The Broadcast Giveaway

When "the public interest" means free ads for politicians

Adam Clayton Powell III from the April 1998 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Never ones to rest on their failures, federal programmers came back with still more from the Washington dream factory. This time, the politicians want to start by ordering broadcasters to run the politicians' own programs--anything from slick campaign ads to Ross Perot staring into a camera lens for 30 minutes. Though they wrap the proposal in idealistic rhetoric peppered with such phrases as "public interest obligations" and "free time" for political debate, it is, of course, nothing of the sort. True debate and discussion is the last thing most political candidates want to put on the air, unless they are far behind in the polls--and then the front runner will almost never agree.

Broadcasters already saddled with federal requirements that they buy new, unpopular "educational" programs will now be required to donate hours of television time to politicians, so the politicians can produce "public interest" programs promoting their re-elections. With the wave of a Washington commissioner's hand, mudslinging political commercials have been transformed into "public interest" programs that broadcasters must run for free. Then again, as the president might say, it's the least we can ask of broadcasters.

Of course, the networks offered free time to political candidates in 1996, as they have in every recent election. Television stations and networks also broadcast many hours of public affairs programming, debates, and special programs. And under existing law, stations are already obligated to sell commercial time to political candidates at a deep discount.

But that is not exactly what President Clinton and other candidates want. What they want is free air time for their campaign commercials. What's more, they want to ban anyone else from running political commercials. So the Gore Commission will try to devise a way to make certain no one except major party candidates will have a voice in future elections. No other individual, club, union, or company would be able to buy air time.

The rationale for restricting who can make political ads was explained at the Media Institute forum by Paul Taylor, who heads the Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition, which is lobbying for donated commercial time. "Candidates are the only actors in the drama [i.e., elections] that voters hold accountable on election day," Taylor said.

So, he continued, the ideal system would have broadcasters donate "air time directly to candidates or indirectly through parties." The voters--the other "actors in the drama"--would have their speech rights limited sharply or eliminated entirely. Only in Washington could stifling political speech on TV be defined as a step forward for the "public interest."

And TV is not the end of the story. Live and recorded news and entertainment are now staples of the World Wide Web, and sound over the Internet is already as good as FM radio was in the 1970s. Within a year or two, the jerky video pictures transmitted over the Net will be smoothed out into something that will look very much like television. Since the Gore Commission's mandate was limited to suggesting regulations for the new digital broadcasting frequencies--and in light of last year's U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the Communications Decency Act--the Internet would seem to be plainly off-limits for federal program regulators.

But is it? In a public hearing on January 16, both of the Gore Commission's co-chairs toyed with the idea of trying to regulate not just television but the Internet as well. "Are we dealing with networks?" asked Moonves. "Are we dealing with cable? Are we dealing with local stations, be they independent? Are we dealing with America Online? When we make suggestions and recommendations about what the public interest obligation is, how far do we go? We're looking at a brave new world here. How far does our reach extend?"

"While our mandate is digital television broadcasters," Ornstein observed, "I don't see how we can avoid addressing in some fashion the much larger question of how the public interest is served by all of these different entities and try to make sure that there is a better balance struck."

Consider where such expansive logic can lead. In all likelihood, political commercials (or "public service" programming) will not attract many viewers; Internet surfers would similarly resist federally mandated Web sites for candidates. So to help spread the word, the Gore Commission, extending the reasoning behind free TV time for candidates, might impose "public interest" requirements for other media, such as newspapers and magazines.

After all, the argument could go, publishers received all of those federal subsidies and preferential postal rates over the years, similar to the "giveaways" to broadcasters ("worth billions"). They make their paper by cutting down trees that are sometimes grown on federal lands, and they deliver their periodicals over the public roads, which are perhaps worth even more than public airwaves. And newspapers make billions of dollars in profits, so they can afford to give space away. Isn't it time for publishers to give a little back to democratic society, to finally do something in the "public interest"? They could start by giving free space--pages of it--to political candidates.

Indeed, a future Gore Commission might well conclude, that would be the least we could ask of them.

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