Nick Coleman: Subsidies? For news? Whoa, Nelly.

The discussion about how to "save" the news media has arrived at a predictable but dangerous juncture, with proposals to have the government subsidize the news.

Asking the government to lend a hand to the news business is like asking the wolves to help a lame old sheepdog by not running so fast when they come for dinner. The dog may survive a little while longer, but the sheep will not.

Journalists are supposed to approach power with skepticism, not with hats in hand. There already has been too little bite from a profession that has failed to find the truth in a timely manner on almost every big issue in recent years: The ginned-up war in Iraq, the conspiracy of greed that brought collapse on Wall Street and ruin on Main Street; the assault on civil liberties in the name of security; the mean-spirited chipping away at the social safety net just as millions more Americans are losing their economic security, and the infiltration of Congress by powerful interests who have succeeded at stopping meaningful health care reform and have brought real change in the way the country operates to a standstill. Just to name a few.

Do you believe that a media subsidized by government would do better? If so, I've got an old printing press I'd like to sell you. Cheap.

According to Reporters Without Borders, an international press freedom organization, the United States ranks only 20th in press freedom. And No. 20 might be too high: What does it say about the media when, earlier this year, managers of the Washington Post were selling access to fancy soirees where government officials would hobnob with journalists at the paper that once brought down a president?

That scheme was dropped after it became public, but it's the attitude -- the mistaking of a press pass for privilege -- that is troubling. Now, the former executive editor of the Post has come forth with a proposal to use government subsidies to keep the media -- mostly still profitable but no longer enjoying profit margins that were the envy of narcotics smugglers -- more comfortable in their old age.

The Post's Leonard Downie Jr., now the newspaper's vice president, argues that traditional media have entered a "transformational period" in which the big news outlets are being replaced by a smaller-scale, Web-based journalism, and he suggests that we need to move toward nonprofit models. Fine. But he goes too far in asking for legislation allowing government to subsidize media and believing some kind of oversight bodies can keep government and media from crossbreeding. The record, even without subsidies, is not good.

Downie's 98-page report, written with Michael Schudson and commissioned by the Columbia Journalism School, is called "The Reconstruction of American Journalism." The press critic A.J. Liebling once wrote, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." Many who have owned a press have not distinguished themselves with courage, independence or honesty. But if the press is subsidized by government, whose freedom is it? (For an educational account of how one newspaper used and abused its freedom, go online to watch "Inventing LA," a PBS documentary about the rise and fall of the Los Angeles Times that aired recently.)

Did I just say "go online" to see a documentary about the decline of newspapers? Yes. Downie and Schudson are correct that "dominant" newspapers and networks are fading while online news organizations -- incorporating the efforts of citizens, volunteers, students and refugees from the mainstream -- are rising to fill the gap.

The Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit with a $4 million annual budget mostly provided by foundations, is producing original investigative reporting on public issues that are not being covered (not enough, any way) by the for-profit news industry. And here in Minnesota, MinnPost.com is one among several efforts to provide an alternative, nonprofit-based look at local news.

These and other promising "new media" efforts will need financial support, from small donors and large, to thrive. Funding from big-money supporters -- no matter how pure their intentions -- will always carry potential problems. But journalists of all stripes should be especially wary of letting government funding blur their vision.

When it comes to telling truths, Americans need news organizations that are unfettered. Not ones that worry about what the government will think.

Nick Coleman is a senior fellow at the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy & Civic Engagement at the College of St. Benedict/St. John's University. He can be reached at nickcoleman@gmail.com.