A media analyst is raising concerns about Washington State’s decision to bail out failing newspapers by providing them with large tax breaks not being awarded to other private businesses.
A new law signed by Washington Governor Christine Gregoire would give newspaper printers and publishers a 40-percent cut in the state’s main business tax. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer switched to an Internet-only publication earlier in the year due to a significant decrease in circulation and advertising revenue.
Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the Media Research Center, says since all of The Evergreen State’s major newspapers endorsed Governor Christine Gregoire last fall, the newspaper bailout could very well be seen as a “payback measure.”
“I think if we’ve been concerned that the government subsidizing newspapers would compromise the image of independence that newspapers have, I think creating a tax break for them — you know liberals tend to think of tax breaks as subsidies — it has the real dangerous tendency to make the newspapers look like this is some sort of pork for them in exchange for better coverage,” he contends.
What is missing in the discussion, according to Graham, is the question of whether some of the papers in Washington and across the country are failing because they are so one-sided that they look like “partisan print outlets” and many non-liberals do not want to subscribe to them.
