WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Tuesday to study the decline of the newspaper business, but it quickly deteriorated into a media-bashing session. Ideologues on the left and right made no effort to conceal their yearning for a day without journalists, when public officials would no longer be scrutinized.
“More than twice as many Americans say the news media are too liberal rather than too conservative,” said Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican.
Democrat John Conyers of Michigan, the chairman, countered with his contempt for Fox News chairman Rupert Murdoch’s “telling us how important it is that the media remain free and viable.” He recalled his own “hard feelings” about once being arrested while protesting outside one of the Detroit newspapers.
“I’m going to ask their editors if I should meet with them tomorrow,” he said bitterly. “Now that they’re in bad shape, maybe I should help them?”
Conyers, who has collected his share of less-than-favorable headlines over the years, went on.
“Newspapers remind me of automobile corporations,” he said. “All of a sudden they need help, they need a lot of help and they need it fast.”
But the industry hasn’t asked for a bailout. The hearing was held after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., suggested the need for an antitrust exemption to save papers in San Francisco. The biggest request for help at the hearing was from the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Brian Tierney, who wanted protection for newspapers to talk about creating a national alternative to Craigslist.
But even that seems to be too much to ask.
“We do not believe any additional exemptions for the newspaper industry are necessary,” Carl Shapiro, head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, informed the committee Tuesday.
Law professor C. Edwin Baker told the committee that “the biggest correlator with less government corruption is newspaper readership: When people are reading newspapers, corruption goes down.”
Another witness gave Con yers a helpful example from his own hometown: the Detroit Free Press’ Pulitzer Prize for exposing the sex scandal that brought down the mayor.
But the dominant sentiment of lawmakers was indifference; most of the 14 subcommittee members didn’t show up.
Dana Milbank writes scene- setting viewpoint stories for The Washington Post.
