Media Research Center slams NJ Legislature for “propaganda bill”
/It’s not quite Joseph Goebbels’ Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda or Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (don’t all these ideas sound more at home in their original German… or Russian… or Spanish… or Chinese…???) but it’s a start in that direction. Yep, it is bad enough that the state forces every property taxpayer to subsidize the larger state newspapers by requiring county and local governments to pay for advertisements – notices that they could put on their government websites for free – but now we have direct government funding of so-called “journalism”. Stand by for the FAKE NEWS to fly.
Our friends at the Media Research Center hit the nail on the head…
NJ Passes State-Funded News Bill - Isn't That Called 'Propaganda?'
Glorious news! Following in the footsteps of the Obama-approved and promoted “Portman-Murphy Counter-Propaganda Act” of 2016, which sets aside over $150 million in federal tax funds to hand to dinosaur news media outlets, the legislature of New Jersey is finally ready to do its part! Isn’t that exciting?
Absolutely! As Joe Setyon reports for Reason, both the NJ House and Senate recently passed a bill to create the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium - state-funded news – beyond the already hair-graying public television and radio systems and state-funded colleges in the Garden State.
It’s a $5 million handout to “local press”, because, you know, when people don’t find it in their interest to purchase local newspapers or visit local news websites, they should be forced to pay for what they don’t want…
Right?
Writes Setyon:
The legislation in question creates a nonprofit group, the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, charged with approving grant applications for local news. The bill has passed both houses of the state legislature; Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, has not yet signed it, but on Sunday he did sign a state budget that sets aside the money.
You can read the full article here:
https://www.mrctv.org/blog/nj-legislature-passes-state-funded-news-aka-propaganda-bill
Setyon adds:
The liberal Free Press Action Fund has been pushing for such legislation for years. The group initially asked for a much larger endowment of $100 million, but it still greeted the news with pleasure. 'Never before has a state taken the lead to address the growing crisis in local news,' State Director Mike Rispoli said in a statement, calling New Jersey a model for the rest of the nation.'
No thanks. There’s been enough of this nonsense in other areas of American culture. We don’t need it in journalism. And can one still call it “journalism” when it’s funded by the state?
Technically, the more precise term is “propaganda”.
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