The tax-credit scheme would require government to decide what counts as a “news outlet.” How partisan is too partisan? Even putting political considerations aside, could people spend their journalism tax credits on sports-reporting or cooking magazines? Would Esquire or Cosmopolitan count? Those are two of America’s oldest journalistic institutions, but I doubt they provide the “quality information” that Walters has in mind.

As for giving news organizations tax-exempt status, they have that option right now by adopting a nonprofit business model. Plenty of publications have done so, as Walters notes in the piece. I don’t see any compelling reason why publicly traded for-profit corporations such as the New York Times Company, with annual revenue of $2.3 billion, shouldn’t be taxed like any other publicly traded for-profit corporation. That it provides an important service is not a defense; we tax energy companies and pharmaceutical companies, which do far more to keep us alive than newspapers do.

Journalism is not a public good, and there aren’t great reasons to think that government support would make it better. Walters’s argument is little more than special pleading for government favors for the industry in which he works.

[That argument gets weaker by the day, too. What of the public good in exposing corruption in government? Our current mainstream media is much more interested in covering it up in service to their partisan and ideological interests rather than in the true “public interest.” Hard pass. — Ed]