Rep. Henry Waxman wants America to think he has only noble intentions in pushing for a government bailout of the media, but Ed Morrissey of Hot Air knows better.

“What Waxman wants is control,” Morrissey wrote in response to my news report from yesterday’s government workshop on the future of journalism in the Internet era. “The founders put the press and the government at odds in the First Amendment for a reason. They discovered firsthand how oppressive a government could be when it controlled the media, and they endeavored to avoid exactly what Waxman proposes.”

Smart journalists, like Robert Stacy McCain, know that history and don’t want Waxman, D-Calif., or any other politician or bureaucrat as a puppetmaster pulling monetary strings to get the coverage they want. “Sad as it is for an old newsman to see the industry circling the drain (especially the worsening woes of the Washington Times), I’d go back to driving a forklift before I’d work for a newspaper dependent on bailout money swindled from the taxpayers.”

Other conservative bloggers aren’t too thrilled by the idea, either. Dan Riehl took Waxman’s speech, which is now available on his Web site, as fightin’ words. “We cannot allow this to happen,” he wrote. “I’ll give them my keyboard when they take it from my cold, dead hands.”

And Melissa Clouthier sees Waxman’s proposal as one more step toward socialism. “How are all these bailouts not takeovers turning the country into a socialist state, where even the newspapers are owned by the government?”

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