Bill Frezza has some skeptical thoughts about the recent move to subsidize financially ailing newspapers:

Behold the “Independent Journalism Tax.”

In order to preserve independent journalism in the age of the Internet, a national Fund for Local News should be created with money the FCC now collects from or could impose on telecom users, television and radio broadcast licensees, or Internet service providers.

This is the key recommendation buried on page 91 of a 100 page report issued last week titled “The Reconstruction of American Journalism” by Leonard Downie, Jr. Vice President of the Washington Post, and Michael Schudson, a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism.  In the current era of single party rule, is there any chance that this further intrusion of the government into our lives might actually come true? Might we one day be forced to pay a tax every time we make a cell phone call to make sure the Press Room in the White House is stuffed with even more reporters eager to credulously swallow whatever nonsense comes out of the President’s mouth? Could truly independent newspapers be forced to compete with government subsidized lapdogs like, say, truly independent banks or car companies?

Yup, this idea is not really intended to support the newspapers, it’s intended by the Obamunists to make government control of the once free press permanent in the US.