Democrats in and out of the media want to bail out newsrooms. The progressives can’t seem to move on. Newspapers are dying, but the people obsessed with Forward keep looking back. Longingly. Pining for a publicly funded propaganda machine (NPR just isn’t enough). Yearning for someone to bail out their mouthpieces.
Millions have been dumped into media by private “investors” to set up fake news portals pretending to be non-partisan landing pages that still manage to echo progressive priorities. We’ve got fake news groups, fake news checkers, and disinformation filters that protect the government message from the truth. Now, Google and the state of California are teaming up.
Google has brokered a first-in-the-nation deal with California lawmakers to direct millions of dollars to local newsrooms, the latest in a series of global efforts to require tech companies to support the journalism they profit from.
California emulated a strategy that other countries like Canada have used to try and reverse the journalism industry’s decline as readership migrated online and advertising dollars evaporated. But the California agreement includes a novel – and controversial — element with funding earmarked for artificial intelligence, a technology that many journalists fear could replace their jobs, and it immediately drew sharp criticism from journalists and Democratic lawmakers.
Under the deal, the details of which were first reported by POLITICO on Monday, Google and the state of California would jointly contribute money over five years to support local newsrooms, excluding broadcasters, through a “News Transformation Fund” housed at UC Berkeley’s journalism school. Google would give $110 million to journalism initiatives, and the state would kick in $70 million, according to Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat who led negotiations on the deal.
The article goes on to explore why so many people are unhappy. One Democrat says it’s not enough money (act surprised). Others suggest this gives Google something at the expense of the purpose (were there indulgences for the climate-killing energy hog that is AI?). Another Democrat said,
“We have concerns that this proposal lacks sufficient funding for newspapers and local media, and doesn’t fully address the inequities facing the industry,” McGuire said in a statement.
I think he was expecting some Affirmative action clauses or DEI voodoo.
Media Guild of the West “blasted the deal as a giveaway to Google that would not alter the company’s vast power over newsrooms.” That’s an interesting admission. Google controls newsrooms. How do they do that, exactly, and why aren’t you clever journalists reporting it and side-stepping it in the name of non-partisan fourth estate integrity? Because you have none. You’re happily bought and bent by a host of partisan forces before whom you kneel daily, and the concern isn’t whether you produce a product that challenges narratives or establishment power to sustain itself. You might as well be GranitGrok, except that we piss people off left and right while trying to survive on donations from same. The other difference is that we don’t sell something that generates revenue to support operating expenses. We give it away to everyone and hope they like it enough to support us so we can keep doing it.
Our bailout is voluntary. California is using taxpayer money and a nice fat check from a powerful player in local and national politics to prop up favorable news outlets that provide free partisan policy and campaign support (earned media) that also attacks political opponents. A plan hoping to sidestep the courts to get the money into their stenographer’s hands (Canada’s bailout hasn’t managed to get a dime to newsrooms a year on).
Lawsuits seem likely. Bilking taxpayers to backstop Marxist universities hasn’t stirred enough ire, but bailing out partisan newsrooms might be more than someone is willing to tolerate. Google, of course, can do what it wants with its money and does. From information and media tampering to election meddling, its tentacles are fat and long. Subscribers can ask what that buys or not – but most will be content to know they’ll keep getting the paper, jumbles, crosswords, comics, sports stories, classifieds, and whatever that other stuff is that destroyed California and threatens to swallow the nation and the world.
