Former CBC Chairman Patrick Watson’s suggestion to aCanadian Senate committee that the federal governmentshould fund a new national newspaper did not receivean easy ride from this nation’s media.

&#0147It sounds like Pravda,&#0148 sneered a recent editorial inthe Windsor Star.

A day later, an identically-worded editorial would runin Prince Edward Island, this time under theimprimatur of the Charlottetown Guardian’s editorialboard.

Never having read Pravda, but understanding it to havebeen a vehicle for distributing homogenized contentstraight from Central HQ, I detected a clever irony inthe decision of editorial boards across our country toexpress their distaste for Mr. Watson’s idea incarbon-copy plagi-torials straight from CanWestCentral HQ.

Or maybe the irony was unintended.

In which case, Mr. Watson would be advised to sit backfor a while and let his critics make his argument forhim.

But as someone who harbours cautious enthusiasm forMr. Watson’s idea, it seems to me that the onus lieswith advocates for a state-funded newspaper to showhow it would not simply become a mouthpiece for thestate.

We might start by pointing out that the private sectorhardly has a monopoly on press freedom.

For years, the state-funded BBC World Service was theonly reliable news source to penetrate China’s closedsociety. And, it was Rupert Murdoch, proprietor of FoxNews, who in 1994 kicked the BBC off his Asian Starsatellite, in order to appease a Chinese Governmentwith whom he hoped to do further business.

So, the mere fact that an outlet relies on governmentsubsidy is not a sign of its moral bankruptcy; just asprivately-bankrolled media, like those of Mr. Murdoch,are not always bastions of journalistic integrity.

Much depends upon whether editorial decisions can beinsulated from political &#0151 or commercial &#0151interference.

Which is why, the Feds should deposit any nest egg inan arms-length trust, to deprive future politicians ofa handy funding-stick with which to brow-beat editors.

But, even if we could trust a state-funded newspaper,is there any need for such an outlet?

Many believe that with the advent of the Internet,the public has more information than it couldever need. But simply because there is more to readthan ever before, doesn’t mean that we are gettingeverything we should be reading.

This was reinforced for me when I recently attendedthe Goldsmith Awards for Investigative Journalism atHarvard University.

Everyone &#0151 from Seymour Hersh who won a Pulitzer Prizefor his investigation of the My-Lai Massacre, to theDallas TV station which exposed how crooked cops wereplanting drugs on innocent citizens &#0151 lamented that itis increasingly difficult to practice their craftthese days.

Shareholders in media companies rarely smile uponeditors who deploy armies of reporters on costly,painstaking investigations, which may or may notproduce results, six, 12 or 18 months down the road.

Far simpler is it for editors to give a twenty-something an expense account and ask forlengthy dispatches from the front-lines ofdating, than to underwrite serious (and costly)investigations.

Of course, the public can always simply cancel theirsubscriptions in disgust.

Indeed, many have done so in my home province of NewBrunswick, where the Irving family controls much ofthe economy, along with every English language dailynewspaper, and where the blind-spots which hamper N.B.journalism are wider than the St. John River whichruns through the province.

But readers can hardly turn to the Internet to findout whether pollution controls at the Irving refineryare being flouted, or whether anti-competitivepractices are keeping the cost of goods high acrossthe province. If no one is doing the basicinvestigation, the information simply goesunreported.

There is some danger that critics of a state-fundednewspaper, particularly those in the media, cling toa narrow vision of the press’s role in a democracy. Tobe sure, the press ought to serve as a governmentwatchdog.

But in an era, characterized by the retreat of thestate, where privatization and globalization accord amuch weightier role to the business community, wealso need media outlets capable of focusing theirattention on economic actors whose activities can haveprofound impacts upon local economies, employmentlevels, public health and environmental protection.

It is here that a state-funded newspaper might help toensure that the media has the resources and theinclination to produce business coverage which doesnot amount to timorous publicity for majoradvertisers.

Mind you, a national newspaper should not become allthings to all people. Coverage of sports, culture, andentertainment, and other sectors would be better leftto the marketplace. Likewise, competition foradvertising dollars should be forbidden, lest agovernment paper simply push existing papers out ofbusiness.

And perhaps most important, given the visceralopposition to a publicly-funded newspaper,particularly from established media outlets, weshould be open to the prospect that our ends might beachieved through less controversial means.

One such idea would be for our Government to endow aninvestigative journalism fund, which all existingmedia could tap into, in order to finance complex andcostly projects which would serve the public interestbut which established media companies are eitherunequipped, or unwilling, to underwrite.