public funding for journalism
Public funding constitutes financial support for journalism that comes from a government entity. Public money can support journalism directly or indirectly. Because independence from government is a valued element of journalism, the extent to which government financially supports journalism has been more controversial than other forms of funding for media such as advertising, underwriting, reader support, or philanthropy.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which includes the wording “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” sets up some protection for journalism from government, and journalists in the United States are expected to act as a check on government. A major function of the press is holding the government accountable. Because of this, opinions among U.S. journalists differ about the extent to which public funding should support what they do or whether it should support them at all. Some have argued public funding compromises the ability of journalists to act independently of government; others have argued it can provide necessary financial support for journalism while safeguarding editorial independence.
History of Public Funding of U.S. Journalism
The United States has a history of subsidizing journalism in various ways. In the 1700s colonial newspaper printers survived because of government contracts and would act as official printers for a municipality. The U.S. Postal Act of 1792 offered discounted rates for mailing newspapers and allowed publishers to send copies to each other for free. The U.S. government contracted most of its printing to newspaper publishers, often doling out contracts as political favors, until Congress in 1860 created the U.S. Government Printing Office. Through much of the 19th century plenty of American journalists were either directly on the government payroll or had sideline patronage jobs working as political party operatives. Public money kept the presses running.
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A gradual shift in the relationship between the press and politics began in the 1830s as commercial, for-profit media bloomed, particularly in larger cities. With the rise of the “penny press” in New York City, some newspapers adopted a business model based on advertising and mass circulation, reducing their reliance on political party funding.
However, there was never a complete break from government support for journalism in the United States, particularly as news media continued to evolve. During World War I the federal government took the unprecedented step of funding and running a daily newspaper called Official Bulletin. Published out of the News Division of President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information, the newspaper appeared in government offices, post offices, and military installations until the end of the war.
Publicly Funded Journalism Entities in the United States
During World War II the U.S. government launched Voice of America (VOA), a radio news operation broadcast overseas to combat Nazi propaganda. The VOA’s charter, signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1976, requires VOA content to be “accurate, objective, and comprehensive.” In 2016 Congress stated that the Inspector General of the U.S. State Department and Foreign Service shall “respect the journalistic integrity of all the broadcasters” of the VOA and other broadcasters overseen by the federal Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). The government agency, renamed as the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) in 2018, calls itself “America’s civilian international media agency.” In addition to VOA, it oversees Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and other networks. For fiscal year 2025 the USAGM requested $950 million from Congress to fund its operations. Congress eventually approved $653 million in funding.
Following the advent of television, President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967 signed the Public Broadcasting Act, creating the private nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). In public remarks at the time, he said that while the CPB would get part of its support “from our government,” it would be independent, “carefully guarded” from government or party control. The CPB created the well-regarded National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting System (PBS). NPR and PBS do not rely entirely on government support. While the outlets receive money from the U.S. Treasury through the CPB, they also raise money from listeners and viewers and receive funds from corporate underwriting and philanthropic foundations.
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In 2020 Congress approved $465 million for the CPB, a minuscule portion of the federal budget that helped support more than 1,500 local public radio and TV stations that year. In 2017 36 states provided public funding for broadcast media, and the percentages of public funding by state differed considerably. Public funding made up more than half the revenue budgets of some local stations. Some conservative politicians have pushed to defund NPR and PBS for reasons ranging from concerns of bias to wasteful spending. In 2012 public funds made up about 15 percent of PBS’s budget. In 2020 NPR stated that grants from the CPB and federal agencies and departments made up less than 1 percent of its annual operating budget on average.
Governments have supported media indirectly as well. Some states offer tax breaks for printing ink or newsprint. States also have laws mandating that certain public notices about public meetings, government contracts, unclaimed property, or other matters appear in a local print newspaper. Smaller newspapers in particular rely heavily on the notices to stay afloat financially. In the digital age, newspaper publishers have had to lobby state lawmakers and fight to keep those laws on the books to prevent losing a revenue stream.
Shifts in Thinking on Public Funding for U.S. Journalism
Still, government support for media in the United States is less robust compared to some other countries such as Germany, Finland, and the United Kingdom, and news outlets funded by the government are outliers in the broader U.S. media ecosystem. For the better part of the 20th century, when a traditional advertising model was working well, particularly for local news publishers, many of those who produced the news in the United States likely would not have advocated expanding public-sector support and might have been repelled by the prospect.
However, following the rise of the Internet at the turn of the 21st century and the Great Recession of 2007–09, when the bottom fell out of the local news business model, public discussion bubbled up among U.S. journalists and those who advocate for journalism about the viability of expanding public funding to support local news. The discussions came at a time of great disruption for local news publishers. Layoffs had lashed the industry. Publications went out of business. Studies showed that a diminished local news scene was bad for democracy.
Some former critics, believing that local news was too important to disappear, began to rethink their aversion toward publicly funding journalism in the United States. In 2014 a North Carolina city government gave a $100,000 low-interest loan to help expand a newspaper that focused on the Black community. That same year a local government in Wisconsin offered a $30,000 payment to a small local newspaper so it would not shut down. Some advocating for more public support for local news proposed creating state or national public media funds to administer money to publishers, forming entities called Community Information Districts funded by local taxpayers, or using local library district taxes to produce journalism, among other possibilities.
As financial cutbacks in the local news industry continued through the first quarter of the 21st century, some who previously might not have entertained the idea of expanding public funding for journalism became more open to it—if it could be done in a way that protected publishers from undue influence. They included well-regarded academics, journalism historians, a former chairman of the Pulitzer Prize Board, and at least one First Amendment attorney. Some argued that if news publishers were able to establish adequate editorial firewalls to protect journalism from the influence of corporate advertisers or philanthropic donors, they could do the same if some revenue came from a government entity. Government has funded important science research without intrusion, some said, and the government has long funded arts and humanities.
In 2018 New Jersey lawmakers approved a bipartisan measure that created a nonprofit organization, the first in the nation, that would invest public funds to bolster local news coverage. In 2020, for the first time ever, the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade offered a $100,000 grant opportunity to a local news publisher.
As COVID-19 spread across the world and was declared a pandemic in early 2020, it prompted business shutdowns that further devastated advertising revenue for many news organizations, and some publishers accepted government support via the Paycheck Protection Program administered by the U.S. Small Business Administration, so they could continue to create journalism. Others argued that newspapers have a core function of covering government and couldn’t reconcile that with accepting taxpayer money. If anything, the pandemic further galvanized a contentious debate over the efficacy of public funding for news in the United States.
The original version of this article was published by SAGE Publications in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Journalism.