Newspaper Monopolies under the Microscope: The Celler Hearings of 1963

Abstract

Early in 1963, United States Representative Emanuel Celler, chairman of the House Antitrust Subcommittee, took a bold step. As part of his committee's long examination of monopolistic practices in major US industries, Celler called newspaper publishers to participate in a series of hearings about the concentration of ownership in the newspaper industry. Discontinued twice, the hearings have remained somewhat of a mystery, with no official documentation of the proceedings available among government records. This research sheds additional light on the Celler Hearings of 1963, characterizes the approaches congressmen and publishers used in the hearings, and contributes a new perspective on why the hearings were discontinued. The article uses press reports, the personal papers of Emanuel Celler, the files of the House Antitrust Subcommittee, government documents, and American Newspaper Publishers Association documents to piece together the narrative. From the facts uncovered, the research concludes that publisher opposition to the hearings and Celler's role in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 brought a premature end to government's first attempt to curb the concentration of ownership in the newspaper industry.