Rolling Stone (April 3) – The core idea that the news media exist in the broad public interest has been in place since the formation of the United States. Even the likes of Washington and Jefferson helped institute the practice of giving cheap or even free postage rates to newspapers. “Abolitionist newspapers were sent to the South thanks to these policies,” says Robert McChesney, a professor of communication at Illinois. “Even back then there was this idea of subsidizing reporting.”
