There’s one piece of the $3.5 trillion spending bill that the media is unlikely to tell you about—their bailout.
The massive, bloated $3.5 billion spending bill has so much pork that fiscal hawks could eat it for weeks. One piece that hasn’t received much attention yet is a special journalism “tax credit” equal to 50% of the salary of each journalist—up to $50,000 per journalist annually.
Yes, that’s correct, your tax dollars would be paying 50% of the salary of many journalists, whether you like their reporting or not.
Think of it as a way to turn every news outlet in America into a version of NPR.
Let’s be clear: “Saving” the media would destroy the media. How could we ever trust journalists to accurately cover the elected officials who voted against their funding? How can you “speak truth to power” when you’re also pleading with that power for cash? Which news outlets would get the funding, and which would be snubbed?
Any pretense of objectivity would be destroyed once the media is on the federal payroll.
And if you think the media is already hostile to conservatives, libertarians, Christians, business leaders, southerners, and basically anyone who didn’t love Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s, D-N.Y., dress from the Met Gala, just imagine the disdain they’ll show us once they’re funded by tax dollars. Also imagine the press coverage of any politician that dares to oppose renewing—or increasing—their funding.
The idea that Americans should be forced to financially support news outlets they don’t like is immoral, obnoxious, and a threat to both free markets and free speech. It’s also outrageous when one considers the proliferation of new media outlets that have already replaced these dinosaurs.