ACTION: Encourage the broadcast news outlets to investigate the role of the media industry itself in the campaign finance debate. Media companies have an obligation to explain their role as beneficiaries of the current system. CONTACT:
NBC Nightly News Phone: 212-664-4971 or 202-885-4259 Fax: 202-362-2009 ABC's World News Tonight 47 W. 66 St., New York, NY 10023 Phone: 212-456-7777 Fax: 212-456-4297 CBS Evening News Phone: 212-975-3691, 202-457-4385 Fax: 212-975-1893As always, please remember that your comments will be more effective if you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair@fair.org with your correspondence.
The media's front-and-center role in campaign finance goes virtually unacknowledged on the network news broadcasts. As debate on the Senate floor began on March 19, viewers would be hard-pressed to find any straight forward account of how the system actually works. On NBC Nightly News, correspondent Lisa Myers came close, reporting that opponents of McCain-Feingold argue that "this money is needed to buy expensive TV time."
Newspaper accounts are often more direct-- Washington Post columnist David Broder (3/20/01) wrote that the truth about who benefits from the current system "is suppressed in Senate debate for the same reason it was ignored on the TV talk shows: fear of antagonizing the station owners, who control what gets on the air."
It's not hard to see why broadcasters would not be interested in disclosing the extraordinary benefits they get from the current political financing scheme. Earlier in the month, a report by the Alliance for Better Campaigns accused television stations of gouging advertisers by charging more than the basic rate for political ads. The report generated some newspaper coverage (New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, all 3/6/01), but no national television coverage, according to a search of the Nexis online news database.
Broadcasters participate as campaign contributors as well. According to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, big media were big soft-money contributors in the 2000 election cycle:
This system is known well to journalists and politicians alike. Broadcast lobbies like the National Association of Broadcasters are considered among the most powerful in Washington, and the mechanics of political campaigns are all too familiar to those close to the system. "Today's Senate campaigns function as collection agencies for broadcasters," former Senator Bill Bradley explained in 1991 (Communications & the Law, 3/95). "You simply transfer money from contributors to television stations."As the issue of campaign finance reform takes center stage, the broadcast industry's participation in the scandal demands greater scrutiny.
For more background, please see: