The U.S. Senate’s powerful appropriations chair “strongly” supports a new tax proposal to help save local news outlets.
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who is also Senate president pro tempore, said she’s all for using tax credits to help news outlets retain and add newsroom jobs.
The credits are proposed in the bipartisan Community News and Small Business Support Act, introduced July 19 in the House. A Senate version is being drafted and expected within a few months.
“I really strongly support that,” Murray said Tuesday during a meeting with The Seattle Times editorial board.
That’s a great endorsement from a key Senate leader as the news industry looks for federal support to prevent further layoffs and closures.
Tax credits would not give the government any say over what or how news is reported. But they would extend news industry support that began with postal subsidies in 1792 and continues today with programs like cable franchise agreements and public airwave usage that enable broadcast and cable television.
Two newspapers a week are closing on average, according to research by Northwestern University’s Medill School, and nearly two-thirds of newspaper newsroom jobs evaporated over the last 15 years.
Murray said it’s critical to help local news outlets survive.
“Look, this is part of our democracy,” she said. “If we don’t have voices heard and we don’t hear other voices our democracy’s in trouble. This is something I care passionately about.”
The current bill would provide a tax credit up to $25,000 per newsroom job retained in the first year and up to $15,000 yearly over the next four years. It would also provide tax credits to small businesses advertising in local news outlets.
Washington’s other U.S. senator, Maria Cantwell, is expected to introduce a Senate version of the Community News bill later this year. Murray said Cantwell, as Commerce Committee chair, would take the lead but she will support the bill.
Murray said she’s hearing more and more from constituents concerned about losing their local news coverage.
“You turn on TV and it’s a national story and you’re like, ‘What’s happening in my backyard?’ ” she said. “I mean, it’s everywhere in all communities.”
The growing void of local coverage is clear when Murray traverses the state to discuss work she’s doing in the Capitol.
“It’s frustrating to me, as someone who really wants my constituents to know what’s going on, to not see anything, not even see a reporter able to come to any of our events to report back, good, bad or indifferent,” she said.
The local journalism crisis is also evident in Washington, D.C., where few local papers still have correspondents covering Congress.
“When I first went into the Senate there was like 19 or 20 reporters from Washington state. We have one now,” Murray said.
So how can the Community News bill get through Congress this year? Murray said it’s important to educate constituents about the situation because “if they’re talking to us about it then it’s more likely to pass.”
Brier Dudley is editor of The Seattle Times Save the Free Press Initiative.
