Lasar analyzes prospects for Free Press crusade to fund public media

Free Press's proposals to expand federal subsidies for public media may be one of many "long shot crusades" launched by the progressive media reform group, writes Matthew Lasar in Ars Technica, but one thing is certain--commercial broadcasters and electronics manufacturers "will protest these ideas early, often, and very loudly if any of them actually surface in a Congressional bill." Lasar believes that Free Press raises important questions about how to fund the journalism that is vital to democracy, and media reformers are better advocates for a new funding mechanism than public broadcasters themselves. "Public television in particular has sunk into a comfortable malaise of genteel poverty and compromise with the very commercial practices it was originally designed to transcend."