In Congress, No Love Lost for Newspapers

[Commentary] The House Judiciary Committee called a hearing yesterday to study the decline of the newspaper business, but it quickly deteriorated into a press-bashing session. Ideologues of the left and right made no effort to conceal their yearning for a day without journalists, when public officials would no longer be scrutinized. Full Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) said, "Newspapers remind me of automobile corporations. All of a sudden they need help, they need a lot of help and they need it fast." The dominant sentiment of lawmakers was indifference; most of the 14 subcommittee members didn't show up. But 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."