Public media funding cuts create fair competition for local news in Indiana

Indianapolis Star

11 hours ago

Indiana, along with the federal government, has cut billions in funding from public media after long-standing accusations of liberal bias.
Local NPR and PBS affiliates, which serve 2.5 million Indiana residents, many in rural areas, should view this as a favor. The average person no longer trusts the media, and associating with the federal government is a terrible way to address that, especially as of late.
'A central pillar of our mission as journalists is to hold power in check,' Stephen Crane, editor-in-chief of the Morgan County Correspondent told me. 'So, if they are simultaneously funding you, that raises a few eyebrows as far as journalistic ethics.'
Eliminating subsidies to public media will create a more even playing field for local news outlets. Fair competition can drive them to creativity fill any information and content gaps that result.
87% of people who name NPR as their main source of news identify as Democrat or Democratic-leaning, which shows the national brand has catered more to an ideological audience, even if not intentionally, rather than directly addressing local needs anyways.
Ending their subsidies won't eliminate PBS and NPR entirely, as only a small proportion of their budgets rely on the government, but it will make sure they don't have an unfair advantage over their competitors while offering a less-relevant product.
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While for obvious reasons I'm partial to IndyStar, with its long history as a local outlet benefitting from the investment of its parent company Gannett, many newer publications have done an excellent job addressing local needs.
The Morgan County Correspondent, the Indiana Capital Chronicle and Mirror Indy are three examples of hyper-focused media outlets that came into existence within the last five years to cover a local media market and did so effectively by seeking local funding sources rather than government subsidies.
'There's plenty of people with deep pockets that really understand the crisis we're confronting,' Crane told me. 'It is a crisis of democracy.'
While it is harder for startups to break into more capital-intensive industries like broadcast media, many have found ways to reach people where they are through social media engagement, podcasts and other rising alternative forms of media.
If the government wants to support the news industry, making newspaper subscriptions and advertisements tax-deductible is a much more ethical way to do so, as it would incentivize public engagement rather than arbitrarily picking winners and losers in the media market.
'The larger problem, particularly when it comes to newspapers … is we're dealing with an ill-informed and disengaged public,' Crane added. 'Everyone is growing more and more isolated for various reasons.'
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41% of the U.S. doesn't trust national media, worsening that problem. By contrast, only 18% of the U.S. doesn't trust local media, perhaps because they are closer to their geographical community and feel more of an obligation to win their trust and provide some level of representation to the things they care about.
'We see the newspaper playing a vital role and sort of retightening the threads of the community fabric and really anchoring the identity of that community,' Crane told me. 'When you're talking about communities, you see them in the grocery store. These are real people. You can't quite get away with as much arm's-length existence. The larger scale you go, the harder it is to define community.'
Indiana has already taken a few steps recently to make it easier to run a news publication, including by reducing the number of years a newspaper has to be in print to be eligible to publish public notices, increasing transparency around state agency spending and requiring local government meetings to be livestreamed.
As traditional metrics of newspaper readership decline and artificial intelligence competes to become the primary distributor of public information, local media now desperately need more of a drive to innovate and win back the public trust.
Eliminating government subsidies is a great first step to restore the competitive drive needed to innovate, but now the government needs to incentivize the public to re-engage by making newspaper subscription and advertisement costs tax-deductible.