FTC chairman calls for government protections of faltering newspapers

Skip Oliva exposed the absurdity of – and conflict of interest in – Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz’s musings earlier this week about the need for special government protections to ensure newspapers’ independence. The anti-trust lawyer now in charge of the FTC – and coincidentally married to Washington Post editorial writer Ruth Marcus – told the New York Times in an “on-the-record chat” that, among other justifications for an even cozier relationship between government and the mainstream media, “investigative reporting…and statehouse reporting would likely falter under blog operations.” Thank you, Comrade Leibowitz, for wanting to ensure that we read “independent news” in our morning copy of Pravda!