| 00000 |
| 01.
The speech Bush did not make |
| 02.
Joint statement : USA attack by Pakistanis |
| 03.
Middle East dispatch |
| |
| 05.
Media role missing from campaign finance coverage |
| 06.
Is right of iegitimate self-defence a 'war crime'?
Not
to begin at the end |
07.
The invisible Afghanistan / |
| 08.
A
widow's plea for non-violence |
| 09.
The algebra of infinite justice |
| 10.
Bombs and biscuits |
| 11.
War Is peace |
| 12.
Interview with Edward Said |
| 13.
A blow for peace
|
| 14.
The truths they never tell us |
| 15.
Interview
with Chomsky, April 2, 2002 |
| 16.
Cry, the beloved country |
| 17.
Three
extra-judicial executions today, a child and five
others killed |
| 00 |
| 00000 |
| Media
role missing from campaign finance coverage |
| By
Shahidul Alam |
| 000000
|
| March
22, 2001 |
| |
| While
the McCain-Feingold campaign finance debate will
often dominate political news over the next two
weeks, one aspect of the story is rarely explained
to TV viewers: Where does all the money go? |
| |
| Many
media accounts correctly draw the links between
the access that big money can buy and the political
favors that donors come to expect. News reports
at the beginning of the Senate debate (3/19/01)
over McCain-Feingold were often strongly worded:
CBS's Bob Schieffer explained that "This money
is like a narcotic to politicians and they're
having a hard time breaking the habit," while
NBC's Lisa Myers reported the issue as a case
of "bigger and bigger money buying more and more
influence." |
| |
| But
a significant portion of that money goes straight
to the media themselves. Estimates of campaign
spending in 2000 find that television stations
took in about $1 billion in advertising revenue.
One study of political ads found that 839,243
political ads were aired in the top 75 media markets
during the 200 election season-- that's over 10,000
per market (USA Today, 3/21/01). |
| |
| 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: |
| |
--Time
Warner/CNN: $2,004,438
--Walt Disney/ABC: $1,805,464 --News Corp./Fox:
$787,980
--Viacom/CBS: $648,170
--General Electric/NBC: $309,700 |
| |
| 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. |
| |
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. --"Hidden Culprit in Campaign
Finance Scandal: The TV Industry"
by Jeff Cohen: http://www.fair.org/whats-new/tvindustry.html |
| |
