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September/October 2000 | Contents
MEDIA MONEY
How Corporate Spending Blocked Political
Ad Reform & Other Stories of Influence
BY CHARLES LEWIS
In his January 1998 State of the Union address, after decrying the campaign fundraising "arms race," President Bill Clinton proposed a major new policy that would address a big part of the problem -- the high cost of campaign commercials. "I will formally request that the Federal Communications Commission act to provide free or reduced-cost television time for candidates," the president said. "The airwaves are a public trust, and broadcasters also have to help us in this effort to strengthen our democracy." Within twenty-four hours, Federal Communications Commission chairman William Kennard announced that the FCC would develop new rules governing political ads.
But days later, the powerful broadcast corporations and their Capitol Hill allies managed to halt this historic initiative. In the Senate, Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Commerce Committee chairman, and Conrad Burns, a Republican from Montana and the chairman of that panel's communications subcommittee, announced that they would legislatively block the FCC's free-air-time initiative. "The FCC is clearly overstepping its authority here," McCain said. In the House of Representatives, seventeen Republicans -- including Majority Whip Tom DeLay, Appropriations chairman Bob Livingston, future House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Billy Tauzin, chairman of the House Commerce Committee's telecommunications subcommittee -- sent a blunt letter to Kennard: "Only Congress has the authority to write the laws of our nation, and only Congress has the authority to delegate to the Commission programming obligations by broadcasters." John Dingell, the Michigan Democrat and ranking House Commerce Committee member, also sent an opposing letter to Kennard. Faced with the very real threat that his agency's budget would be cut, Kennard had no choice but to retreat from the proposed rule making.
It was a humiliating and metaphorical moment for the FCC. The threat of a shrunken budget and a congressional backlash -- "the likes of which would not be pleasant to the Federal Communications Commission under any circumstances" is the way Livingston described it -- was too much for the FCC. Many politicians in power tend to fear free air time for the leg up it would give to challengers. More than that, free air time for political candidates would directly affect the bottom line of a very important industry and Washington player -- the media industry. It would cost broadcasters millions of dollars in lost advertising revenue, and they were not about to allow a direct affront to their financial self-interest become law. Free air time quickly went from the fast track to the back burner. In a very public way, the agency and the White House had been "rolled like a pancake," recalls former FCC chairman Reed Hundt, Kennard's immediate predecessor.
Indeed, the media's success in handling the threat of free air time for candidates is but one of a stack of pancakes that media companies have rolled in Congress and the White House in recent years. Which is why the media industry is widely regarded as perhaps the most powerful special interest today in Washington.
How do media corporations win friends and influence people in our nation's capital? The old-fashioned way, by using the time-honored techniques with which business interests routinely reap billions of dollars worth of subsidies, tax breaks, contracts, and other favors. They lobby vigorously. They give large donations to political campaigns. They take politicians and their staffs on junkets.
LOBBYING -- An investigation by cjr and the Center for Public Integrity found that since 1996, the fifty largest media companies (defined as companies that derive half or more of their revenues from broadcasting, cable operations, publishing, online media, and their content providers) and four of their trade associations have spent $111.3 million to lobby Congress and the executive branch of the government. The number of registered, media-related lobbyists has increased from 234 in 1996, the year the historic Telecommunication Act became law, to 284 in 1999. And last year, the amount of money spent on lobbyists was $31,408,965, up 26.4 percent from the $24,835,961 spent in 1996.
By way of comparison, in 1998, when media firms spent $28.5 million for lobbying, securities and investment firms spent $28 million, labor unions spent $23.7 million, and lawyers spent $19.1 million. Media companies weren't the biggest lobbying interests (airlines spent $38.6 million, defense contractors $48.7 million, and electric utilities $63.7 million). But no other sector of the economy has the perceived power to shape coverage in the news, a factor that greatly increases the media companies' lobbying weight.
CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS -- Since 1993 through June 30th of this year, media corporations have given $75 million in campaign contributions to candidates for federal office and to the two major political parties, according to data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics. The next president of the United States will have gotten to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with more than a million dollars in political donations from media interests; Vice President Al Gore has taken in $1.16 million, Governor George W. Bush has received $1.07 million. The sitting member of Congress with the biggest haul in media money -- including his presidential campaign -- is Senate Commerce Committee chairman McCain, who has collected $685,929. Over all, the amount of campaign cash from the media industry is skyrocketing every election cycle, which is typical of political giving in general. For example, media corporations gave $18,937,449 in 1997-1998, a 61 percent increase over the previous, 1993-1994 mid-term election cycle.
No media corporation lavishes more money on lobbyists or political campaigns than Time Warner, Inc. The media giant spent nearly $4.1 million for lobbying last year, and since 1993 has contributed $4.6 million to congressional and presidential candidates and the two political parties. The second-heaviest media spender in Washington is the Walt Disney Co., Inc., which paid $3.3 million for lobbying and just under $4.1 million in political donations during the same period of time. This is not a subject either company appears anxious to discuss. Calls to Gerald Levin, chairman of Time Warner, and to Michael Eisner, chairman of Disney, were not returned. Nor would the c.e.o.s of the other big media political spenders answer our questions: AT&T/Liberty Media (formerly Tele-Communications, Inc.) chairman John Malone; Viacom's Sumner Redstone; Seagram's Edgar Bronfman; Ralph Roberts, chairman of the board of Comcast; DreamWorks' part-owner David Geffen; and News Corporation's chairman Rupert Murdoch.
JUNKETS -- Since 1997, media companies have taken 118 members of Congress and their senior staff on 315 trips to meet with lobbyists and c.e.o.s to discuss legislation and the policy preferences of the industry. Lawmakers and their staffs have traveled near and far, to events as close as Alexandria, Virginia, and as far away as Taiwan. They've spoken at anniversaries of news organizations, gone fact-finding in Capetown, South Africa, and toured movie studios. Blaine Merritt, chief counsel to the courts and intellectual property subcommittee, wrote that the purpose of his trip to Burbank, paid for by Walt Disney, was to "learn about Disney production facilities and review relevant legislative issues which affect the company's operations."
The cumulative cost of these 315 trips was $455,867. The top three sponsors of the all-expense-paid jaunts were News Corporation, the National Association of Broadcasters, and the National Cable Television Association.
No member of Congress traveled more frequently on the media industry's nickel than Congressman Billy Tauzin, the Louisiana Republican. He and his senior staff have been taken on forty-two trips -- one out of eight junkets the industry has lavished on Congress. In December 1999 Tauzin left with his wife Cecile on a six-day, $18,910 trip to Paris, sponsored by Time Warner and Instinet, ostensibly for a conference there on e-commerce. Another member attending the same meeting, Rep. John E. Sweeney, a New York Republican, reported half the costs incurred by Tauzin, $7,445. Tauzin's wife and his son Michael have accompanied him on several industry-sponsored trips to New York, New Orleans, and Palm Springs, California.
Despite calls to his office and home, Tauzin declined to be interviewed. Andrew Schwartzman, a public interest lawyer and the director of the Media Access Project, who has been watching Tauzin for years, says he is not the least bit surprised about Tauzin's trips. "Billy Tauzin is an active, knowledgeable, and involved member of Congress who spends a great deal of time on telecommunications issues," he says. "But unlike some other members, he is not the least bit embarrassed about accepting large quantities of their generosity. This is the Eddy Edwards, Huey Long kind of streak in these guys of 'wink, wink, I'm a rogue' . . . Billy just kind of revels in it."
The second most frequent flier in Congress courtesy of the media has been Thomas J. Bliley, the Republican who chairs the House Commerce Committee. Bliley and his staff have logged nineteen junkets over the last three years.
At the GOP convention in Philadelphia, Tauzin, who hopes to succeed chairman Bliley, hosted a Mardi Gras-style celebration, complete with floats from Louisiana. The affair, attended by lobbyists and pols and reportedly costing $400,000, was underwritten by, among others, SBC Communications, which owns cable properties; BellSouth Corp.; and Comsat Corp. Not to be outdone, Tauzin's rival for the top job on Commerce, Michael Oxley, threw an American Bandstand-themed bash, complete with the show's host, Dick Clark, the day before. Oxley's dance party was paid for by contributions of up to $75,000 a pop, according to Legal Times, from the likes of COMSAT Corporation, Satellite SuperSkyway Alliance, and SBC Telecommunications; the total cost was estimated in the $300,000-to-$400,000 range.
The largess extended by the media industry is not limited merely
to Congress. We also found that Federal Communications Commission employees
were taken on 1,460 all-expenses-paid trips sponsored by media corporations
and associations since 1995, costing a total of $1.5 million. A group called
the Institute for International Research paid for sixty-two trips at a cost
of more than $95,000. The innocuous sounding IIR is a privately held, global
conference organization group, designed to allow corporate clients "an excellent
opportunity to showcase your products in front of key decision makers . .
. and to ensure maximum networking opportunities." The FCC's Office of Policy
Planning chief, Bob Pepper, tops IIR's list of favorite regulators, with eight
trips totaling more than $23,500.
JUNKETS
1997-2000 Sponsors of Trips
| SPONSOR | TOTAL COST OF TRIPS |
| 1. News Corp | $68,175 |
| 2. National Assn. of Broadcasters | $56,212 |
| 3. National Cable Television Assn. | $48,168 |
| 4. Media One | $41,159 |
| 5. Walt Disney | $33,868 |
| 6. NBC | $26,929 |
| 7. World College of Journalism & Communication | $18,700 |
| 8. Assn. of Local Television Stations | $18,490 |
| 9. Instinet | $15,260 |
| 10. Discovery Channel Foundation | $13,900 |
1997-2000 Congressmen and Staff Trips
| CONGRESSMEN | TOTAL COST OF TRIPS |
| 1. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (42) | $77,389 |
| 2. Thomas J. Bliley (19) | $18,110 |
| 3. Elizabeth Furse (3) | $14,710 |
| 4. Orrin G. Hatch (12) | $12,846 |
| 5. John M. Conyers Jr. (12) | $12,616 |
| 6. Michael G. Oxley (7) | $12,488 |
| 7. John F. Kerry (3) | $11,340 |
| 8. J. Dennis Hastert (6) | $10,540 |
| 9. Henry J. Hyde (9) | $10,134 |
| 10. John M. Shimkus (6) | $9,332 |
THE BIG PLAYERS
The intermeshing of public and private sectors has, of course, been an endemic problem in Washington for years, and the social and professional interaction between the media business and the government that regulates it is, not surprisingly, quite extensive. For example, Podesta & Associates, now known as Podesta.com, is the outside lobbying firm representing the widest array of media behemoths. Since 1996, the company has received $1.62 million as the Washington representative for Viacom, Time Warner, and NBC. It is headed by Tony Podesta, whose brother John happens to be the White House chief of staff. Twenty-three members of its staff of thirty-three formerly worked on Capitol Hill for one party or the other. One of them, Kimberley Fritts, is the daughter of the president of the National Association of Broadcasters, NAB.
No media organization spends more money lobbying or has more people covering Washington than the NAB, which has spent $19.42 million to persuade government officials since 1996. NAB president Eddie Fritts was a college classmate and is a close friend of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, and on occasion this relationship has been immensely helpful to the broadcasters. There are twenty registered lobbyists at the NAB, seven of whom came from congressional staffs, the FCC, and the Federal Trade Commission. Until recently, their ranks included Kimberly Tauzin, daughter of Billy Tauzin.
The Newspaper Association of America has spent $6.5 million on lobbying since 1996, using four in-house lobbyists and four outside firms, most notably Wiley, Rein & Fielding, whose founding partner, Richard Wiley, once served as chairman of the FCC. They've lobbied on everything from the Freedom of Information Act -- certainly an understandable concern for journalists -- to postal reform bills and amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act that could change the rules governing independent contractors. They've also sought to overturn FCC rules that limit the number of stations any broadcaster -- including newspapers -- can own.
Media corporations have spared no expense in Washington, hiring all of the "usual suspects" kind of big-name lobbyists. They include former Republican party chairman Haley Barbour (CBS); Tommy Boggs, son of the long-deceased House Majority Leader Hale Boggs and U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Lindy Boggs, and brother of ABC News correspondent Cokie Roberts (National Cable Television Association; Magazine Publishers of America); a former Reagan White House chief of staff, Ken Duberstein (Comcast, National Cable TV Association, Time Warner); a former Nixon White House aide, Tom Korologos (Cox Communications); a former Carter White House aide, Anne Wexler (Comcast, Univision); and former FCC chairman Richard Wiley (CBS). After all, from copyright issues to broadband access to media ownership rules, billions of dollars are at stake in the changing media industry.
Corporate executives are often directly involved in the lobbying process, and media moguls are no different. In his recent memoir, You Say You Want A Revolution (Yale University Press), former FCC chairman Hundt recounts important conversations he had with Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., chairman and president (at the time) Ted Turner; QVC Network, Inc., chairman Barry Diller; TCI chairman John Malone; DreamWorks executive Steven Spielberg; and Disney vice president (at the time) Michael Ovitz.
Hundt candidly describes the atmosphere of influence-peddling at his agency: "I learned quickly that the volume of lobbying defined the major issues before the agency . . . . A single company might send soldiers from its regiments to the commission as many as 100 times, visit or phone the chairman on a dozen occasions, call some member of the chairman's staff perhaps daily. Congressional staffers made tens of thousands of telephone calls to the commission staff. Congressmen wrote letters on behalf of different parties, up to 5,000 or more a year. Sometimes, when the members wanted a particular result they phoned the commissioners to solicit votes as they might call each other on the Hill. Smart and well-financed lobbyists also ran media strategies to persuade the commission to write rules in their favor. Industries might spend millions of dollars on television advertising to influence a handful of commissioners."
The nature of the media's political power remains fascinating to Hundt. "The media industry does not mobilize great numbers of voters and it actually is not comprised of America's largest, economically most important companies . . . ." The media's significance and political clout, he argues, come "from its near ubiquitous, pervasive power to completely alter the beliefs of every American." Members of Congress and presidential candidates, he believes, are afraid to take on the news media directly for fear that they will simply "disappear" from the TV or radio airwaves and print news columns.
MEDIA DONATIONS
The Top Recipients, 1993-2000
| PRESIDENTIAL | CANDIDATES | AMOUNT |
| Al Gore, D | Democratic nominee | $1,163,490 |
| George W. Bush, R | Republican nominee | $1,070,728 |
| Bill Bradley, D | Primary challenger | $1,034,004 |
|
Bill Clinton, D |
42nd President | $634,456 |
| Bob Dole, R | '96 Republican nominee | $294,095 |
| SENATORS | COMMITTEE | AMOUNT |
| John McCain, R | Chair, Commerce | $685,929* |
| Edward Kennedy, D | Judiciary | $529,970 |
| John Kerry, D | Commerce | $470,944 |
| Charles Schumer, D | Judiciary | $435,550** |
| Barbara Boxer, D | Foreign Relations | $417,249 |
| REPRESENTATIVES | COMMITTEE | AMOUNT |
| Howard Berman, D | Judiciary | $315,598 |
| Richard Gephardt, D | Minority Leader |
$252,997 |
| Edward Markey, D | Ranking, Commerce | $250,350 |
| John O'Dingell, D | Commerce | $193,136 |
| Mark Green, R | Science | $157,340 |
Through 6/30/00.
Source: Analysis of data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics
* - Includes contributions to Presidential campaign
** - Includes contributions to House campaigns.
Top Ten Donors, 1993-2000
| COMPANY | AMOUNT |
| Time Warner, Inc.* | $4,605,209 |
| Walt Disney Co., Inc.* | $4,086,195 |
| National Cable Television Ass. | $1,992,090 |
| National Assn. of Broadcasters | $1,932,057 |
| Tele-Communications, Inc. | $1,861,935 |
| Viacom International* | $1,851,310 |
| Dreamworks SKG | $1,754,150 |
| Joseph E. Seagram & Sons | $1,484,333 |
| News Corp* | $1,477,905 |
| Universal Studios, Inc. | $1,396,274 |
Through 6/30/00.
Source: Analysis of data provided by the Center for Responsive Policits
* - Includes subsidiaries.
The Money
| CYCLE | INDIVIDUAL | (WITH SOFT) PAC | TOTAL |
| 93-94 | $9,334,507 | $2,402,569 | $11,737,076 |
| 95-96 | $20,293,975 | $2,902,250 | $23,196,225 |
| Subtotal | 34,933,301 | ||
| 97-98 | $16,051,540 | $2,885,909 | $18,937,449 |
| 99-00* | $19,584,564 | $1,695,560 | $21,280,124 |
| Subtotal | $40,217,573 | ||
| TOTAL | $75,150,874 |
* - Through 6/30/00.
Source: Analysis of data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics
THE BIG ISSUES
These have been spectacular times for media corporations, and the task of their Washington lobbyists is to keep the party going for as long as possible. The past decade has seen stunning annual revenues and unprecedented corporate concentration. No reasonable person would accuse the FCC of overzealous enforcement of the antitrust laws. In 1992, for the first time in twenty-two years, the FCC allowed network-cable TV cross ownership, allowing a single company to own such outlets in the same market (TV and newspaper ownership in the same market is a violation of cross-ownership rules.)
And the FCC, the Justice Department and the Congress generally have allowed media companies to mate and merge like rabbits. To name just a few, we have watched Time Warner merge with Turner Broadcasting, and Disney merge with Capital Cities/ABC, and News Corporation acquire Heritage Media, and AT&T merge with TCI, and CBS buy King World, and Viacom buy CBS, and Tribune Co. buy Times Mirror, and Time Warner and America Online announce the mother of all mergers -- a $350 billion deal to create the "world's first fully integrated media and communications company."
Today, 98 percent of Americans live in communities with only one local newspaper. The same percentage of citizens is served by a single cable provider. Some fifty cable channels are available in at least 40 million American homes, and three companies -- Disney, Time Warner, and Viacom -- own all or part of twenty-eight of them. Not far behind is General Electric, which owns NBC, CNBC, and shares joint ownership of MSNBC, A&E, the History Channel, and PAX-TV, a family-oriented cable channel.
In this marketplace milieu, media corporations press for further advantage in Washington. In the current Congress, more than sixty bills aimed at the broadcasters, networks, cable operators, and satellite operators -- as well as at the FCC that regulates them -- were proposed in the House and Senate. And that number doesn't include the tax, trade, labor, and non-binding resolutions that draw the industry's attention.
Below are some of the industry's legislative concerns:
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY -- Media companies spend tens of billions of dollars each year securing the right to content -- whether it's paying reporters' salary while they get the story or buying the rights to a free-lance magazine piece, or the rights to air a Seinfeld episode or Jurassic Park. They spend millions more on lobbyists who seek legislation designed to protect their investment in such properties, a major concern to media firms, especially as the Internet grows in sophistication.
VIOLENCE -- Lobbyists for the media industry have consistently raised First Amendment freedoms as a carte blanche protection against any regulation of violent content broadcast over the airwaves. The current system that rates violence in programs was agreed to voluntarily by broadcasters only after Senator McCain threatened to have the FCC block station license renewals for those broadcasters who refused to participate.
THE SATELLITE HOME VIEWER IMPROVEMENT ACT -- Signed into law by President Clinton last November, this permits satellite broadcasters to offer local signals to subscribers. Cable companies, who railed against the "must carry" provisions that require them to provide customers with all local broadcast channels, were only too happy to see their satellite competitors saddled with the same burden.
MEDIA OWNERSHIP -- Under current FCC rules, a single company is permitted to reach only 35 percent of the national audience through the stations it directly owns, preventing a handful of companies from owning all of the television stations in the country. With the CBS deal, Viacom went over the cap. To meet regulatory muster, Viacom will have to sell off some of its stations by May 2001. Within a week of the merger's announcement, Senate Commerce chairman McCain introduced a bill that would help Viacom skirt that requirement, raising the audience cap to 50 percent of the national audience. As noted in the Center for Public Integrity's book, The Buying of the President 2000, Viacom was McCain's fourth most generous "career patron."
NBC would also benefit from McCain's bill to lift the ownership cap. NBC acquired a 32 percent stake in Paxson Communications, the Florida-based broadcaster (whose interests McCain has promoted, in a letter to the FCC demanding action on one of the company's pending license requests. The letter was written just a day after the senator flew on the company's corporate jet). NBC has an option to purchase a controlling interest in Paxson by February 1, 2002, "if FCC rules then permit," the company's parent, GE, announced in documents filed with the SEC. Should McCain's bill pass, NBC won't face any FCC hurdles exercising its option.
REPEAL OF ESTATE TAXES -- Last July, the Senate joined
the House in passing legislation to repeal estate taxes. The measure was strongly
supported by some well-known family-owned publishers. Copley Newspapers, Cox
Enterprises, and Morris Communications have paid a lobbyist $950,000 since
1996 to fight for the end of the "death tax." In June the San Diego Union-Tribune,
a Copley newspaper, published an editorial entitled, "The Death Tax: Repeal
the Most Unfair of All Federal Levies": "House Republicans and Democrats were
right to pass legislation that phases out the death tax not only on family
farms, but on all family-owned businesses and other assets." Not mentioned
was the direct financial interest of the Copley family in the legislation,
and attendant lobbying efforts in that regard. "We are contributors to a fund
that is trying to eliminate the estate tax," Hal Fuson, Copley's chief counsel,
told us. "There was nothing particularly surreptitious
about it."
LOBBYING
What the Media Want: Top Ten Lobbyist Issues Since 1996
| 1. Intellecutal property: 556 lobby registrations* | 6. Political ads/campaign finance: 220 |
| 2. Violent programming restrictions:469 | 7. Cable issues: 192 |
| 3. Satellite systems: 287 | 8. Tobacco/alcohol advertising: 178 |
| 4. Tax issues: 272 | 9. Antitrust/ownership issues: 170 |
| 5. Telecommunications: 272 | 10. Broadband/spectrum issues: 105 |
Lobbying Fees Paid by Media Companies Since 1996
| 1996 | $24,835,961 |
| 1997 | $26,600,229 |
| 1998 | $28,493,371 |
| 1999 | $31,408,965 |
| TOTAL | $111,338,526 |
Then and Now: Media Lobbyists in
1996 and 1999
| YEAR | LOBBYISTS REGISTERED | FEES COLLECTED |
| 1996 | 234 lobbyists | $24,835,961 |
| 1999 | 284 lobbyists | $31,408,965 |
[Rate of increase: 26.4%]
Top Ten Media Lobbying Spenders
in 1996 and 1999
| 1996 | AMOUNT | 1999 | AMOUNT |
| National Assoc. of Broadcasters | $5,280,000 | National Assoc. of Broadcasters | $5,320,000 |
| Time Warner | $4,530,000 | National Cable Television Assoc. | $4,130,000 |
| National Cable Television Assoc. | $3,463,054 | Time Warner | $4,060,000 |
| Newspaper Assoc. of America | $2,110,631 | Disney World Services | $3,300,000 |
| Cox | $1,800,000 | Comcast | $3,240,000 |
| Disney | $1,680,000 | Assn. of American Publishers | $1,600,000 |
| CBS | $1,592,837 | Newspaper Assoc. of America | $1,556,000 |
| News Corp | $1,079,632 | News Corp. | $1,510,000 |
| ABC | $570,000 | Viacom | $1,380,000 |
| Gannett | $520,000 | CBS | $1,300,000 |
| TOTAL | $22,626,154 | TOTAL | $27,396,000 |
Top
Ten Media Organizations by Lobbying Costs Since 1996**
| 1. National Assoc. of Broadcasters, $16.92 million | 6. News Corp./Fox/AskyB, $7.48 million |
| 2. Time Warner Turner, $15.77 million | 7. Newspaper Assoc. of America, $6.51 million |
| 3. National Cable Television Assoc., $13.68 million | 8. Cox Enterprises, $4.61 million |
| 4. Walt Disney, $11 million | 9. Comcast Corp., $4.12 million |
| 5. Viacom/CBS, $9.29 million | 10. Assoc. of American Publishers, $3.12 million |
* -Lobbyists register with
the Clerk of the House of Representatives, and must list specific bills that
they are paid to try to influence
**
- Includes in-house lobbying
operations and trade groups
CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM
Still, no single recent media issue more poignantly portrays the clash between public and private interest than the debate over free air-time for political candidates. In early 1998, before the president and FCC chairman made their rule-making move, the broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, were already targets of criticism. They were excoriated for reaping, potentially, billions of dollars in 1997 when Congress gave them -- free -- the government-owned digital spectrum, to use for the next generation of technology. There was a rising public clamor around the question, Do broadcasters have public-interest obligations anymore?
Against this backdrop, television stations and networks separately have been making a financial killing from political advertising. According to data collected by a firm called Competitive Media Reporting, local and national TV political advertising will earn broadcasters $600 million this year. In fact, income from political ads has been steadily rising for twenty years -- from $90,570,000 in 1980 to $498,890,600 in 1998. In the first four months of this year, TV stations in the top seventy-five media markets took in $114 million for 151,000 commercials from the candidates alone.
At the same time, around the nation, news coverage of political candidates is getting minuscule. For example, the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California discovered that in the final three months of the 1998 California governor's race, local TV news on the subject comprised less than one-third of one percent of possible news time. In 1974, the amount of gubernatorial coverage in California was ten times greater. Another USC Annenberg finding: sixteen of the nineteen top-rated TV stations in the top eleven markets broadcast, on average, only thirty-nine seconds a night (from 5 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.) about political campaigns. Top stations in Philadelphia and Tampa averaged six seconds a night.
As Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois professor, wrote in Rich Media, Poor Democracy, "Broadcasters have little incentive to cover candidates, because it is in their interest to force them to purchase time to publicize their campaigns."
Recent research seems to bear this out. For example, in the New Jersey Senate primary, in which Jon Corzine spent more of his own money than any Senate candidate in U.S. history, local television stations in New York and Philadelphia made $21 million from political ads. In the last two weeks of the campaign, citizens watching top Philadelphia and New York TV stations were ten times more likely to see a campaign ad than a campaign news story.
Broadcasters, says Paul Taylor, founder and executive director of Alliance for Better Campaigns, "are profiteering from democracy." Since 1998, his group, co-chaired by former presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford and the former CBS News anchor, Walter Cronkite, has been calling for the networks and 1,600 TV stations to give at least five minutes of political news coverage a day during the last month before the 2000 election. So far, only two percent of the broadcasters have agreed.
The free air-time reform idea is not altogether dead. The FCC still seems to hold some interest, as do a few members of Congress, who have included proposals requiring broadcasters to provide free air time to political candidates in campaign-finance reform measures in the current congress. But industry lobbyists do not give an inch on any of them. In formal comments before the agency in March, the NAB said it "respectfully submits that there is no lack of political news and information available for persons who have any interest in obtaining such information. Thus, a voluntary or mandatory requirement for broadcasters to offer additional free time for political candidates is unnecessary." The Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) stated, "Proponents of mandatory air time for political candidates would prefer that the FCC ignore altogether the First Amendment rights of broadcasters. They would have the commission turn its back on political coverage decisions made by experienced, professional journalists."
Meanwhile, some newspaper editorials about the free-air-time proposal have been curiously consistent with the extent of their ownership of broadcasting properties. The Los Angeles Times, with no TV stations, wrote supportively of the initiative. The Chicago Tribune, owned by the Tribune Co., which recently purchased the Los Angeles Times and Times Mirror and also contributes to political candidates and parties and owns nineteen TV stations, saw the issue differently. It wrote in 1998, "It might be good if candidates didn't have to raise and spend so much money to finance broadcast ads. In that case, let Congress provide public funds to subsidize campaigns. If the public stands to gain from improved candidate access to the airwaves, the public ought to bear the cost." In other words, let the citizens pay for the ads they increasingly must watch.
The dirty little secret is that from 1996 through 1998, the NAB and five media outlets -- ABC, CBS, A.H. Belo, Meredith Corp., and Cox Enterprises -- cumulatively spent nearly $11 million to defeat a dozen campaign finance bills mandating free air time for political candidates. One company lobbyist willing to talk to us was Jerry Hadenfeldt, who represents the Meredith Corporation, owner of a dozen TV stations and twenty magazines, and publisher of more than 300 books. "Free political ads are basically picking the pockets of a select group, namely television broadcasters," he says. "They [candidates] already get the lowest available rates, and that's the way we believe it should stay."
One of the free-air-time bills he opposed was introduced by
Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, a New York Democrat. She apparently did not
realize the extent of the industry maneuverings against her. Told that $11
million had been spent lobbying against her bill and others like it, she was
taken aback. "Oh, good Lord," she said. "It seems excessive
to me. I am absolutely astonished. They paid $11 million to kill it? Well,
it sure worked, didn't it?"
SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY: The source for campaign contributions is the Center for Responsive Politics, which provided data from 1993 through June 30, 2000 on individual, PAC, and soft money contributions from broadcasting, publishing, cable, Internet, and entertainment companies and their employees. Erring on the side of caution, we did not include contributions from some of the parents of media firms that had other interests on Capitol Hill. Data on lobbyists and trips came from the Clerk's Office of the House of Representatives, the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, and the Office of Government Ethics. We limited our search of trip reports and lobby registrations to companies with revenues over $500 million, of which more than half were attributable to publishing, broadcasting, cable, or Internet service provision. We also included trade groups representing the interests of these industries in our search.
Charles Lewis, a former producer for 60 Minutes, is the executive director of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington. Bill Allison, Erin Gallavan, Shannon Rebholz, Helen Sanderson, and Derrick Wetherell of the Center contributed to this article. The Joyce Foundation and the Town Creek Foundation provided project support.
The Center's complete investigative report on media lobbying can be found at www.publicintegrity.org
