, to be clear, those partnerships have already been forming those acquisitions and mergers. Why Why here at Philly, acquired the digital alternative newspaper, Billy Penn, we’re seeing these partnerships around the country. And I think that’s a it’s a positive development, we need to see more of that, we also need to be clear that that alone isn’t going to be enough. I mean, that’s going to help out, too, it’s mostly happening in larger cities is happening where you have well received public broadcasting stations that are getting lots of foundation support and reader support. But that’s not going to address the news deserts problem. You know, there are many communities across the country that lack access to any local news media whatsoever. We’re also finding that there’s a there’s basic public media news desert as well. So we have to find ways where there’s a systemic approach to this so that all members of society can have access to the news and information that they need. And so I don’t want to be the buzzkill whenever we’re looking at something like what’s just happened in Chicago, because again, that is an exciting development. But I do think it speaks to this broader fact, which is, there is simply not a commercial future for newspapers in general, really, we’re just looking at the big three, the New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and otherwise, we’re going to have to find non market support to sustain newspapers going into the future. So those kinds of partnerships are certainly one way of doing that.

Jenna Spinelle
You know, Victor, as we start to think about this larger systemic change, I realize it is a very big problem to solve and something really massive to tackle. But where does it start? I mean, is this something where it needs to be a presidential level priority? Do we need another commission like the Carnegie Commission? Do we need more influence to get this going in Congress to need a solution from the courts? Like what what’s the first step here?

Victor Pickard
I think all of those ideas would be fantastic to see happen. You we basically need intervention in all these places, and all in all branches of government. But I would, I would certainly argue that a commission would be a good first start. But first and foremost, we need to make sure that we get resources to build the public media infrastructure that we need. One way would be to simply adjust our expenditures, our annual expenditures, right now we’re at point 001 of GDP, even if we shifted that the point 01. That would translate to billions of dollars for the public media that we need and start to bring us up to international norms, democratic norms in terms of how much we spend towards our public broadcasting. So that would probably require congressional intervention. But you know, as I started mentioning earlier, a commission would be at least a way that we can raise awareness. There was a poll that came out a few years ago that showed that most Americans were unaware of the journalism crisis whatsoever. They thought that their news originated We’re relatively healthy. So it shows us that we also need to have a public education campaign to just raise awareness about the nature of the structural problem that we’re facing. And I think that will help set us up to bring about the systemic change that we need to see happen.

Jenna Spinelle
We’re also right now in the midst of a conversation about what corporate media’s role is in explicitly standing up for or defending democracy, particularly at a time when one of our political parties seems to not really be doing that so much. And so, you know, I guess I understand that there’s this sort of vision of what a public focus media could look like. But in the interim, are there things that corporate media could or should be doing to help help achieve, you know, more democratic goals, democratic ends,

Victor Pickard
Certainly. And, you know, for at least the near term, we’re going to be very much at the mercy of this corporate news media system. And while I argue in all my work that we’re going to face some serious structural constraints in terms of trying to shame a commercial media system into better behavior. And too often, it’s assumed that it’s just a problem of a few bad apples instead of looking at these systemic attributes that shift public discourse that basically ensure that debates remain within particular parameters. And of course, for many years that included the kind of false equivalence, he said, she said, the Democrats says this, the Republican says that, and I do see some signs of positive change, among particular journalists and news outlets where there’s moving away from that typical framework, and they’re beginning to frame it more in terms of democracy. And if there’s one party that’s behaving in an anti democratic fashion, as there is right now, they’re starting to call that out more and more. But still, in terms of our long term vision, I think we have to look at something beyond the commercial media system that we have today, we have to think about creating a new public system. And in my wildest utopian dreams that I that I flesh out in the conclusion of my book, I talk about maintaining or establishing a public media center, in every community across the country. And I think that would be a way where the communities themselves would be creating their own media newsrooms would look like the communities that they purportedly serve. I think it would be one systemic approach to finally achieving these democratic objectives and to create the news media system that democracy requires.

Jenna Spinelle
Well, Victor, your your work gives us a lot to think about and a lot to work toward and be be hopeful about, or at least cautiously optimistic, as you said, so thank you so much for joining us today.

Victor Pickard
Thank you, Jenna. It was great talking to you.

Chris Beem
So Candis, I’m gonna put you on the spot. What would you say? Is Victor’s answer to the question? What is journalism for? And what is Candace Watts Smith’s answer to what is journalism for? Is it the same answer?

Candis Watts Smith 
I think it’s the same answer. I think he gives a really good answer, because it’s also my answer.

Chris Beem
That works out,

Candis Watts Smith 
Which is that it’s a public good. I think that because journalism has been so deeply commodified, we’ve really forgotten about that. And our common sense ideas about journalism is that it’s just something that you pay for, or you tried to get without paying for, and that it’s for, you know, that, you know, some people will get a profit out of it, and so on and so forth. But it misses out, that kind of orientation misses out on the necessity of journalism as informing, you know, helping to inform citizens to make better political decisions. So, you know, one thing that kind of stood out to me as I was listening to the interview, and also reading Victor’s book is that we’re kind of treating journalism much in the way that we’re starting to treat public education, which is a commodity, and that we’ve forgotten in many ways that public education is not just for individuals to like, move up the mobility ladder and get more stuff. But instead, public education was implemented as a policy to ensure that citizens are informed can read can be think critically and make good decisions about who our representatives are and what policies we should do or not do.

Chris Beem
And because we now have this crisis, associated with the corporate model of journalism, the for profit model of journalism, we need to go to government and it just strikes me as and I think he knows this. He calls it utopian. He knows what an uphill climb this is. Yeah, we should talk about it. What other ways we can engage this, but at the end of the day, you know, that is what government is for, it’s a way for the public to to solve these problems, public problems that you cannot solve in a market framework.

Candis Watts Smith 
Well, I think people forget, like, Okay, well, the market works. But what the market also does is to say that news outlets are concerned with ensuring that they get and keep customers. And so their incentive is to produce what customers want and not what they need, and not what’s needed for democracy. And we see this, especially in rural places, or where, or in low income places where there is not going to be the customer base. And so now what is it that it’s okay, because there’s no market there, that people in those areas aren’t going to get the kind of information that they need, so that, you know, rich people can get richer and middle class people can get news and keep their government accountable.

Chris Beem
Right. And you made the point that the post office goes to wherever there’s a mailbox, and it doesn’t say, Yeah, you know, it’s just too expensive for us to go down this road. It’s too expensive for us to have an office in a post office in this town. It is the job of the post office to provide that public utility for everybody in the United States. And, and as a result, it works for everyone. Right. So it’s not to say that we it can’t be done, it’s that we’ve decided not to.

Candis Watts Smith 
One of the worries, I think that people might have is that there is one political party that is anti democratic, right. And so then the question is like, Okay, well, do we really want to give them the power to say what the press can do or to, you know, fund or, you know, I get that worry. But I also think that there are models, including ones that that Victor points out that can kind of mitigate these matters. So one of the things that I remember reading, and that stood out was that there was an experiment for a money principle newspaper in California. And so one that was at the local level. So even let’s say the federal government was to provide funds and it gets devolved to the local level. This newspaper was supported by local government, and you know, people who wanted the, you know, the paper delivered their mail, could pay a little bit more, and it did well, but ultimately, it got sabotaged by private companies, who essentially said that the government was being like, was an unfair competitor. And even though the public really liked it, it got tanked in a campaign at a low turnout election. Okay, why am I saying all of this one, I think what’s really helpful about this, is that the model was a local model. And so you know, maybe your town run, you know, leans right, or maybe your town leans left, I think it’s okay, if you know, hey, maybe that means that the town paper leans a little left or leans a little right. And that’s an issue of framing, not an issue of dis information. And it’s not a right, that’s like what we get from Facebook. And it’s not a, you know, a matter of no information. Right. So people are reading the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post in New York Times. But that has nothing to do with their local politics. Right. So I think that, you know, we can go back in history and find helpful models, and Victor’s book does a really good job of kind of outlining some of those.

Chris Beem
Well, you know, I also think that in this political climate in which we find ourselves, we have, you know, this this market model of journalism, especially with respect to local newspapers, that is dying. And in Chicago, there’s a pretty good juxtaposition between both sides, right, on the one side, the Alden Capital Group, bought the Chicago Tribune and basically driving it into the into the ground, that’s their business model, that they buy these papers, and eke every last ounce out of them, and then just throw the husk away. Right. The other model is the Chicago Sun Times, which was just bought by the public radio station in Chicago. WBEZ. WBEZ, is a well regarded institution in the city and they had the resources and so rather than make it beholden to the tender mercies of Alden, capital and any other market based institution, they’ve just basically said, No, we’re going to we’re going to sustain this. So there’s a lot of problems with that. And Victor in the interview mentioned it right that that this only works in big cities. But if the alternative is vulture capitalism, and that’s the only alternative. Then in the meantime, I think that’s something that we need to look for models and celebrate them when we see them.

Candis Watts Smith 
Something we’re thinking through also is that, like you said, WBEZ is based in Chicago. It’s a bigger city. I’m sure their fundraising situation is amazing. And so they can afford to do this. But the other side of that is that public radio is underwritten by corporations. And it gets money from listeners like you and listeners, like you are largely middle class, well educated people. And so they have to cater to that audience. What kind of stories do they cover? Who Who are they missing? Right? Like, when is the last time we got an update on bad water across the United States, or, you know, a lot of stories told about opioids are from doctors and scientists who studied fentanyl, not from people who are suffering and families, etc. You know,

Chris Beem
You’re speaking to a problem that people have talked about for decades with it with philanthropy, right? Rich people have a set of interests, they’re going to fund the ballet and they’re going to fund the symphony. Yes. But it’s, they’re less likely to fund the the walk and shelter or, or whatever else. And so there’s a reason why we tax rich people, because this is a public problem, you know, the distribution of goods should be not be left in the hands of rich people. But and so I take the point, I think I agree with just about everything you said. But where we are right now, while we work for the utopian solutions that Victor is professing. Until then, we are constrained to come up with workarounds. Right. And I think WBEZ is one real good example of that. And, you know, let 1000 Flowers bloom. And we’ll just keep working for a day in which these public questions become political questions, which is where they belong. So that’s enough for now, I think, right. This is this is a very interesting and as you’ve heard, pretty deep foray into some of these issues and really important for democracy. So thanks to Jenna and to Victor. I’m Chris Beem.

Candis Watts Smith 
And I’m Candis Watts Smith For Democracy Works. Thanks for listening.