The FCC Can Can Help Clean Up Big Money in Campaigns

[Uncle Joe]

Pretend you’re a journalist (if you really are one, ignore that but read on anyhow) and someone calls and says “I’ve got a good and timely story that I think your readers/listeners would like to know about. There is a government agency that has both the authority and the responsibility to help clean up our broken big-money election campaigns — and it is refusing to do its job.” Let me explain.

Billions of dollars are being funneled into anonymous, misleading, special-interest TV political advertisements that fill our living rooms with politics at its ugliest. These ads are aimed at influencing and winning your vote while distorting both the issues and the personalities of the candidates running for office. People, long-since sick of these ads, are also convinced that there is no solution, with Congress unwilling to legislate and an Administration unlikely to pursue the matter on Capitol Hill.

Yet there is already a law — and even government agency rules — already on the books. And the kicker: the agency charged with implementing that law — the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) — resolutely refuses to do so, maybe because of powerful big money interests, perhaps because of the power of consolidated media, probably both.

For those new to this issue — and that would be a lot of us because of media’s silence on the story and the FCC’s covering it up — the requirement for Accountable Ads is in the Telecommunications Act itself, specifically in Section 317, and the (ignored) rules are in the FCC’s rulebook. The law and the rules boil down to this: People have a right to know by whom they are being persuaded and this requires disclosure of the true identity of an ad’s sponsor. Nothing unclear or arcane about that! A political ad claiming to be brought to you by “Citizens for Furry Kittens and Cuddly Puppies” that is really brought to you by some special interest is insulting to people’s intelligence — and to our democracy. Citizen advocate Ralph Nader put it clearly in a recent blog post: The actual ad sponsors, he said, “could be chemical companies polluting our water, big arms manufacturers wanting more over-priced government contracts or banks who are opposed to proper regulation of their consumer-gouging tactics and their speculation.”

(snip)

I’ve talked to a number of the shining stars of TV and newspaper journalism, urging them at least to explore the matter. You would be amazed at the answers I get from these mainstream media mavens. One response (and I’m not making this up) was that the ad issue is too out-of-the-blue to cover. “Hmm,” I thought, “isn’t journalism supposed to dig beneath the surface to uncover issues? Isn’t news something new, often out-of-the-blue?”

(snip)

Anybody think there might be something other than a debate over the purity of journalism standards going on here? Well, let’s start with this. Most TV stations will take in more money running political ads between now and November than they will earn from those seemingly endless Toyota, Honda and Chevy ads you see when you turn on your local “news.” (BTW, in many — I’d say most — markets, political ads command magnitudes of airtime more than hard news about the elections themselves. In Philadelphia, when last checked, the ratio was on the order of 45-to-1.) Anyhow, few will express surprise that money drives this. And in this age of consolidated media, with a few giants controlling what should be a decentralized and diverse industry, money wields more media power than ever. These companies merge, spending too much on the transaction, and then, in order to pay the price they cut back the newsrooms or, often, just shut them down. They have to turn a profit so that the wizards of Wall Street stay happy. These ads are closely watched in the financial markets, and god help your company if you do anything to lessen the returns. (Making the presidential campaign into an inglorious reality show helps the bottom line, too. That’s why CBS’s CEO can say Donald Trump may not be good for America, but he’s great for CBS.) Corporatized, centralized, commercialized media is more destructively inimical to our democratic well-being than anything else I can imagine.

(snip)


http://billmoyers.com/story/fcc-can-can-help-clean-big-money-campaigns/

[tonyt53]

1. You can thank Ronald Reagan and his fairness doctrine for most of this.

A Democrat majority in the Senate with a Democrat in the White House can start resolving this situation.

[Uncle Joe]

2. I believe we had that exact scenario since Reagan at least twice.

[tonyt53]

3. Can you say "blocked in the Senate".

[Uncle Joe]

4. What was blocked in the Senate, the FCC and the current law which is cited in the OP?