The owners of the city’s newspapers and television stations — Rupert Murdoch, Mortimer Zuckerman, Sumner Redstone, Ted Turner and the like — are some of the wealthiest men in America. You’d think their companies could afford to pay for work-related parking for their employees. Instead, they’ve stuck the city’s taxpayers with the bill. New York’s politicians, no doubt in an admirable effort to curry favor with the press barons, have seen fit to provide free parking to journalists. In fact, there are 598 spaces in some of the prime spots in the city that are reserved for those with press credentials, according to the city’s transportation department.

This is a welcome convenience, and by our lights, if there’s anyone in the city who deserves free parking, it is newspaper ownereditors. Still, the city faces a $6 billion budget gap. The politicians want to raise taxes on commuters — who can’t even vote in New York City to defend themselves — and on property owners. But why should workers and property owners pay taxes to sustain a parking subsidy for an industry that can well afford to pay for its own parking? In Washington, D.C., a city so overrun with journalists that the main cultural institution there is something called a “Newseum,” no such subsidy exists as one providing free parking spaces for the press baron’s employees. What do reporters do when they need to park their cars? “They just obey the law, as anybody does,” says a spokesman for the Dis trict of Columbia’s transportation department, Bill Rice.

The press lords will no doubt argue that their staff’s ability to get around the city in cars is essential to their business needs and to the constitutionally essential function of covering the news. But there are plenty of other businesses that need to park regularly — UPS and FedEx delivery services, for example. They don’t get free parking. If the press manages to make the case that it deserves special parking privileges in connection with its special status under the First Amendment, perhaps the press spaces could be left in place — but with parking meters placed there, and with press cars parked at expired meters subject to ticketing. Better yet, just install regular parking meters at the city’s 598 press parking spots. The average city parking meter generates about $1,400 a year in revenue, says Keith Kalb, a spokesman for the New York City’s department of Transportation.

That works out to $837,200 a year in free parking the city’s taxpayers have been providing the press barons. That’s just the change that ends up in the meters. Add in the parking-ticket revenue paid by those caught at expired meters, and the money the city is leaving on the table probably reaches $1 million. Add in the parking-tax revenues that would be generated when some of the press barons’ employees who have been taking advantage of the free parking decide to rent spots in the city’s parking garages, and we’re definitely past $1 million. A garage spot rents for about $300 a month, and the city imposes an 18.25% tax. In the context of the city’s $42 billion budget, this all amounts to parking-meter change. But to the property owners in an already-high-tax city who are being asked to pay more because Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Miller claim they can’t find anywhere to cut — it adds up to 1 million more reasons for skepticism.