Would you invest in order to fund a free press?

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruno-giussani/press-freedom-gets-listed_b_20457.html

Bruno Giussani


05.05.2006
Press Freedom Gets Listed on the Stock Market (5 comments )
READ MORE: 2006
Sasa Vucinic announced it at TEDGLOBAL last Summer, raising both interest and skepticism: he wanted to sell "free press bonds." "If investors are willing to fund the US deficit, why wouldn't investors want to fund the press freedom deficit?," Vucinic said.

It's now reality: for the first time a social cause will be listed on a major stock exchange.

The Media Development Loan Fund, a non-profit run by Vucinic and based in New York and Prague providing low-cost financing to independent media in emerging democracies, is launching a security that mobilises private investment to support a free press -- basically a bond with a social element. They're doing so together with Swiss bank Vontobel and Zurich social investment specialists responsAbility.

Do you think the US could qualify as an "emerging democracy"?

[0007]

1. Is that kind of like blackmailing the truth into suicide?

[Demeter]

2. Everyone Reading DemUnderground IS Investing in Free Press

Not everything runs on money--truth, for example.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

3. good point. nt.

[Jade Fox]

4. This sounds really interesting.....

I'm gonna check it out.

[kitkat65]

5. It's a really interesting idea and raises a lot of questions.

Would there be a board of trustees? What are the qualifications to be on that board? What is the process/requirements for the press to apply for funding? Could journalists apply as individuals or do they have to belong to a media outlet? And on it goes.

Investigative journalism is a big financial investment for newspapers and I'm assuming tv and radio as well. Pull the plug on that investment and I think you start to see what is happening now with our media.

I would be happy to financially support a free media but it's with great disappointment since a free press is no longer a given in America these days.