Over the last year, the Federal Trade Commission has been investigating the role of public policy in helping to meet Americans’ information needs. This week, the FTC will hold its final hearing on finding policies that could reshape our media system for the better.

In preparation, the FTC released a “Discussion Draft” that outlined the various policy recommendations submitted to the agency for consideration. More than 2,000 citizens have filed comments, and many organizations submitted recommendations. FTC staff have been deployed to journalism-related events across the country to gather information and ideas percolating in those communities.

The Discussion Draft is just that – fodder for a discussion – and the FTC has not endorsed any of the ideas. The agency is looking for input on which policies they should recommend and how those policies might be implemented. As I have noted in earlier blog posts, now is the time for dialogue, not knee-jerk reactions that too often miss the point and misrepresent the goals of this proceeding.

We should be encouraged that the government is taking seriously their role in shaping our media system. Public policies - often made behind closed doors - have been a core component of our 4th Estate in America. In the past, no one worried about postal subsidies, spectrum licenses, tax credits - even though they were implemented with little or no public input. Right now, the government is owning up to their role in creating both the problems and the opportunities facing media in America - and they are giving the public a chance to weigh in.

In that spirit, Free Press is suggesting five policies we believe that the FTC should support in it’s final report that would help build a media system that fosters innovation and supports a forward-thinking approach to the future of news.

1) Invest in Broadband deployment and Safeguard Net Neutrality: This recommendation was missing from the FTC’s Discussion Draft, but is perhaps one of the most central media policy issues of our time. As more news and information moves online and employs innovative digital tools, it’s essential for both journalists and citizens that we achieve universal Internet access. Equally important is ensuring that no news organization be censored by government or Internet service providers. Thus, even as we work to expand broadband, the future of news and innovation also depends on instituting strong Net Neutrality protections.

2) Expand America’s Public Media System: We need to re-imagine the role of public and noncommercial media in America. For too long, our politics and policies have treated public media as a second-class alternative to the mainstream media. We only spend $1.35 per capita on public media in federal money, where leading nations spend 70 times as much.

NPR and PBS are consistently ranked as the most trustworthy news sources by people across the political spectrum, and the audience for public media has been on the rise year after year. NPR and PBS are pushing innovative journalism projects across platforms on shoestring budgets, and could be doing much more to fill in the gaps being left by commercial news if they had sufficient funding.

At the same time, community media centers like Low-Power FM Radio stations and public access TV are giving local people the tools to be journalists and are producing deeply local reporting. Likewise, the new noncommercial, multiplatform news websites appearing across the country have gotten more attention than funding, leaving their sustainability in question. Smart policies could support and expand these new ventures.

3) Uphold and Enforce Antitrust Laws and Media Ownership Limits: Too often in debates over the future of news, people neglect to acknowledge the role media consolidation has played in creating the media crisis we face today.

Under intense pressure from Wall Street, big media companies took on enormous debt to purchase more media holdings, but then when they couldn’t pay off the debt, they began gutting newsrooms and even closing entire newspapers. Because of this, the quality of news and the number of diverse viewpoints in a given community has deteriorated.

Relaxing antitrust laws or media ownership regulations will not fix the news industry any more than tying two rocks together will make them float. Media consolidation is a failed strategy, and only props up failing business models at the expense of the public interest.

4) Change Tax Policy to Encourage Innovation and Investment in Journalism: Who would have thought our tax code would have such a bearing on the future of news? Our tax code gives very little clarity about the IRS’s view of news organizations as charitable entities, especially if they also want to accept ads, and gives even less guidance on the formation of hybrid organizations - newsrooms that have qualities of both for and nonprofit entities. If we want to foster innovative funding models and expand noncommercial news, we need clarity on some of the pressing questions raised during the FTC’s inquiry over the last year.

Tax changes could also directly encourage new investment in news through programs. David Westphal and Geoff Cowan at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism have outlined the wide array of tax credits already in place for traditional news orgs. Why not undo some of those, and put better policy in their place? Tax changes could encourage media conglomerates to break up their holdings and put those outlets in the hands of local people, diverse owners and/or new innovators.

5) Encourage Government Transparency and Access to Government Data: The FTC Discussion Draft dedicates significant space to policies that could help journalists gain access to government information and lower the costs for access to that information. The use of government data has driven innovative journalism efforts from DocumentCloud and EveryBlock, to the data centers at the Texas Tribune and California Watch.

The FTC should continue to push for policies that would encourage greater access to government data and information.

As the FTC brings its study to a close and prepares its policy recommendations, we encourage the agency to put journalists and communities first, to emphasize the future of news, and to develop policies that promote innovation and protect the First Amendment. These are major public policy areas, full of nuance and complications. We commend the FTC for conducting an open process and acknowledging the role public policy has always played in shaping the American media system.