The campaign finance skeleton in the news media's closet
By Ted Marks
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Thursday, January 6, 2000
Ted Marks, a veteran journalist and former news executive at U.P.I. and Knight Ridder, is president of Marks & Frederick Associates.
That rattling sound we hear from inside the 2000 election campaign can be traced to the skeletons in
the American media's closet. Now that the quadrennial election season is about to enter full swing,
those closeted skeletons are busy counting the tidal wave of campaign funds used to acquire
political ads on TV and Radio stations across the country. Skeletal fingers are nimbly adding up the
profits -- and they are substantial.
So, as this election year in the U.S. begins in earnest, here is a question which needs to be asked:
should the media in the world's largest and most robust democracy -- a media which enjoys the free
use of public airwaves and the Internet, and a constitutionally-guaranteed freedom of the press -- be
chalking up substantial profits from the process of public elections?
Senator John McCain is championing campaign finance reform, and as he does, the public's
attention is being drawn to the gargantuan sums of money the politicians are using, through direct
(hard) and indirect (soft) fund raising efforts, to bankroll the existing election process. We've all
heard the complaints of politicians that they must constantly raise campaign funds in order to be
re-elected. And then there are the White House coffee klatches, the Lincoln Bedroom overnights, the
donations from the Chinese, Thai and Indonesian business interests -- not to mention the Buddhist
temple fundraising shams that the politicians have resorted to in order to raise hard and soft
campaign funds. Those are all sins of the current Democatic Administration, but the Republicans are
also capable of priming the money pump with equal relish.
It's not a pretty picture. In fact, it's downright ugly. The current campaign finance practices have
significantly changed the nature of American politics. It's no longer one man, one vote. If you want
any impact on politics, you'd better be prepared to open up your checkbook. Let's face it: the
American democratic process has become corrupt, plain and simple, and McCain should be given
credit for forcing the issue into the public discourse.
But what hasn't drawn much public attention is the fact that up to two-thirds of all the money raised
by the candidates eventually end up as profits on the books of the broadcast industry. Nearly half of
the so-called soft-money is spent on PR campaigns in national and local media.
Consider the numbers: in the 2000 elections, candidates are projected to spend $1.5 billion, with
$600 million of that being spent on television advertising alone.
The record of public campaigns over the past 25 years only highlights a very ugly trend: in the 1972
elections, television advertising totaled $97.7 million (all figures are from the Television
Advertising Bureau). By 1980 television advertising had nearly doubled to $ 182 million. TV
spending doubled again by 1992 when it reached $355 million. Four years later, in 1996 it nearly
doubled again, climbing to $515 million.
The estimate of $600 million in TV spending in this year's campaign comes from Common Cause, but
no one would be surprised if the actual spending in this year's campaign goes even higher. So for
the past three decades, the TV spending by the candidates has been growing exponentially and
unless something is done, it will only continue to escalate.
The broadcast industry, of course, welcomes the cash, and who can blame them?
"We're Salivating"
"Yeah, we're salivating," said one Buffalo, New York TV salesman, as reported by the trade
publication, Electronic Media. "It's a great time to own a broadcast station," said Media buyer
Barry Bennett of Strategic Media services, as reported by the Political Standard, a newsletter
published by the Alliance for Better Campaigns.
The knee-jerk reaction is to say wait a minute; this isn't right. The media shouldn't be profiting from
this process; they should be donating free airtime to the campaigns of any bona fide candidate.
Indeed, there are a number of well organized public interest groups, including the Alliance for
Better Campaigns, which are trying to do just that in order to help achieve campaign finance
reform.
The fundamental premise underlying these organizations is that if we take away the need for
expensive television and radio ads, we will eliminate the need for huge sums of money to finance the
campaigns.
The argument makes a lot of sense. This journalist -- as a private citizen -- agrees with those
advocating that bona fide candidates get free advertising. The details have to be worked out, but in
principal, the media should not be profiting from election campaigns, especially at the margins they
are now achieving.
Having said that as a private citizen, however, this writer is going to put on his professional
newsman's hat and suggest that if I were advising senior management in the media, I would
probably recommend that they resist any outside effort to rein in the media's role in our political
campaigns.
Why? Well, in the American democratic experience, the press must be absolutely independent. Any
effort to place controls on the media will ultimately diminish the independence of the press.
Moreover, the primary defender of the free press should be the news media itself -- that
responsibility comes with the territory.
Some years ago, there was an effort to organize a National News Council, which would have had the
authority to review complaints against the press. The idea was conceptually sound, but the
heavyweights in the American news media resisted the idea. Led by the New York Times, the news
media simply refused to have anything to do with the formation of such a council, and without their
support, the idea was deader than a doornail. And in our view they were right to oppose the News
Council.
In 1996, former Washington Post reporter Paul Taylor quit his job to found the Free TV for Straight
Talk Coalition, an organization whose objective was to get free airtime for political candidates.
Taylor (now executive director of the Alliance for Better Campaigns) got some publicity and even an
endorsement from President Clinton and former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, but his plan to require
the networks to issue vouchers to candidates to acquire airtime never got off the ground because it
was vigorously opposed by the broadcast industry. Since then, Taylor has been lobbying the FCC to
require that licensees for the new digital TV Technology be required to air more public interest
programming. He is encountering heavy opposition from both members of Congress and the
broadcast industry.
First, Fifth Amendments Restrictions
Opponents of campaign finance reform claim that any attempt to change the current system through
legislation or any other federal edict would violate the First Amendment guaranteeing not only the
independence of the press, but freedom of speech in general. They also claim that any attempt to
give away air time would violate the Fifth Amendment which protects private property being taken
for public use without some sort of compensation.
In fact, the Fifth Amendment argument is not a very strong one. The air waves used in the broadcast
industry are not, and never have been, private property; they are solidly within the public domain,
and the idea that a network or any other commercial entity has private ownership rights to
broadcast technology is simply ludicrous.
Likewise, the Internet is also very much within the public domain. No one claims to "own" the
Internet (except perhaps Al Gore), and should anyone make such a claim they would simply not be
taken seriously (Gore, again).
The only valid position against mandating free airtime for political candidates is the Free Press
argument, and we believe that defense alone is sufficient to win the debate. If we tinker with the
First Amendment we are tinkering with the core values of the American democratic experience.
Still, the greed and corruption surrounding current campaign finances is equally unacceptable. If
we don't do something, the special interests will take over the system, and if that happens, then the
American experience will start to die off, at the relatively tender age of little more than 200 years.
So how do we resolve the inherent conflict between common sense strategy of giving bona fide
candidates free access to the media and protecting the interests of a free and independent press?
Unilateral Action
The easiest solution is for the news media to simply unilaterally decide to give the candidates free
access to television, radio, and even newspapers and magazines (most candidates are already
making abundant good use of the Internet).
Unilateral action is an easy idea to suggest, but much harder achieve as a practical reality. The
only way to achieve this goal, we believe, is for the senior management of the American news media
to get together and decide that it's in the public interest to unilaterally and arbitrarily institute this
reform.
We don't need a study group, or a round of polls. As the News Council experience showed, the news
media will not stand for a "well-rounded" commission to take on the problem. The only way to get
this thing done is for the senior management of the most influential American media organizations
to get together, find a common ground and decide to do it.
How?
Well, we suggest that the captains of the media industry (CMI) have lunch one day, talk about the
problem and then agree that the public interest would be served if they agreed to voluntarily lift the
burden of expensive advertising off the candidates. Participants in the meeting should include
Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., Donald Graham, John Curley, Tony Ridder, Mark Willes (or maybe Otis
Chandler), Jack Welch, Gerald Levine, Ted Turner, Michael Eisner, and Mel Karmazin (if the others
would have him, Rupert Murdoch should also probably be invited).
Make the decision first, and then figure out how to do it. Once a commitment is made by this group
of influential media managers, it will be done -- or if it isn't, they aren't the managers we think they
are.
Some will raise the specter of anti-trust implications in such a concerted action. That charge can be
de-fused by the simple fact that this unilateral action will cost the industry money even as it acts for
the public good. If anything, the more serious reaction is likely to be from shareholders in the public
corporations which own the media. But if the action is presented as a reasonable, altruistic, even
patriotic effort, there's a good chance that those critics will probably be won over. It will take some
effort to make a convincing case to win over public opinion, but it is a solid, very winnable case
from the start.
Some tell us that we should let Congress take care of this through the FCC or FEC. We don't think
so. In the last few decades we as a society have left too much to the government, and in this instance,
we definitely do not want the government legislating or regulating the press. In any event, the CMI
would be foolish to let the government get its foot in the door as the regulator of the press.
Unilateral action would render any government action a moot issue.
There are occasions when a country, an institution or a person is presented with the opportunity to
make a real difference -- to take action that will have a fundamental impact in our culture. The
founding fathers did this in 1776; Abraham Lincoln did it when he took office; FDR and Winston
Churchill did this in the build-up to World War II. While campaign finance reform may not rank
with the birth of the nation, the Civil War or World War II, it does represents a very serious flaw in
our system, and the group of gentlemen listed above have a very real opportunity to help the system
correct itself.