Congressional Hearing Videos
Did you know that the first televised congressional hearing was in 1948? According to a CRS report, the Senate Committee on Armed Services was the first committee to broadcast a hearing, followed by the House Un-American Activities Committee a few months later.
However, even though there were a few early hearing broadcasts—mainly newsreel and television network coverage of high profile hearings—the practice of filming wasn't formalized until the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 (PL 91-50). The Act allowed hearings to be filmed, but didn't require it. And certainly not all hearings were recorded.
Today, between the House Recording Studio, the Senate Recording Studio, and C-SPAN, it's easy to watch live footage of the House and the Senate in session. Congressional committees frequently stream hearings and business meetings. And YouTube has House Hub and a Senate Hub to bring together channels from individual member offices.
The Center for Legislative Archives is regularly asked for audio and visual clips of congressional hearings. Unfortunately, copies of footage from C-SPAN and the news media very rarely end up in the official records of congressional committees. The vast majority of our holdings are textual records.
We recommend researchers check with C-SPAN and other film and television archival repositories—such as the UCLA Film & Television Archive or Vanderbilt University's Television News Archive, with the network television archives—such as the NBC Universal Archive, or with library collections—such as the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division of the Library of Congress. To get started with the Library of Congress collections, start with the Politics and Public Affairs on Film, Television, and Radio research guide.
One exception to the Center's primarily textual holdings, are committee hearing videos from the Senate Recording Studio from the 108th to the 112th Congresses (2003 - 2012). Information on these videos is available through the National Archives Catalog.
In addition to the Senate Recording Studio records, the National Archives Catalog may also show other, related videos in the National Archives holdings outside of legislative records. After conducting a Catalog search, look to the menu down the left side of the page. Under 'Refine By: Type of Materials', select 'Sound Recording' and 'Moving Pictures'—this will narrow your search results down to audiovisual materials held (generally) in NARA's Moving Image and Sound Holdings Unit.
For more background on video records of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, see the CRS report: Video Broadcasting of Congressional Proceedings, and the Smithsonian Magazine article: "How Watching Congressional Hearings Became an American Pastime" (June 8, 2017).
If you have any questions, please email us at legislative.archives@nara.gov or check out the resources under Getting Started with Your Research.