(Government) News Corporation

I've talked before about how terrible our newspaper industry is doing, in the face of the immediate availability of information on the Internet and the convenience of 24/7 cable news channels. You had to know that someone in the government would find a way to step in and help out. Reuters reports that the idea of a bailout of sorts is cooking within the creaky, dirty walls of the Congress.
The last thing the government should step in and help out is the media. Mass media has already skewed the idea of freedom of speech. However, Henry Waxman, a Dem Chairman on the House Energy and Commerce Committee thinks differently. Complaining of a failing business model, he warns that, "Eventually government is going to have to be responsible to help and resolve these issues." Despite how terrible the media is right now, letting the government step in and take the reins is a terrible, aside from concerns over censorship. With a bailout comes restrictions, like in the case of the government bailout of the auto industry; salary caps, concessions, streamlining, trimming the corporate fat, basically. Restrictions on how they functioned and what they could and couldn't do also applied. An auto company that should have been left to implode is one thing, a struggling but evolving thing such as media is another. I don't fear so much what would happen to the massive, lumbering conglomerates that haven't been able to keep up with the changing nature of media, but how the smaller, moderate news outlets and such would be affected. Once politics collides head on with free speech and the free press, there's no telling what could happen, particularly when there are large sums of money involved. Case in point, FOX News has pretty much become the speaking arm of the Republican party, as 'fair and balanced' as they would like to appear. Thomas Paine must be spinning in his grave.