Journalism 02 - Key Events in history of Journalism

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Journalism 01 - What is journalism?

Concurrent with my series on Tax I have been working on series on Journalism. Frankly, this work on Journalism began back in 2010 while working on Subverting Capitalism and Democracy. It was taken further by discussions with former editors, journalist and others who complained about lack of business models. The series will analyse the Journalism part and we will generate some ideas on how a new business model can be built for journalism.

A good place to start the series is to ask What is Journalism? The reason I ask this question is two-fold. I want to know what is journalism in the context of it being the pillar of democracy. And I want to know how journalism is different from other things - media, reporting of mere facts, etc.

Let us first look at dictionary meaning of Journalism

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Definition of journalism
1
a : the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media
b : the public press
c : an academic study concerned with the collection and editing of news or the management of a news medium
2
a : writing designed for publication in a newspaper or magazine
b : writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation
c : writing designed to appeal to current popular taste or public interest

American Press Institute (API) says 

"Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information. It is also the product of these activities."

API also points out 

"That value flows from its purpose, to provide people with verified information they can use to make better decisions, and its practices, the most important of which is a systematic process – a discipline of verification – that journalists use to find not just the facts, but also the “truth about the facts.”

API also has a distilled list of elements of Journalism from the book The Elements of Journalism, by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel:

1. Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth
2. Its first loyalty is to citizens
3. Its essence is a discipline of verification
4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover
5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power
6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise
7. It must strive to keep the significant interesting and relevant
8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional
9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience
10. Citizens, too, have rights and responsibilities when it comes to the news

You must read the detail as they explain it well. But some of the insightful comments I am highlighting here.

Journalistic independence, write Kovach and Rosenstiel, is not neutrality. On one level, it means not becoming seduced by sources, intimidated by power, or compromised by self-interest. On a deeper level it speaks to an independence of spirit and an open-mindedness and intellectual curiosity that helps the journalist see beyond his or her own class or economic status, race, ethnicity, religion, gender or ego.

The publisher of journalism must show an ultimate allegiance to citizens. 

This “journalistic truth” is a process that begins with the professional discipline of assembling and verifying facts. Then journalists try to convey a fair and reliable account of their meaning, subject to further investigation.

The earliest journalists firmly established as a core principle their responsibility to examine unseen corners of society. 

Watching over the powerful few in society on behalf of the many to guard against tyranny   

Journalism should also attempt to fairly represent varied viewpoints and interests in society and to place them in context rather than highlight only the conflicting fringes of debate. 

Journalists must continually ask what information has the most value to citizens and in what form people are most likely to assimilate it. While journalism should reach beyond such topics as government and public safety, journalism overwhelmed by trivia and false significance trivializes civic dialogue and ultimately public policy.

Note: 

The blog series will be quite unstructured. Me being a scanner keep jumping from idea to idea. But I will persevere with it. I have been at it since 2010 so nothing new. But expect waxing and waning.

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Buy my books "Subverting Capitalism & Democracy" and "Understanding Firms".

Tax Reform 2 - Designing Tax system

Today we start by analysing a paper "Designing Tax and Transfer Schemes: Some Basic Principles" by John Creedy, Department of Economics, University of Melbourne.  [Dr. John Creedy, incidentally, has published quite a few papers on taxation and some of those can be accessed here.]

Below you will find some points made by Dr. Creedy and my understanding of these. For clarity they are intermingled here, but you can get better idea by reading Dr. Creedy's paper linked above. Just to keep in mind, the paper deals with taxes and benefits (such as social security) together.

So broadly what I understood from this is the following:

1. While governments derive the "power to tax" from the Constitution, the nature of the system they choose depends on "attitudes" to the role of the state. 
2. These lead me to following inferences
• The Constitution may or may not define what the "role of state" is. But system for taxation is affected by what government itself and/or the society thinks the "role of government" is.
• Further, over time, as a perception of the role of the state changes, the best system to attain that goal may also change. But tax systems do not change that much. In that context, look at the FDR tax reforms. These are reorienting to new "role of the state" as a provider of social security. 
• In Indian scenario, the role of government changed drastically from near socialism to proper capitalism. The Indian Constitution does state the country to be socialist but the society has moved away from it.
• So Indian tax system needs a drastic reform. 
3. Dr. Creedy lists a six attitudes. The list itself is quite instructive. Some of the attitudes are relevant for benefits and not tax per se.
1. The tax structure is influenced by views regarding the extent to which govern- ments may intervene in peoples lives. Tax administration involves obtaining private information. It may, for example also involve forcing people to take particular jobs. Attitudes towards these aspects are influenced by views regarding certain basic freedoms or rights. A related issue here is the level of government chosen to carry out necessary administration.
2. The ways in which individual responsibilities are perceived are important. For example, unemployment has variously been judged as a failing of individuals, or alternatively as a ‘problem of industry’. This affects the extent to which people are categorised as being ‘deserving poor’ or ‘non-deserving poor’.
3. The nature of a tax and transfer system adopted will depend on a range of paternalistic judgements. For example, some judges may prefer to provide benefits (such as rent assistance, food stamps and so on) which are linked to certain spe- cific goods. Or, the view may be taken that people should make minimum savings for retirement in the form of a special income-related contribution in addition to income taxation.
4. An important factor is the view taken of intra-family intra- and inter-generational transfers versus a state system of support involving compulsory taxation. This has been particularly relevant in the context of aged care and disability care, where there have been substantial changes in attitudes over time. Thus there is a strong preference for tax-financed care (insurance) rather than within-family transfers.
5. A choice must be made regarding those eligible for the receipt of transfers, or payment of taxes. This may involve the choice of a social insurance type of system whereby unemployment and sickness benefits and pensions are available only to those who have a history of tax (or ‘national insurance’ contributions).1 Alternatively, eligibility may be related to nationality or residence requirements. 
6. A judgement must be made regarding the tax base. This may be some concept of income, consumption, or wealth. The decision here is influenced by views regarding the main aims of the tax system, and often a variety of tax bases are used. In the public finance literature, the ‘comprehensive’ income concept is often mentioned, but its choice in favour of other bases involves a value judgement. Comprehensive income is of course difficult to measure in practice, and involves the awkward treatment of unrealised capital gains and the coverage of such a tax.
4. In the first post on tax, I clarified that tax should not be used as instrument of policy. Benefits are essentially instruments of policy. We are concerned here regarding tax system not the benefit system. We will debate the benefit system separately. I would keep both systems as separate as possible.

Next we will look at other papers.

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Tax reform - Introduction to the new series

After demonetisation, it is widely expected that next step will be tax reform. So I wanted to examine and recommend the possible taxation reforms we can expect.

But this time, I want to open the research process to you all. So this post will be the beginning of a series of posts on this topic. Each post will be ideas under exploration and may end with some questions too. At the end of the series, I will convert it into a proper research paper and an explanatory article. 

So to start off, let us begin by asking basic questions.

What is Tax?

Tax is essentially a levy charged, on the people, by the government, to fund its activities.

You can find equivalent definitions in Wikipedia and Investopedia. Let us examine the crucial aspects of this definition and the question it raises. 

Tax is a levy. It is a charge on something such as a transaction or an asset. It implies that there exist transactions or assets that are visible to the government.

Government or its equivalent implies some authority that can bear the force of law on the person. The person may be a citizen or foreigners (including friendly aliens or enemy aliens).

Activities of the government include all the activities taken by the government upon itself. Initially, it included mere protection from enemies (army). Then expanded to provide safe internal law and order (police). It was further expanded to include dispute resolution (Judiciary). It further expanded to infrastructure for citizens (markets and city infrastructure). And now includes education, social security, health, etc. 

Distinction of tax

In purely communist countries there is ideally nothing like taxes. Everything belongs to the government and the citizens only get what they need for living.

In capitalist societies, a tax is something government takes from the people in return for the services it provides. It envisages a government to charge fairly for the services it provides even though the government can impose itself by authority of law.

Capitalist societies want to restrict the scope of government so that only a minimum amount needs to be taken from the person. The individual himself is best placed to spend the rest of the amount. So better to tax him less and leave him enough resources to achieve her own potential. This is the republican position on government.

The left-wing position on government is somewhat contrary. Their view is that government should provide the common services that could enable the individuals to achieve their full potential. They are for expanding government role in activities that involve common good. So they are happy to pay higher taxes.

In either case, taxes are a reality only the extent differs. We discuss this distinction because it has a bearing on HOW the individual is taxed not just WHAT he is taxed.

Power to tax
The constitution of the country grants power to the government to tax the citizens. The constitution decides what level of government can tax what activity. These powers are then refined by relevant laws and hence collection or even benefit from the taxes collected can be allocated to other government (usually lower).

Notice that power to tax is embedded in the constitution and hence amending it is a considerably expensive legislative exercise.

Types of Taxes
If you search for types of taxes, you will end up with taxes at the level of various governments. Local taxes, state taxes, central or federal taxes etc. But when designing tax policy the relevant classification is a bit different.

1. So one way to differentiate taxes is - income taxes v/s expenditure taxes. Expenditure taxes means sales tax, VAT or GST type taxes. Income taxes are fairly well understood. But people forget that income for individuals is salary and for corporates is the profit.   So in accounting terminology, individuals get taxed on revenues and corporates get taxed on profits. 
2. Another way is to look at is flow taxes v/s stock taxes. Flow taxes include income or expenditure taxes while stock taxes include property taxes or estate taxes, inheritance taxes etc.
3. Some taxes are mixed taxes - capital gains. It is partly income and partly stock tax. Experts have intuitively suggested that short-term capital gains are like income and therefore it is closer to income tax. Long-term Capital gains is an investment gain, therefore has second and third order effects hence taxed at lower rates.
4. Transaction Taxes are another type. They are incurred only when a transaction occurs. Banking Transaction tax being discussed currently is part of this.
5. Policy taxes like import taxes, sin taxes and environmental taxes, carbon taxes etc. These are not essentially taxes but instruments designed to influence the markets. So if extremely low costs imports are threatening the domestic industry some import taxes may be charged. The objective of these taxes is not to create fund for government activities but to influence the markets or policy. The fund created from them may be used selectively but the aim is different.

Tax Collection
Taxes are collected from taxpayers (different from citizens) either by direct deductions (Tax deducted at source) or by seeking payment of taxes.

Tax payment is accompanied by a statement by the taxpayers that details her assessment of taxes and proof of payment. It is generally called Tax Returns.

Tax inquiry and approval
If you note, taxes are self-assessed. Hence, by definition, the government will create an oversight mechanism to ensure your assessment is correct or not. This is done by tax scrutiny, wherein an officer or a computer checks for correctness of your statement. Your statement or return is examined against the data generated by your banks and other agencies and tallied with your return. If it is correct, your return in approved and tax liability is extinguished.

In every country, there is a limit as to how long the tax liability stays active. In India it is presently 5 years. In other countries the years varies depending upon how efficient the tax department is. Once this period is passed you are no longer required to pay for liabilities that may be discovered for prior period.

In sum
These are the very basic things about taxes. Next we will dive into the main topic.

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