A Public Option Might Be Journalism’s Last Best Hope

It’s likely that a robust antitrust enforcement regime, in tandem with a suite of economic policies could create a market more amenable to sustaining journalism. But in the absence of that, and the uncertainty as to whether the market is fundamentally able to provide the necessary journalistic coverage to inform and serve a functioning democracy and civic life, it’s worth considering what no Democrat has dared advocate for 50-some years: a renewed and robust public investment in media. Yet the fate of (public) media has gotten surprisingly little attention in the 2020 cycle. Despite a number of policies being introduced that might work as a market corrective to rein in some of the monopoly players at the various levels of the media ecosystem (and a proposal from Elizabeth Warren to curtail private equity), the question of public-sector journalism has gone largely ignored. The return to a public option in media would not only be popular; it would dovetail readily with a spate of small-d democratic reforms like automatic voter registration and campaign finance reform, both of which were hallmarks of the 2018 House bill HB-1. And it could even prove politically expedient in the general election against President Donald Trump: “There’s a real opening,” noted Free Press President and CEO Craig Aaron, “for presidential candidates to actually get at this loss of journalism going against Trump, who spent all this time with fake news.”