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74% Oppose Taxing Internet News Sites To Help Newspapers

Renae

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A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 84% oppose a three percent (3%) tax on monthly cell phone bills to help newspapers and traditional journalism.
Similarly, 76% oppose a proposed five percent tax on the purchase of consumer electronic items such as computers, iPads and Kindles to help support newspapers and traditional journalism. Seventy-four percent (74%) oppose the proposal to tax web sites like the Drudge Report to help the newspapers they draw their headlines from.
Each of these ideas was suggested for consideration in a recent FTC report.
Only 10% favor the tax on monthly cell phone bills to help newspapers and traditional journalism. Sixteen percent (16%) support the tax on consumer electronic devices, and 18% of Adults favor placing an additional tax on Internet news sites.
Seventy-one percent (71%) oppose the creation of a taxpayer-funded program that would hire and pay young reporters to work for newspapers around the country. Fourteen percent (14%) support such a program, while 15% are undecided.

74% Oppose Taxing Internet News Sites To Help Newspapers - Rasmussen Reports

Does anyone else have a problem with the FTC believing that the best solutions are gov't paid reporters and news organizations??
 
Taxing internet sights? You have got to be kidding me. The looming end of printed news media is an incentive for the papers to clean up the terrible mess they call reporting and fix their news. It is the competition with the internet that will drive them to get better. If they fail, then too bad. Why spend money to support something nobody really wants anymore.
 
74% Oppose Taxing Internet News Sites To Help Newspapers - Rasmussen Reports

Does anyone else have a problem with the FTC believing that the best solutions are gov't paid reporters and news organizations??

Rasmussen isn't really giving a very good depiction of what the FTC report says. (This is not at all surprising.)
http://www.ftc.gov/opp/workshops/news/jun15/docs/new-staff-discussion.pdf

So to answer your question:
"No because that's not what the FTC appears to believe."

Edit to clarify: The FTC report is extremely neutral and discusses a very wide variety of topics and ideas.
 
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Newspapers are dying because they are becoming irrelevant. Just like other old technology, no need to prop them up just delay the inevitable. In 20 years, there won't be any newspapers as we know them today.
 
Rasmussen isn't really giving a very good depiction of what the FTC report says. (This is not at all surprising.)
http://www.ftc.gov/opp/workshops/news/jun15/docs/new-staff-discussion.pdf

So to answer your question:
"No because that's not what the FTC appears to believe."

Edit to clarify: The FTC report is extremely neutral and discusses a very wide variety of topics and ideas.

Ahhh our Rezident Gov't Apologist has come in to say that Rasmussen is lying and really the FTC isn't really considering any such thing... trust them!

I'll go to the New York Post for more insight:

Instead, the FTC staff declares defeat in the search for business models so it may explore many government interventions, including:
* Expanding copyright law and restricting the doctrine of fair comment to benefit legacy publishers.
* Granting antitrust exemptions to allow publishers to collude on pricing to consumers and to business partners.
* Giving news organizations tax exemptions.
* Subsidizing news organizations by increasing government funding to public broadcasting; establishing an AmeriCorps to pay reporters; giving news companies tax credits for employing journalists; creating a national fund for local news, and giving the press an increased postal subsidy.
To its credit, the FTC does ask how to pay for all this. So the staffers speculated about what I'll dub the iPad tax -- a 5 percent surcharge on consumer electronics to raise $4 billion for news. They also consider a tax on broadcast spectrum and even on advertising.
Most dangerous of all, the FTC considers a doctrine of "proprietary facts," as if anyone should gain the right to restrict the flow of information just as the information is opening it up. Copyright law protects the presentation of news but no one owns facts -- and if anyone did, you could be forbidden from sharing them. How does that serve free speech?


Read more: How NOT To Save the News Business--Jeff Jarvis - NYPOST.com
 
Ahhh our Rezident Gov't Apologist has come in to say that Rasmussen is lying and really the FTC isn't really considering any such thing... trust them!

I'll go to the New York Post for more insight:

Or you could read the FTC report itself like I did. And maybe reread the thread so that you might notice I did not make any such claim about what I bolded there. Or you can just keep to the standard conservative tactic of exaggerating a liberal's post to create a straw man.

Edit: And it's hilarious that you'd respond to my posting the actual report with an opinion piece from an online journalist.
 
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Or you could read the FTC report itself like I did. And maybe reread the thread so that you might notice I did not make any such claim about what I bolded there. Or you can just keep to the standard conservative tactic of exaggerating a liberal's post to create a straw man.

So to answer your question:
"No because that's not what the FTC appears to believe."

I went to their PDF. I went to Rasmussen, I went to the NYPost.

Only you are saying that isn't what they are saying. I will have to disagree with you, however you are free to carry on..
So to answer your question:
"No because that's not what the FTC appears to believe."

Even though both your PDF, the poll and NYPost all disagree with you.
Do you get paid by the day or the post?
 

vader-nooooo.jpg
 
I went to their PDF. I went to Rasmussen, I went to the NYPost.

Only you are saying that isn't what they are saying. I will have to disagree with you, however you are free to carry on..
So to answer your question:
"No because that's not what the FTC appears to believe."

Even though both your PDF, the poll and NYPost all disagree with you.
Do you get paid by the day or the post?

Why would a poll, the NYPost, or Rasmussen be good evidence of what the FTC says?
The report also discusses copyright laws and fair use laws, "hot news" laws, antitrust laws, tax-exempt status, tax breaks for news organizations, non-profit news organizations, donations via tax returns, university grants, loans for new nonprofit news organizations, a tax on spectrum auctions, cost-reduction methods for printed media, allowing access to already-existing government-funded computing centers, and other things that Rasmussen and OpEd Man conveniently ignore. And when the FTC does discuss all of these things (including the taxes) it discusses them in a very neutral manner. It even points out that direct funding of journalism is undesirable because of the possibility of bias.

So yeah, you're ignoring what the FTC is saying and focusing on what other people claim the FTC is saying.
 
Here, I have a wild idea...

If Newspapers stop being profitable and fail...let them go out of business.

Crazy I know.
 
Here, I have a wild idea...

If Newspapers stop being profitable and fail...let them go out of business.

Crazy I know.

But........ aren't they too big to fail?

[/sarcasm]
 
Ahhh our Rezident Gov't Apologist has come in to say that Rasmussen is lying and really the FTC isn't really considering any such thing... trust them!

I'll go to the New York Post for more insight:

You don't even have to go anywhere else except the report by the FTC. Starting on page 20, it discusses every item listed in the poll. Deuce just seems to be having a lapse in literacy.
 
You don't even have to go anywhere else except the report by the FTC. Starting on page 20, it discusses every item listed in the poll. Deuce just seems to be having a lapse in literacy.

No, he's our резидент administration cheer leader. Gov't can do no wrong Comrade. Any reports, polls, opinion pieces, facts, evidence, video footage... confessions that show Gov't doing something people do not like are obviously wrong OR the people are "misinformed".
 
Why would a poll, the NYPost, or Rasmussen be good evidence of what the FTC says?
The report also discusses copyright laws and fair use laws, "hot news" laws, antitrust laws, tax-exempt status, tax breaks for news organizations, non-profit news organizations, donations via tax returns, university grants, loans for new nonprofit news organizations, a tax on spectrum auctions, cost-reduction methods for printed media, allowing access to already-existing government-funded computing centers, and other things that Rasmussen and OpEd Man conveniently ignore. And when the FTC does discuss all of these things (including the taxes) it discusses them in a very neutral manner. It even points out that direct funding of journalism is undesirable because of the possibility of bias.

So yeah, you're ignoring what the FTC is saying and focusing on what other people claim the FTC is saying.

You don't even have to go anywhere else except the report by the FTC. Starting on page 20, it discusses every item listed in the poll. Deuce just seems to be having a lapse in literacy.

I believe you missed a very important word, sir. Not to mention the entire premise of this post of mine. Lapse in literacy, you say? :rofl

Here, I have a wild idea...

If Newspapers stop being profitable and fail...let them go out of business.

Crazy I know.

I agree. I don't really see why people think they're so important.
 
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Rasmussen isn't really giving a very good depiction of what the FTC report says. (This is not at all surprising.)
http://www.ftc.gov/opp/workshops/news/jun15/docs/new-staff-discussion.pdf

So to answer your question:
"No because that's not what the FTC appears to believe."

Edit to clarify: The FTC report is extremely neutral and discusses a very wide variety of topics and ideas.

I'm sorry I fail to see how Ramussen and the FTC report are contradictory. Here's a quote from the two sentences of the Ramussen report:

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is considering several ways to help the struggling newspaper industry, but Americans strongly reject several proposed taxes to keep privately-owned newspapers going.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 84% oppose a three percent (3%) tax on monthly cell phone bills to help newspapers and traditional journalism.

Note the word "considering."

Now on page 20 of your link:

ISP-cell phone tax. They suggest consumers could pay a small tax on their monthly ISP-cell phone bills to fund content they access on their digital services. A tax of 3 percent on the monthly fees would generate $6 billion annually.

The FTC is clearly considering a tax that a large majority of Americans oppose. It hasn't definitely decided to do it but Ramussen never said that and in fact has not misrepresented what was in the report.

That's only one example. Go through each item that Ramussen polls and you'll find it being considered in the report. Where is your problem? This is a clear poll of things that are clearly being considered. The report doesn't say that the FTC is trying to force anything or that they have made a decision, it is simply examining what the FTC is considering and showing what people think of the ideas being floated. What exactly is wrong with this? By showing how little the public supports these taxes the chances of them actually getting implemented are decreased. There are other items on that report that may or may not get more support but Ramussen didn't attack every item in the report (heck just stating poll numbers isn't much of an actual "attack" anyways) or even the report itself just the specific items it polled opinion on.
 
You know, I saw on some news show, don't remember which one it was, that had the editor of Newsweek who was discussing how Newsweek was being put up for sale. Right now, what Newsweek has been doing is take their most popular print stories and put them online. He believes the future of print media is the opposite - news sites will post stories and the most popular articles will put printed at the end of the week or month as a magazine for newsstands. I happen to agree with him.

Print media will have to adapt in order to survive, just like every other industry has to when a revolution occurs. Print media can survive the internet revolution - it just has to adapt to do so. It may be painful and it may not be pretty, but it's what it has to do to stay alive. And if it can't, it doesn't deserve taxpayer money. After all, the government doesn't subsidize rafts to be floated down canals since that went out with use of horses, carriages, railways, automobiles, and airplanes.
 
But what the hell will all those pet owners use to line bird cages, hamster cages, chicken cages, or whatever? And stuff.

I mean, obviously newspaper...paper is a vital national resource and thus a tax is of course necessary to support it's continued production
 
Na na na na na na na na hey hey
 
Say hello to the state run media.
 
But what the hell will all those pet owners use to line bird cages, hamster cages, chicken cages, or whatever? And stuff.

I mean, obviously newspaper...paper is a vital national resource and thus a tax is of course necessary to support it's continued production

Except the newspaper has gotten so small, it won't even fit a bird cage anymore. A few years ago, I used two sheets and had to fold them. Now I have to put three sheets in the bottom of my parrot's cage with no folding.

Based on the Obama cheerleading in my local paper, that's all it's good for. I try to use the editorial pages so my parrot can "comment" on them.
 
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But what the hell will all those pet owners use to line bird cages, hamster cages, chicken cages, or whatever? And stuff.

I mean, obviously newspaper...paper is a vital national resource and thus a tax is of course necessary to support it's continued production





I see a market opportunity. :thumbs:
 
Wait...so If i start a company that makes kitty mugs, and i start losing money, i can tax citizens ?!

THIS IS AWESOME!

Whats that thing people use to say..

No taxation without something something...

:roll:
 
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