duck!

The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy [erm… we have a Constitutional Republic] expressed worry about whether the news industry’s financial woes will make for a less educated citizenry and considered whether the government should prop up independent journalists.

Like MSLSD?  Cuz Breitbart, Malkin—even Koz et al—seem to be doing just fine....

he nation needs to give the same urgency to making sure all Americans have broadband access as the Eisenhower administration did in building an interstate highway system a half-century ago, a report released Friday concluded.

...The commission includes two former FCC chairmen, newspaper publishers, a top Google executive, the NAACP president and a former CNN president. It concluded that a free flow of information “is as vital to the healthy functioning of communities as clean air, safe streets, good schools and public health,” and that it’s time for leaders to give it a higher priority.

Diveeersity?  and certainly no Conflict of Interest, there, eh?

The commission said independent journalism plays a vital watchdog role and wrestled with how to encourage it.

Leave it alone and let the Free Market work?  Just an idea…

You have to have access in order to be socially first class, economically first class and politically first class,” said Alberto Ibarguen, former Miami Herald publisher and president and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

“First Class?” WTH?!?

But the commission came to no consensus on whether private-sector journalists should get public subsidies, an idea that would test the historical tradition of journalists’ independence from government.

..."It’s difficult enough when I get the call from somebody in government complaining about the way we reported something,” [ABC News President David Westin, who was not on the commission] said. “But if the person himself who is getting the call is either directly or indirectly employed by government, that could be dangerous.”

Thank you for that clear statement of the obvious—though I doubt the commission is capable of comprehending it.