…since public funding would put (say) the Guardian into the same class as local council newspapers which she has fought against so stalwartly as propaganda and (essentially) a waste of taxpayer money.

What are we to make of David Leigh?

A £2-a-month levy on broadband could save our newspapers

Proceeds could be distributed based on UK online readership and reinvested to protect great journalism

Having survived more than 40 years at the coalface of British journalism (longer than a term of service in the ancient Roman army), I have been feeling a bit depressed lately by the insistent predictions of media pundits that the internet is killing off quality newspapers. There are very few people in the trade who are prepared to bet that all our daily papers will still be publishing newsprint copies in five years’ time.

According to conventional wisdom, print is doomed. Circulations are collapsing because readers can get everything they want on the internet. Not only do those readers dislike the idea of paying to read online, but the existence, among other sites, of the rival licence-fee-payer-funded BBC website guarantees that they will never actually need to pay for a supply of reliable day-to-day news. Paywalls will never really work in a UK context for that reason.

One moment he is decrying the BBC, and the next…

A small levy on UK broadband providers – no more than £2 a month on each subscriber’s bill – could be distributed to news providers in proportion to their UK online readership. This would solve the financial problems of quality newspapers, whose readers are not disappearing, but simply migrating online.

[…]

A £2 levy on top – collected easily from the small number of UK service providers (BT, Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk etc) who would add it on to consumers’ bills – would raise more than £500m annually. It could be collected by a freestanding agency, on the lines of the BBC licence fee, and redistributed automatically to “news providers” according to their share of UK online readership.

…and the next he wants to adopt its funding model, public funding so that we can all read his pearls of wisdom.

Leigh is, of course, the man who leaked the Wikileaks Cablegate password in a book thus demonstrating that he is perhaps in thrall to hubris above operational security.

So I wonder what Heather thinks?

Ye gods, if this keeps up I’ll start sounding like some kind of libertarian. Especially when yesterday I learned how the BBC used to be funded by taxing radio receivers.