BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
No right to means of expression, like Internet

Ed Morrissey. "The Internet, the BBC, and 'rights'" Hot Air. March 8th, 2010: "The right to speak springs from the innate sense of owning one’s self rather than being a property of the state, which means that each individual has the right to their own thoughts and to express them. That right doesn’t extend to publication, however, which is where Toure’s argument runs off the rails. If one wants to get published, then either one has to own the means to publication or pay someone else for the service. After all, no one has the right to confiscate someone else’s printing press in order to get published."
Journalism bailout would be payoff for biased election coverage

Gerry Storch. "Gov't Bailout for Newspapers?". Our Blook: "Consider also that many people feel America's newspapers were basically in the tank for Obama with slanted coverage during last year's presidential election. As Washington Post ombudsman Janet Howell wrote after the election, 'I'll bet that most Post journalists voted for Obama. I did.' If papers were now to take a bailout from the Obama administration, wouldn't it have the look ... and smell ... of a payoff?"
Creative destruction in journalism would be good for society

Declan McCullagh. "Should you be taxed to subsidize 'The New York Times'?". CNET. September 28, 2007 - "probably the biggest reason to be wary of higher taxes to help out newspapers is the broader one: Bailing out an industry that's suffering because of technological change or increased competition is not a wise choice in the long run. Afternoon newspapers are largely a defunct breed for the obvious reasons; would society really be better off if taxes were raised to subsidize such money-losing ventures for purposes of nostalgia?"
Daily newspapers add little, let them die

Joseph Farah. "Bail out newspapers?". World News Net. April 28, 2009: "Now, it occurs to me that Brooks is laboring under the delusion that newspapers like the one that formerly employed her services are actually doing investigative journalism into government waste, fraud, abuse and corruption. They aren't. They haven't been for a long time. [...] And this is the very reason they are going bankrupt. No one wants to read them any more – at any price. They have out-served their usefulness."
Citizen-journalists cannot replace professional journalism.

John Nichols and Robert McChesney. "The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers". Nation. March 18, 2009: "The Internet and blogosphere, too, depend in large part on "old media" to do original journalism. Web links still refer readers mostly to stories that first appeared in print. Even in more optimistic scenarios, no one has a business model to sustain digital journalism beyond a small number of self-supporting services. The attempts of newspapers to shift their operations online have been commercial failures, as they trade old media dollars for new media pennies. We are enthusiastic about Wikipedia and the potential for collaborative efforts on the web; they can help democratize our media and politics. But they do not replace skilled journalists on the ground covering the events of the day and doing investigative reporting. Indeed, the Internet cannot achieve its revolutionary potential as a citizens' forum without such journalism."
Journalism is not independent under control of media moguls

John Nichols and Robert McChesney. "The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers". Nation. March 18, 2009: "Our founders never thought that freedom of the press would belong only to those who could afford a press. They would have been horrified at the notion that journalism should be regarded as the private preserve of the Rupert Murdochs and John Malones. The founders would not have entertained, let alone accepted, the current equation that seems to say that if rich people determine there is no good money to be made in the news, then society cannot have news. Let's find a king and call it a day."
Founding Fathers envisioned government fostering journalism

John Nichols and Robert McChesney. "The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers". Nation. March 18, 2009: "The founders regarded the establishment of a press system, the Fourth Estate, as the first duty of the state. Jefferson and Madison devoted considerable energy to explaining the necessity of the press to a vibrant democracy. The government implemented extraordinary postal subsidies for the distribution of newspapers. It also instituted massive newspaper subsidies through printing contracts and the paid publication of government notices, all with the intent of expanding the number and variety of newspapers."
Government subsidization of journalism would not be expensive.

Robert Kall. "Bail Out Investigative Journalists". Huffington Post. December 17, 2008: "Imagine if the government funded a 'news conservation corps' of 10,000 investigative reporters at $50-80,000 salaries, plus health care benefits -- costing, say, an average of $75,000 each --probably a high estimate. Throw in another $225 million to pay for 3000 more editors. That would cost less than a billion dollars and provide the nation with probably 50 times more investigative reports than we now have. The reporters could work with one or more publishers and their reporting could be open source -- without copyright, just as TV networks share a common feed. Or publishers could share in the cost."
Journalism industry is in crisis, requires government help

Sara Catania. "Hey President Obama, Spare Any Change?". Huffington Post. January 1, 2009 - "Attention Barack Obama: journalism needs your help. [...] In 2008 more than 15,500 journalists were laid off or bought out (or, considering the corporate greed driving much of the cuts, laid out and forcibly bought off), a 700 percent increase over the second half of 2007, according to a running tally on Paper Cuts, a website created by a journalist from the St. Louis Post Dispatch. [...] we are in desperate need of some major help. As in government cash. Non-profits like ProPublica and the Poynter Institute can't do all the heavy lifting. [...] With advertising revenues and subscriptions plummeting and newsprint costs soaring, someone needs to help maintain the infrastructure of American journalism."
Journalism can monetize demand without government bailout

Declan McCullagh. "Should you be taxed to subsidize 'The New York Times'?". CNET. September 28, 2007 - "I'm not sure what's going to happen to newspapers in their current form, but I am optimistic about the future of journalism. My own employer, CNET Networks, has found a way to make money by publishing news and reviews without collecting taxpayer handouts. If readers (or viewers) continue to want original reporting, and I believe they will, news organizations will find a way to meet that market demand. Without a taxpayer bailout, newspapers may not look exactly like they do today, but journalism itself will remain alive and well."
Newspapers can succeed by adopting new media

Duncan Riley. "Journalist Calls For Government Assistance…For Journalists". The Inquisitr. January 2, 2009 - "That some journalists are finding it tough does not equal there is no money to be had either. Smart journalists, and media companies have embraced new media, and while they may not have replaced their offline revenue streams in full yet, even during the recession online streams at some outlets have actually increased at a time print advertising in particular is dying. The true difference today is that the closed markets of old have been replaced by open markets with vibrant competition, and it is in these spaces that some journalists believe that the market is unfair. The time of Journalism as a closed shop with life long opportunities has passed."
Cutting postal rates would help quality newspapers survive.

John Nichols and Robert McChesney. "The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers". Nation. March 18, 2009: "In the near term, we need to think about an immediate journalism economic stimulus, to be revisited after three years, and we need to think big. Let's eliminate postal rates for periodicals that garner less than 20 percent of their revenues from advertising. This keeps alive all sorts of magazines and journals of opinion that are being devastated by distribution costs. It is these publications that often do investigative, cutting-edge, politically provocative journalism."
Subsidization would damage independence of journalism

Declan McCullagh. "Should you be taxed to subsidize 'The New York Times'?". CNET. September 28, 2007 - "The main reason I say the answer should be [that government do] nothing [for the journalism industry] is that government money tends to come with strings attached. Sure, at first, a handout may seem free. But over time, that tends to change. Look at the ongoing controversies over the National Endowment for the Arts. In response to controversial photographs (including a provocative retrospective of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's work) in an NEA-funded exhibit, Congress did two things. It reduced the NEA's budget for the next fiscal year and then slapped a new restriction on the agency, saying that its grants must take 'into consideration general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public.'"
Leaving journalism to the markets risks degrading the trade

Marty Baron, the Editor of the Boston Globe, said at a lecture in April 2009 at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication: "There will be many experiments, many new models. Some will be nonprofit. But many will seek to make a profit, a big one. An era of entrepreneurship for journalism has begun. Entrepreneurship comes with greater risks…. There also are risks for the practice of journalism. There are risks that journalism will turn cynically to the quick, the easy, and the cheap — that a story’s greatest accomplishment will be to get a million page views, rather than to correct an injustice, or unearth wrongdoing, or give voice to people who would not otherwise be heard."[1]
Subsidization keeps journalists in work, stimulates economy.

John Nichols and Robert McChesney. "The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers". Nation. March 18, 2009: "It would keep the press system alive. And it has the added benefit of providing an economic stimulus. If these journalists (and the tens of thousands of production and distribution workers associated with newspapers) are not put to work through the programs we propose, their knowledge and expertise will be lost. They will be unemployed, and their unemployment will contribute to further stagnation and economic decline--especially in big cities where newspapers are major employers."
The collapse of journalism would be devastating for society

Rosa Brooks. "Bail out journalism". Los Angeles Times. April 9, 2009 - "I also can't imagine anything more dangerous than a society in which the news industry has more or less collapsed. [...] If newspapers become mostly infotainment websites -- if the number of well-trained investigative journalists dwindles still further -- and if we're soon left with nothing but the yapping heads who dominate cable "news" and talk radio, how will we recognize, or hope to forestall, impending national and global crises? How will we know if government officials have made terrible mistakes, as even the best will sometimes do? How will we know if government officials have told us terrible lies, as the worst have sometimes done? A decimated, demoralized and under-resourced press corps hardly questioned the Bush administration's flimsy case for war in Iraq -- and the price for that failure will be paid for generations. [...] It's time for a government bailout of journalism."
NPR/PBS are great examples of what subsidization can achieve.

NPR and PBS are great examples of how government subsidization can grow thriving news organizations. They are also good examples of how government subsidization does not generally impede on independent reporting. NPR and PBS both include edgy programs and have heavily criticized the government for its actions. In reality, government subsidies do not get in the way of what NPR and PBS see as their journalistic obligation to remain independent and provide citizens with sometimes critical reports of their government, when those reports are warranted.
Journalism has/can maintain independence following subsidization

John Nichols and Robert McChesney. "The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers". Nation. March 18, 2009: "Only government can implement policies and subsidies to provide an institutional framework for quality journalism. We understand that this is a controversial position. When French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently engineered a $765 million bailout of French newspapers, free marketeers rushed to the barricades to declare, "No, no, not in the land of the free press." Conventional wisdom says that the founders intended the press to be entirely independent of the state, to preserve the integrity of the press. [...] We are sympathetic to that position. [...] Fortunately, the rude calculus that says government intervention equals government control is inaccurate and does not reflect our past or present, or what enlightened policies and subsidies could entail."
Government should subsidize readers, maintain competition.

John Nichols and Robert McChesney. "The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers". Nation. March 18, 2009: "Let's give all Americans an annual tax credit for the first $200 they spend on daily newspapers. The newspapers would have to publish at least five times per week and maintain a substantial "news hole," say at least twenty-four broad pages each day, with less than 50 percent advertising. In effect, this means the government will pay for every citizen who so desires to get a free daily newspaper subscription, but the taxpayer gets to pick the newspaper--this is an indirect subsidy, because the government does not control who gets the money. This will buy time for our old media newsrooms--and for us citizens--to develop a plan to establish journalism in the digital era. We could see this evolving into a system to provide tax credits for online subscriptions as well."
Subsidization damages journalism's freedom to criticize

Declan McCullagh. "Should you be taxed to subsidize 'The New York Times'?". CNET. September 28, 2007 - "One argument for tax subsidies, and the Columbia Journalism Review article invokes it at length, is that newspapers' 'role of informing citizens is crucial to democracy' through aggressive reporting on government malfeasance. But supporting that kind of aggressive reporting, it seems to me, is the worst argument for government funding--it would be the first type of reporting killed, openly or covertly, when the inevitable political pressure is brought to bear. (I wonder if I'd even be permitted to write this commentary if my salary were paid by the government. And would a taxpayer-subsidized newspaper ever publish an editorial calling for lower taxes?)"
Journalism is public good for democracy, deserves subsidies

John Nichols and Robert McChesney. "The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers". Nation. March 18, 2009: "We begin with the notion that journalism is a public good, that it has broad social benefits far beyond that between buyer and seller. Like all public goods, we need the resources to get it produced. This is the role of the state and public policy. It will require a subsidy and should be regarded as similar to the education system or the military in that regard. Only a nihilist would consider it sufficient to rely on profit-seeking commercial interests or philanthropy to educate our youth or defend the nation from attack. With the collapse of the commercial news system, the same logic applies. Just as there came a moment when policy-makers recognized the necessity of investing tax dollars to create a public education system to teach our children, so a moment has arrived at which we must recognize the need to invest tax dollars to create and maintain news gathering, reporting and writing with the purpose of informing all our citizens."
Government should not bailout journalism in the face of competition.

Declan McCullagh. "Should you be taxed to subsidize 'The New York Times'?". CNET. September 28, 2007 - "everyone says they like competition in theory, but nobody actually likes to have competitors in practice. For the better part of a decade, Craigslist and eBay have been slowly nibbling away at newspapers' classified-ads business. A 2005 MediaPost article says that as a result, according to McKinsey, newspapers have lost as much as 75 percent of their pricing abilities in key categories such as employment and general merchandise. Google is another competitive threat, with both broad and very targeted ads, and the cost of newsprint probably isn't helping. [...] So the threat to newspapers' long-term existence, at least in their current form, is real. The real question is: what should the government do about it? [...] I believe that the answer is nothing. We didn't see taxpayer subsidies bail out stock brokers (unhappy about E*Trade) or travel agents (unhappy about Expedia). In fact, the federal government officially chose to side with disruptive technologies."
Journalism is not dying, it is more alive than ever

Duncan Riley. "Journalist Calls For Government Assistance…For Journalists". The Inquisitr. January 2, 2009 - "The argument that journalism is dying has already been disproved many times before. It is the last argument of those unable to adapt to the new reality of publishing news. Quite the opposite, journalism, in its many forms is the strongest it has ever been in the history of man kind. No longer is the written word the exclusive domain of an elite few, and guided by media proprietors with set agendas."
NPR/PBS demonstrate how subsidization impairs journalism

Declan McCullagh. "Should you be taxed to subsidize 'The New York Times'?". CNET. September 28, 2007 - "I'm sure that at this point, some readers might be thinking, 'What about National Public Radio? It's taxpayer-supported, right?' Yes. NPR and PBS receive about 15 percent of their combined budget from the government. [...] Even though that's not a huge amount by percentage, it has made NPR the target of political threats by President Richard Nixon and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, both Republicans, to eliminate its funding. Conservatives say NPR itself has admitted a liberal bias while liberals accuse it of being elitist. Do newspapers really want that controversy spilling over into their pages?"
Governments already subsidize journalism without problem

Rosa Brooks. "Bail out journalism". Los Angeles Times. April 9, 2009: "If the thought of government subsidization of journalism seems novel, it shouldn't. Most other democracies provide far more direct government support for public media than the U.S. does (Canada spends 16 times as much per capita; Britain spends 60 times as much). And as Nichols and McChesney point out, our government already 'doles out tens of billions of dollars in direct and indirect [media] subsidies,' including free broadcast, cable and satellite privileges."
The benefits of marijuana for the terminally ill outweigh risks

Consumer Reports. Editorial. May, 1997: "Consumer Reports believes that, for patients with advanced AIDS and terminal cancer, the apparent benefits some derive from smoking marijuana outweigh any substantiated or even suspected risks. In the same spirit the FDA uses to hasten the approval of cancer drugs, federal laws should be relaxed in favor of states' rights to allow physicians to administer marijuana to their patients on a caring and compassionate basis."[21]
Crime outside of dispensaries no different then outside banks

Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion joined the Maine Civil Liberties Union, said on June 17th of 2010: "Medical marijuana is a public health issue, it's not a law enforcement problem. The data from California suggests that the risk of crime outside a dispensary is no greater than what we'd experience at a bank. So I think we should just move forward and exercise the common sense that the voters have demonstrated in repeated votes on this measure."[5]
Alternatives to marijuana should be used to ease the terminally ill

Gabriel Nahas, MD, PhD. Editorial, Wall Street Journal. Mar. 1997: "[T]he use of marijuana [for the terminally ill] can no longer be considered a therapeutic intervention but one of several procedures used to ease the ebbing of life of the terminally ill. But for this purpose doctors should prescribe antiemetic and analgesic therapies of proven efficacy, rather than marijuana smoking. This therapeutic course is not based on bureaucratic absolutism, political correctness, or reflexive ideology - but on scientific knowledge and the humane practice of medicine."[22]
The health risks of smoking marijuana are relatively minor

Lester Grinspoon, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. "Puffing Is the Best Medicine," Los Angeles Times. May 5, 2006. - "[T]here is very little evidence that smoking marijuana as a means of taking it represents a significant health risk. Although cannabis has been smoked widely in Western countries for more than four decades, there have been no reported cases of lung cancer or emphysema attributed to marijuana. I suspect that a day's breathing in any city with poor air quality poses more of a threat than inhaling a day's dose -- which for many ailments is just a portion of a joint -- of marijuana."[23]
Marijuana is homeopathic alternative to pharmaceutical drugs

"Libertarian Party Condemns the Supreme Court Decision Against the Use of Medical Marijuana." The Libertarian Party. June 6, 2005: "The Libertarian Party is a long-standing advocate for individual liberty and believes that Americans should be responsible for their own actions and, in this case, be able to use alternative forms of medication outside of the realm of insurance companies and the pharmaceutical lobby."[14]
Marijuana is not addictive

There is no evidence that marijuana physically addictive. While it may be psychologically addictive, in the sense that people like it and want to do it again, this is little different than alcohol. But, certainly, cigarettes are more addictive than marijuana. And, since cigarettes are physically addictive and yet legal, should addictiveness really be a barometer for a substance's illegality? No. Colin Blakemore, Ph.D. Chair, Dept. of Physiology, University of Oxford (U.K.), and Leslie Iversen, Ph.D., Professor of Pharmacology, Oxford University. Editorial, The Times (U.K.). August 6, 2001 - "For some users, perhaps as many as 10 per cent, cannabis leads to psychological dependence, but there is scant evidence that it carries a risk of true addiction. Unlike cigarette smokers, most users do not take the drug on a daily basis, and usually abandon it in their twenties or thirties. Unlike for nicotine, alcohol and hard drugs, there is no clearly defined withdrawal syndrome, the hallmark of true addiction, when use is stopped."
Potential for abuse should not halt legitimate marijuana use.

Philip Denney, MD, co-founder of a medical cannabis evaluation practice, stated the following in his Nov. 17, 2005 testimony to the Arkansas legislature in support of House Bill 1303, "An Act to Permit the Medical Use of Marijuana": "While a substance may have some potential for misuse, in my opinion, that's a poor excuse to deny its use and benefit to everyone else."[29]
Doctors should be trusted to check abuse of medical marijuana

Robert DeLorenzo, MD, PhD, MPH, Professor of Neurology in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. University press release: "Marijuana and Its Receptor Protein in Brain Control Epilepsy." Sep. 30, 2003: "Individuals both here and abroad report that marijuana has been therapeutic for them in the treatment of a variety of ailments, including epilepsy. But the psychoactive side effects of marijuana make its use impractical in the treatment of epilepsy. If we can understand how marijuana works to end seizures, we may be able to develop novel drugs that might do a better job of treating epileptic seizures."[30]