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There are plenty of arguments one could make both for and against government offering a bailout to newspapers.

And the arguments, at least in America, would probably fall on deaf ears, as the White House seems to have already made up its mind:

With the Boston Globe just the latest big-city newspaper teetering on the edge of shutdown, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs brushed aside a question about whether the federal government will consider stepping in to help save newspapers, as it has with so many other industries.

“I don’t know what, in all honesty, government can do about it,” Gibbs told reporters.

Well … what, in all honesty, government could do about it is the same damn thing government has done for every other failing industry — throw buckets of cash at the problem.

I acknowledge that, as CNN goes on to paraphrase Gibbs, there would certainly be hurdles and questions involved in bailing out an industry that (at least theoretically) lists “examination and criticism of government” as one of its top priorities.

However, I would imagine there are ways around that problem. In the grand scheme of things, withholding bailout money from a traditional industry because part of their job involves interacting with government and reporting about it to the people smacks of either pettiness … or resignation. Or, of course, pragmatic politics.

While President Obama’s superhero shine may have dimmed somewhat in the eyes of leftists as he has moved towards the centre since his inauguration, most of us would still have a tough time believing that he’d be unable to find some cash to keep newspapers afloat while still managing to allow them to report independently about his administration.

If it was a priority to keep newspapers afloat, believe me, they’d find a way.

But in brushing off the question, Gibbs goes for the quick shot, implying that there are issues of coverage and objectivity in play:

“You guys didn’t think $100 million meant a lot a few weeks ago,” Gibbs said. “But looking at some of the balance sheets, $100 million seems to mean a lot.” Ouch.

That’s nothing more than a glib way — and kind of funny — way to duck a real explanation. And I would speculate that the reason for the dodge is because, if the White House has considered a bailout for newspapers at all in the middle of all of this, it’s been flatly rejected because there’s no point in throwing good money after bad.

So long as network television news, CNN and their cable news buddies, mainstream magazines like Time and Newsweek and newsradio from all sides of the political spectrum are going strong … why would the White House step into save newspapers, really?

There are the altruistic motives, sure, about the fourth estate and all that … but really? Aside from journalists themselves and their ever-shrinking cadre of True Believers, who cares about that?

In the minds of many more people, tossing $100 million at the quickly fossilizing newspaper industry would be tantamount to propping up the failed status quo in order to keep the market from evolving into its next iteration — and that would be a fairly un-capitalist stance for a White House already hearing the ceaseless yap of retarded talk radio DJs with a special case of “Socialist!” Tourette’s.

Add to that the Republican-manufactured image of an election given to Obama by the mainstream media — we all remember how “in the tank” became part of the political lexicon for those six months, right? — and you’re just poking the Right with a stick a few short weeks after the saner elements of the party finally began to climb on board.

A government bailout for American newspapers can’t happen right now. Not only is it probably a waste of money, but the political optics are terrible and the industry as we know it is well past the point where a $100-million injection could really “save” anything.