Philanthropy & Government Can Save News Gathering in the U.S.

Writing on the CBS website, a former public broadcasting executive says public philanthropy and government support are needed to save the American news-gathering industry.

William F. Baker, former president of WNET and Bernard L. Schwartz Professor and Journalist-in-Residence at Fordham University, in part says:

The amount the government now sets aside for public broadcast media is about what it costs the military to occupy Iraq for two and a half days. Taking into account the hundreds of billions lavished on the interim survival of our elite financial institutions, funding our news infrastructure won't be a hardship. Just a small fraction of the $45 billion -- that's billion with a "b" -- Citigroup alone has received since October 2008 would give NPR and PBS all the money they need.

The former chief of public television in new York City adds:

Saving journalism might seem like an entirely new problem, but it's really just another version of one that Americans have solved many times before: how do we keep a vital public institution safe from the ups and downs of the economy? Private philanthropy and government support are the two best answers we have to this question.

On the same page of the CBS site, multi-million dollar news anchor Katie Couric talks with Tina Brown and Barry Diller about the Internet news site, The daily beast.