[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 57 (Tuesday, April 2, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H2980-H2983]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





             IMPORTANCE OF JOURNALISM IN THE UNITED STATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from California 
(Mr. DeSaulnier) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. DeSAULNIER. Mr. Speaker, I thank those watching and my colleagues 
who will join me in the next half hour to talk about journalism, the 
importance of journalism in the United States and the importance of 
journalism to democracy.
  Abraham Lincoln once said: Let the people know the facts, and the 
country will be safe.
  The challenge is, how do we get them those facts?
  For professional journalists, there is nothing more important. They 
don't always make us who hold office happy. Sometimes, we disagree with 
them. Sometimes, we think they are not being fair. But they are 
extremely important to the success or failure of American democracy.

                              {time}  1745

  Neil Postman, in 1985, in his book, ``Amusing Ourselves to Death,'' 
wrote about his own belief in 1985 that how people got information in 
journalism was changing too dramatically, and he was just talking about 
the media in terms of television news. Think about how much that has 
changed since 1985.
  Mr. Postman talked about the Lincoln-Douglas debates and that 
thousands of people would go and listen to those debates because 
Douglas and Lincoln took the time to write out what they would say and 
how they anticipated answering questions. People would listen without 
speakers and without any kind of amplification of what they were 
saying--thousands of people--for as long as 6 or 7 hours, with a break 
for dinner.
  Mr. Postman's whole argument was this was cognitively different, that 
when you read something that was prepared over and over again by people 
who were really good writers, people responded differently and they 
accepted factual information in a different way than we were learning 
to accept facts.
  Now, in 2019, with this administration and with social media and 24/7 
news, I think Mr. Postman would be horrified about how Americans get 
their facts, how they cognitively process them, and how they engage as 
American citizens.
  There is nothing more important than, as Lincoln said and I would 
opine, that Americans get journalism with factual content, with the 
professional expertise of people, many of whom have gone to school, to 
journalism schools for undergraduate degrees, often for graduate 
degrees, who go out to work for not a whole lot of money but to be able 
to investigate, get to the facts, and then communicate. Too many of us 
underestimate those talents. Maybe we have become spoiled.
  But what has happened is a consequence of many things. The business 
model has changed. Being from the bay area, Craigslist changed 
classified ads, and that is a revenue source to print journalism. But 
now as it moves to digital, a group of us wants to talk about what we 
can do appropriately in Congress and maybe work with--not maybe, but 
work with State and local officials to talk about how we can 
appropriately support professional journalism so we can get back to 
that point where Americans are engaged in a very deep way in their 
discussion with government and, specifically, with local government.
  Most Americans--and maybe it is because I came from local 
government--learn about democracy, oftentimes, at the local level. They 
know the people who are in the city council and on the school board. An 
issue comes up. Their kids start to go to school, and they take an 
interest in the governance and superintendent and the superintendent's 
bosses. They care about the curriculum. Maybe there is a land use 
decision at their city council, and so they start to learn about 
democracy in a meaningful way that way.
  Heretofore, except in the last 10 years with the demise of local 
journalism, for a variety of reasons, they don't get that information. 
They get a lot of information about Congress. They get a lot of 
information about the President of the United States, and some 
information still at the statehouse, but not nearly as much, and very 
little at the local level.
  I will say there are heroic people out there who are still doing 
great local journalism, but because of the business model and because 
of consolidations, that has become, I am afraid, very ill.
  So just in terms of the definition of the problem, in 2017, estimated 
daily U.S. newspaper circulation--that is print and digital. So when we 
focus on, ``Oh, well, print is gone; forget about it,'' we realize that 
the business model has changed.
  But there is a digital model here that we can see in The Washington 
Post, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, San 
Francisco Chronicle. There is still a model. But their ability to talk 
about local news is where we have to get more effort, I think, in 
understanding, as citizens.
  Circulation, print and digital, in 2017 was 31 million for weekday 
and 34 million for Sunday. That is down 11 and 10 percent, 
respectively, from each previous year. The chart next to me shows the 
steady decline.
  Newspaper consumption--that is digital and print--has been falling 
every year since 1994. Today most Americans get their news from 
television and social media, the primary way they get their 
information.
  Fifty-five percent of Americans are regularly tuning into TV to 
consume that news information. In contrast, only 20 percent of 
Americans regularly get their news from a physical newspaper. Only 38 
percent of Americans regularly get their news online.
  In 2017, advertising revenue for the entire newspaper industry was 
$16.5 billion, a 10 percent decrease from 2016.
  Then there are consolidations, an issue that I know Mr. Cicilline 
will talk about, the consolidation of the print newspaper business in 
particular.
  And I will say this for the bay area where I live and represent, in 
the bay area, newspapers, at their peak, had about 1,500 journalists. 
This is for about 7.5, 7.75 million people, in one of the largest 
metropolitan areas in the country that is very diverse, 1,500 
journalists. These aren't support people. These are writers, 
professional journalists. Now there are less than 300 serving those 
same 7.5 million people in an area that is growing and has one of the 
most innovative and fastest growing economies in the world.
  It is not just the bay area. Since 2004, 1,800 local papers have been 
closed or merged. What traditionally happens--and there are two large 
companies that do this--is they go in and buy the newspaper and then 
sell the assets. So very rarely now--when you go around to a city or a 
town where it used to be a prominent building was the headquarters of 
the local newspaper, those buildings have been sold.
  The San Jose Mercury News had a prominent building in downtown San 
Jose right by city hall. In Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times still 
thrives because it has local ownership, fortunately; but that L.A. 
Times building, a beautiful art deco that was so much a part of the 
history of Los Angeles, was directly across the street from city hall. 
There was a reason for that.

  The Examiner and the Chronicle in San Francisco were prominent 
downtown. These were icons. Well, a lot of these consolidations came 
about, and they sold these iconic buildings where people worked. Then, 
of course, they sold the print functions because there was less to do 
and a lot of the distribution. But they also laid off and eliminated a 
lot of the journalists, and that is where we get our information.
  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 39,210 people worked as 
reporters and editors in the newspaper industry in 2017. This is down 
from 44,000, about 15 percent from 2015, and 71,645 in 2004, about a 45 
percent nationwide decrease. About one-third of the large U.S. 
newspapers have suffered significant layoffs.
  Additionally, journalists' wages remained low. In 2017, the median 
wage for an editor was only $49,000, while the median wage for a 
reporter was about $34,000. If you are in a place like the bay area, 
Los Angeles, New York, D.C., or Boston, you can imagine what the cost 
of living does to that kind of income for people whom we rely on to 
provide us information.

[[Page H2981]]

  There is hope, however: some newspaper groups like the one in 
Philadelphia that has coordinated and consolidated with a nonprofit 
model and is refocusing its mission on producing excellent journalism 
to inform the public and focusing on local journalism.
  There has been a spike in attendance in university journalism 
programs in spite of the numbers I just told you since this President 
took office in 2017.
  Through programs to reengage citizens, particularly students, in the 
importance of journalism and reimagining how we fund print and 
electronic newspapers, we can ensure that journalism remains a bedrock 
of the country and a check on its power as it always has been.
  As someone from the bay area who has had a relationship with our 
innovation and our tech companies, for Google and Facebook, they make 
millions of dollars off of journalists, and we think that they should 
contribute to that amazing asset that they have right now, largely free 
of charge. So we look to them to partner with us so that these 
platforms can be platforms not just for profit, but platforms for 
democracy, where local journalists can put their wares out there and be 
able to benefit from it just as they benefit from it.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. 
Lofgren), who is my wonderful colleague from San Jose, in the San 
Francisco Bay Area.
  Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. The 
gentleman has laid out the case quite eloquently.
  I simply wanted to say that, while the government could never own or 
should never own the news media, we may have a role to create an 
environment where local news can flourish without our saying in any way 
how or what they should cover. But we know that local news covers local 
stories, and without the local news, you will never find out what is 
going on in city hall, what is going on in the board of supervisors, 
and what is going on on the planning commission and the like.
  So what Mr. DeSaulnier, Mr. Cicilline, and others have outlined here 
is a very important challenge for the United States of America. If we 
are going to have control of our governments, we need to have 
information; and if we are going to have information, then we need to 
have a free press all the way from city hall up to the White House. We 
have got some holes in that coverage right now.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I commend Mr. DeSaulnier, Mr. Cicilline, and others 
for the efforts that they are making, and I look forward to supporting 
them as they move forward.
  Mr. DeSAULNIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Rhode 
Island (Mr. Cicilline).
  Mr. CICILLINE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by thanking Congressman DeSaulnier not 
only for organizing this important Special Order hour and saving local 
news, but for his enthusiastic and really passionate leadership on this 
issue.
  I think the graphs that my friend from California presented tonight 
are an illustration of how grave the problem is and how essential it is 
that we develop a solution to help preserve our local newspapers, 
because I think we all recognize that our democracy is strongest when 
we have a free and diverse press that informs citizens, holds 
concentrated power accountable, and roots out corruption.
  There are examples all across the country of local newspapers doing 
heroic investigative work uncovering corruption, holding power to 
account, and sharing important information with folks at the local 
level.
  As Justice Brandeis wrote in 1927, those who won our independence 
believed that public discussion is a political duty, that the greatest 
threat to freedom is an uninformed citizenry, and that the freedom of 
thought and speech are indispensable to the discovery and spread of 
political truth.
  But today, as you have so eloquently argued, these bedrock 
constitutional values are facing existential threats by the new 
gatekeepers of information, the dominant platforms.
  Last year, Facebook and Google amassed more than $60 billion from 
online advertising, the majority of all online ad revenue. Despite 
record levels of online readership, news publishers have seen a steep 
decline in revenue during the rise of these technology giants.
  This bottleneck is bleeding publishers dry.
  In an editorial published last year, my local newspaper, The 
Providence Journal explained that: ``Google and Facebook now harvest 
the majority of the advertising that is supposed to sustain that 
journalism. It's essentially parasitism: newspapers and other 
journalistic enterprises do all the work, while Silicon Valley sucks 
out the profits.''
  In the absence of a competitive marketplace, newsrooms across the 
country are laying off reporters and editorial staff or folding 
altogether. This is happening to legacy news companies and digital 
publishers alike.

  There is no question that we have reached a tipping point.
  If this trend continues, we risk permanently compromising the news 
organizations that are essential to uncovering corruption, holding the 
government and powerful corporations accountable, and sustaining our 
democracy.
  That is why Mr. DeSaulnier and I have introduced the Journalism 
Competition and Preservation Act, a bill that would strengthen 
journalism by allowing news publishers to collectively negotiate with 
dominant platforms to improve the quality, accuracy, attribution, and 
interoperability of news online.
  It is critical that news publishers, both large and small, have a 
seat at the table and equal bargaining power when negotiating with 
dominant platforms. Whether it is an online publisher or your local 
newspaper, we cannot have a democracy without a free and diverse press. 
Our country will not survive if we do not have shared facts, if 
corruption is not exposed and rooted out at all levels of government, 
and if power is not held to account. It is simply not possible.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his support and 
cosponsorship of the legislation, his passionate advocacy for moving 
forward with it and for organizing tonight's Special Order hour to 
bring attention to this really critical issue which is really at the 
center of preserving our access to quality, reliable, and trustworthy 
news information which is essential to the survival of our democracy.
  Mr. DeSAULNIER. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Cicilline for the nice 
comments.
  This bill is extremely important, and I am proud to follow the 
gentleman's leadership in getting it passed and getting it signed.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from the great State of 
Colorado (Ms. DeGette).
  Ms. DeGETTE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank Mr. DeSaulnier for 
yielding to me. I also want to thank him and my colleague, Mr. 
Cicilline, for sponsoring this important piece of legislation.
  This really is a very concerning trend that is taking place in our 
society as more and more local news organizations in our communities 
are shutting down or becoming nonexistent. Maintaining a truly free and 
independent press is vital to our democracy.
  I guess he is our favorite Founder tonight, Thomas Jefferson, also 
said: ``Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a 
government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I 
should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.''

                              {time}  1800

  We, as a society, rely on members of the press to be our watchdogs, 
to sound the alarms and hold our government leaders accountable when 
necessary.
  According to a study from the University of North Carolina, over the 
last 15 years, the newspaper industry has seen over 1,800 mergers or 
closures of print newspapers.
  That is a staggering 20 percent of all newspapers in the country that 
have now closed since 2004.
  In my home State of Colorado, we have three counties--Costilla, Baca, 
and Cheyenne--that have no daily or weekly papers at all.
  And, in my hometown of Denver, where we have seen explosive 
population growth, we now only have one daily newspaper, The Denver 
Post. Our other newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, published its last 
issue in 2009, 2 months shy of what would have been its 150th 
anniversary.

[[Page H2982]]

  While it may have outlived the competition and it now serves as our 
city's only remaining daily paper, The Denver Post, too, has faced its 
share of hardships in recent years.
  In 2013, The Post had over 250 employees, but today the number is 
less than 100. On April 8, 2018, in response to another round of 
devastating layoffs at the paper, The Denver Post's own editorial board 
published an op-ed entitled ``As Vultures Circle, The Denver Post Must 
Be Saved.''
  In that op-ed, the editorial board wrote: ``The smart money is that 
in a few years The Denver Post will be rotting bones. And a major city 
in an important political region will find itself without a 
newspaper.''
  These are not my words. These are The Denver Post's own employee's 
words. The massive decline in the number of reporters covering our 
local communities is not happening just in Denver. It is happening all 
over the country, and it is threatening to have real, tangible impacts 
on our communities.
  Now, we heard Congresswoman Lofgren question how we are going to get 
coverage of local government in our newspapers.
  At The Denver Post, one of the layoffs they had was their one 
employee who covered Congress. So we are not only now not having 
coverage on local governments, but also of the U.S. House of 
Representatives.
  Nationwide, the number of full-time reporters covering our State 
legislatures is down 35 percent from 2003.
  And, while the reporters who remain continue as an invaluable service 
to our communities, frankly, they can't do it all, and, as a result, 
certain stories absolutely go unreported.
  A joint study by the University of Notre Dame and the University of 
Illinois at Chicago found a connection between local newspaper closures 
and increased interest rates on local bonds. In fact, the study found 
that the closure of a local newspaper results in local taxpayers paying 
an extra $650,000 in interest per loan.
  That is $650,000 in local taxpayer dollars that could otherwise go to 
schools, police, firefighters, potholes, or any other of a host of 
local needs, all lost simply because they didn't have local newspapers 
watching out on local government.
  We often talk in Congress about the fox guarding the henhouse, but in 
too many small and rural communities there is no one guarding at all.
  At the end of the day, for the sake of our democracy, we need local 
newspapers. We need local reporters. We need our watchdogs doing what 
they do best. We need to find ways to protect local news outlets and 
help them thrive.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Mr. DeSaulnier for highlighting this 
pressing issue affecting our communities and for having us here to 
discuss this tonight.
  Mr. DeSAULNIER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all my colleagues who 
have joined me today. We started an informal group, actually, after the 
instance that the congresswoman talked about in Denver.
  The same ownership owns the Bay Area News Group and the Los Angeles 
News Group, and there were similar layoffs there.
  And in the Bay Area, being there, but also being there seeing the 
demise of local news, seeing the Chronicle in San Francisco, still 
owned by a local publisher, but then having the rest of the 
newspapers--almost the entirety of what was the bedrock of local news 
outside of San Francisco, for the other 7 million residents in the Bay 
Area--almost 7 million people--they have seen these large layoffs like 
Denver has.
  I will say that, in my native town of Lowell, Massachusetts, the same 
company owns that newspaper, and a similar event has happened there.
  There is nothing wrong with people making money, wanting to make a 
larger return on their investment; however, this is, I would argue, a 
very unique institution for democracy.
  As Jefferson said, ``Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press. 
. . .''
  As Brandeis said: How people get their information, these are not 
things that you can separate. They are mutually intertwined.
  So, we need the ability to have this, and particularly for local 
government.
  When I started almost 30 years ago in the city of Concord, 
California, with a population of about 130,000 people, there was a 
gentleman named Larry Spears who had written for years for the Oakland 
Tribune and then for our local newspaper, The Contra Costa Times, a 
county of about a million people--not a small county.
  He was in the front row. There are still journalists in that front 
row, but we need people--and more of them--in every front row. Mr. 
Spears knew the relationships, how people got elected to city council, 
who was appointed to the planning commission. Having him there made a 
difference.
  It is human nature that, if you don't have someone watching, you are 
going to have human nature sometimes do things that it wouldn't if 
somebody who was professionally charged and trained to be able to 
explain to the general public what is happening and why it is happening 
was there.

  People will talk about the truth and deep truth, ``truth'' being the 
simple explanation of what actually happened and ``deep truth'' being 
the meaning of why people took those physical actions.
  This is what journalism is about. It is both being able to explain 
why a legislator or a city council member or a county supervisor did 
what they did and why they voted. But, as important is understanding 
why they did it. Did they do it for the reasons that they said that 
were part of the agendized items, or were there other influences behind 
their thoughts? And, can we explain ourselves so that the public can 
understand why we took that choice.
  And the ability of somebody to be able to communicate in an objective 
way what we say is important to democracy.
  So, I hope that today is the beginning of a discussion. Mr. Cicilline 
talked about his bill that I am proud to be a coauthor of that we 
introduced today. I think it is probably the most important.
  We have many, many newspapers supporting it. We hope that there will 
be, obviously, a wave of support. Editorial boards, we ask for your 
help. Any interested citizen can contact my office. I have a simple 
name to remember as far as Googling it.
  Let us know how you can help. If you are at a journalism school, if 
you are a journalist and you have ideas, give us ideas. These are 
constitutionally difficult issues.
  The Congress shouldn't be, as Congresswoman DeGette said, deciding 
how the First Amendment is orchestrated, I should say, or organized. 
But we should be supportive because, if we are successful, it is 
because of independent journalism out there.
  I would say that it is important that we have people who write, so 
that people who read and cognitively accept complicated issues will not 
become lazy.
  We often get told that it is about our messaging, but messaging is a 
two-way street. It requires the person who is speaking, or writing, to 
be able to communicate in a succinct, profound, empathy-filled way, but 
it also requires us, as citizens, to be listening and understand that 
sometimes issues are complicated.
  Well, how do you find that out? I would opine, as Mr. Postman did in 
1985, that--and we know more about this now in terms of neuroscience 
and cognitive development and exercise--the more we read, the more we 
practice at our writing skills, the more we practice at our 
communication skills in general, the deeper our knowledge and the 
greater our capacity, cognitively, to understand and problem-solve.
  So I would make the hope that this is the beginning of something that 
we will do good bipartisan work on and will allow for newspapers, as 
Jefferson said, to allow for democracy to exist and to prosper.
  And lastly, in Lincoln's comment that I started with when he said: If 
you let the people know the facts, the country will be safe--our 
Speaker has a favorite quote where she says another Lincoln quote that 
says: Public opinion means everything. No statute, no public 
proclamation, Lincoln said, has any meaning if the people do not 
support it and it has their sentiment.
  I would argue this other quote from Lincoln is equally as important: 
If the American people know the facts, the country will be safe.
  We need to provide the professional journalism to make sure they get 
those facts.

[[Page H2983]]

  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________