You’ve got to hand it to Newton Minow, the venerable Chicago media lawyer and one-time chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. There he was last week, addressing our city’s business elite in the Grand Ballroom of the Palmer House Hilton, warning his tuxedo-clad audience that money (money!) will be the ruin of democracy in these United States.
Unless, that is, politicians are given free television time to put their campaigns before the voters. That way the pols would not have to raise so much green. And presumably, the Republic would be spared much of the influence-peddling, Lincoln Bedroom-selling and such hypocrisies as are about to unfold in upcoming congressional hearings on campaign finance abuses.
Part of me wanted to believe all this. I’ve long been an admirer of Newton Minow and his tell-it-like-it-is crusade to make TV live up to its promise of making us a better-informed nation. Though best known for his “vast wasteland” broadside against the vapidity of commercial television circa 1961, Minow has spent a lifetime working, writing and jaw-boning for better TV.
His performance last Wednesday night before the Economic Club of Chicago was vintage “Newt.”
“Politicians sell access to something we own–the government,” Minow told an after-dinner audience that included more than a few buyers of political access. “Broadcasters sell access to something we own–the public airwaves. Both do so, they tell us, in our name.
“By creating this system of selling and buying access, we have a campaign system that makes good people do bad things and bad people do worse things, a system that we do not want, that corrupts and trivializes public discourse, and that we have the power and the duty–a last chance–to change.”
That’s tellin’ ’em, Newt.
But his prescription for what ails our politics gets a bit dicey.
Minow would require TV broadcasters, as a condition for getting the additional electro-magnetic spectrum needed to handle advances in digital programming, to allot free airtime to candidates for public office, beginning with the presidency.
“As a condition of accepting that offer,” he continued, sketching how the reform might work, “you (the candidate) will not buy further time on this medium. For experience has shown that with such purchases comes the drive to raise great sums of money, with all its abuses and detriments to sound governance.”
If deep-pocketed candidates were to spurn the free-TV offer and keep trying to outspend the opposition, Minow would have Congress “go even further and constitutionally prohibit broadcasters from selling time for political purposes.” He speculated the Supreme Court would find such a law compatible with 1st Amendment guarantees of free speech, because it regulates not the content of speech but the “structure of the market.”
I’ll defer to his expertise on that last point, but I still have some questions about all this:
– What’s to stop political candidates from spending wildly on other means of communication? After broadcast TV is capped or placed off limits, wouldn’t the spending wars turn to print advertising? Or direct mail? Or telephone push-polling? Or door-to-door canvassing by professional pitchmen?
– Given the proliferation of non-broadcast media–from cable TV to the Internet to subscription/satellite hookups, does it still make sense to saddle just VHF/UHF license-holders with this reform?
– As sleazy and misleading as TV political ads tend to be, what would be the level of public interest in the longer, League-of-Women-Voters-type presentations that Minow has in mind? Especially if these talking heads appeared, say, one after another on the Sunday night before election day? Imagine the lines at Blockbuster video and the bowling alleys.
Don’t get me wrong. Minow’s proposal deserves serious consideration. Which is what it will get, now that President Bill Clinton reportedly is about to name him chairman of a national commission to examine the responsibilities of digital broadcasters.
Quite possibly, some of Minow’s thinking will be grafted onto existing proposals such as the bill sponsored by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). Among other things, their bill would grant reduced postal rates and free television time to candidates who comply with voluntary spending limits.
To me, much of this sounds like Rube Goldberg come to politics. The pols and their strategists will find loopholes before the ink dries in the Federal Register. Nor do I much like proposals to expand public funding of political campaigns–a concept that would never survive a popular referendum.
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So what’s my solution?
Disclosure. Complete, detailed and immediate disclosure of every person, company or group that gives more than $100, coupled with a ban on all contributions within 30 days of the election. That way candidates (and the press) would have time to scream about who is financing whom. And one other thing: harsh, swiftly-delivered criminal penalties for violators.
But then, that’s easy for me to say. I didn’t have to stand up there, like Newt Minow in front of all those tuxedos, condemning the influence of money. The “vast wasteland” man still tells it like it is.