FTC Responds to Stories on CE Tax

We reported today that FTC chairman Jonathan Leibowitz thinks it's a "terrible idea" to subsidize journalism through a tax on consumer electronics.

He was responding to recommendations put forth in the FTC's recently published document, "Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism."

The FTC has come under fire for considering such silly ideas as bailing out journalism by taxing technology, cellphone data plans and advertising.

But the organization wants everyone to know that the document in question is not a proposal by the FTC, rather a discussion of recommendations put forth by various parties.

The recommendation for a 5% tax on CE was "an idea submitted to the FTC's staff as part of workshops we've been holding since last year," writes FTC Deputy Public Affairs Director Peter Kaplan in an email to CE Pro. "It was never FTC's proposal or recommendation ...."

He adds, "The FTC hasn't even finished holding the workshops yet, much less made any recommendations. We hope to release a report in the fall, which may or may not include recommendations."

Kaplan points to a press release (below) that was distributed on June 4.

See, no wonder we need to reinvent journalism! Damn reporters got this story all wrong. (I got it mostly right, careful to report that FTC was considering recommendations, but have clarified some of the language in my two stories.)

FTC Corrects Misinformation on Journalism Workshops and "Discussion Draft": Ideas are Compilation, not Recommendations from Agency
The Federal Trade Commission has hosted a series of workshops on the Future of Journalism: “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” Panelists have represented a wide range of views from bloggers such as Search Engine Land and BlogHer to online publishers like ProPublica and the New Haven Independent and traditional media companies such as News Corp. and The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

On May 24, the FTC released a staff discussion draft in advance of the next workshop on June 15. The discussion draft collects proposals and public comments articulated during previous panel conversations and in reports and articles about the future of journalism. The staff discussion draft states:

“[T]hrough this document, we seek to prompt discussion of whether to recommend policy changes to support the ongoing reinvention of journalism, and, if so, which specific proposals appear most useful, feasible, platform-neutral, resistant to bias, and unlikely to cause unintended consequences in addressing emerging gaps in news coverage.”

The FTC has not endorsed the idea of making any policy recommendation or recommended any of the proposals in the discussion draft.

Recent press reports have erroneously stated that the FTC is supporting and proposing some of the public comments (for example, taxes on electronic devices, favoring one medium over another).

The discussion draft and workshop info can be found at the FTC website: http://www.ftc.gov/opp/workshops/news/index.shtml.

But, of course, I must have the last word:
First, even though the reinventing-journalism document is a compilation of recommendations, not a recommendation or proposal itself, someone made the decision to include some ideas and exclude others, right?

So someone in the FTC thinks it at least a passable idea to tax the technologies that evidently are killing journalism.

This is what we in the media call "setting the agenda."

Washington Examiner reporter Mark Tapscott puts it beautifully in his piece, "Evasive FTC wants it both ways on 'reinventing journalism'"

So [in reponse to the FTC's PR] I asked the agency's deputy public affairs director, Peter Kaplan, if the inclusion of any idea in the working draft thereby made it at least possible that it would subsequently be endorsed by the agency.

Kaplan, a former Reuters reporter, hemmed and hawed a bit but said yes. So, contrary to the press office statement, the decision of FTC staff members to include a selection of ideas in a menu of ideas any one of which could ultimately become official government policy constituted a form of endorsement. This is called trying to have it both ways: These aren't our ideas but we endorsed them before we didn't.

In any case, it is silly for the government to even contemplate a reinvention of journalism, much less play a role in rewarding news organizations for their outmoded business practices.

Finally, I would like chairman Leibowitz to repudiate the idea of a tax on advertising and cellphone service with the same resolution as he denounced the tax in CE.