Maybe goverment funding is not the way to go

An interesting story from Nieman Lab for those who feel that government funding should be at the forefront of the campaign to save journalism.

They bring our attention to a study carried out in Argentina which

analyzes Argentina’s four largest newspapers and finds a strong correlation between their willingness to cover government scandal and the amount of money they received from government coffers.

The study found that

1. a “huge correlation” between, in any given month, how much money went to a newspaper and how much corruption coverage appeared on its front page. For example, if the government ad revenue in a month increased by one standard deviation — around $70,000 U.S. — corruption coverage would decrease by roughly half of a front page.

2.They also, in periods where newspapers were getting more money from the government, they produced fewer corruption scoops of their own and covered fewer of the scoops produced by other newspapers. (It should be noted here that the study only looked at the front pages of newspapers — so it’s possible rival papers were writing about the scandals uncovered by their peers.