海角大神

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, a supposed small-government conservative who is reportedly thinking about running for president,聽wants to create a state-run news agency聽to compete with the private media:

Given the fact that state agencies, including the governor鈥檚 office, already have press secretaries and communications directors that send out press releases on a regular basis, it鈥檚 unclear exactly why something like this would even be necessary. This would seem to be especially true given the fact that the vast majority of the press releases that the average government office or agency really aren鈥檛 newsworthy to begin with. Many of them merely announce various personnel shifts or other internal matters that, quite honestly, barely qualify as news to begin with. In addition to press releases, communications directors employed by politicians routinely call political reporters trying to pitch stories. Sometimes their pitches result in a published pieced, sometimes they don鈥檛. The point is that there are already any number of means by which politicians can communicate with the media, so it鈥檚 unclear exactly why something like this is necessary. Indeed, many of Indiana鈥檚 newspapers are wondering the same thing:

In addition to the point that Ronald raises, one has to wonder how Pence squares this with his limited government principles. After all, since all of the government agencies that are involved in this project already have their own press secretaries and communications directors, and already issue numerous press releases on a daily basis, what鈥檚 the point in having another agency that does the same thing and more? How exactly is this a proper function of government? A cynical person would point out that this announcement coincides with reports that Pence is considering a run for the Republican nomination for president and that a centralized agency that does nothing but send out pro-administration press releases and 鈥渇eatures鈥� for the press to read and, if Mr. Ronald鈥檚 reaction is any indication, largely ignore. That doesn鈥檛 sound very fiscally conservative to me.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.