Steve Chabot Meets Norman Rockwell

The other day I posted a piece about Rep. Steve Chabot's (R-OH) recent town hall meeting. During this town hall meeting, Chabot banned the use of cameras (though not media cameras) and even had a Cincinnati Police Officer confiscate equipment of those who tried to record the public meeting. This was all done for, as Chabot claimed, "security purposes" of those in attendance but as ThinkProgress pointed out, the real reason was so that people "didn't make a show" of the event.

The backlash from First Amendment advocates was intense and led to Chabot announcing that cameras would be permitted at his next event.

It is curious why some Conservatives claim to champion "personal freedom" while campaigning, but then deploy Orwellian tactics that are anything but open and honest when at a public event. Remember Ohio State Treasury Candidate Josh Mandel, whose staffer tried to block my camera during a public event in 2010? Or how about Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) who recently distributed a "blacklist" of local activists who may criticize him at town hall meetings?

It appears that Rep. Chabot has fallen in with the crowd who are first to preach love for the Constitution and love for protesters (especially when speaking to them), but who take a much different stance when it is time to put those words into practice.

This leads me to a reader submitted graphic that might make an appropriate campaign sign for Chabot in the future. The artwork on this one is credited to Roger De Bris, "with apologies to Norman Rockwell":




This piece is cross posted here.

Supreme Court: Corporations Can Spend Money Freely in Elections

The Supreme Court just handed down a decision that is a setback for those advocating for restrictions on campaign financing. From The Hill:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down major provisions of campaign finance reform, though it remained to be seen if its decision represents a revolution in money and politics.

The court upheld disclosure requirements for corporations but also struck down the distinction between individual expenditures and corporate ones.

That should allow corporations to spend freely in support or opposition to candidates.

This decision is a big deal and really hasn't been covered that well in the corporate media. This decision allows for corporations to freely spend vast sums of money in order to support political candidates and will subsequently allow for corporate dollars to play an even larger role in the political process.

Here is part of the statement by Robert Weissman, the President of the group Public Citizen who played a key role in this case:

Shed a tear for our democracy.

Today, in the case Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence election outcomes.

Money from Exxon, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer and the rest of the Fortune 500 is already corroding the policy making process in Washington, state capitals and city halls. Today, the Supreme Court tells these corporate giants that they have a constitutional right to trample our democracy.

[...]

The court has invented the idea that corporations have First Amendment rights to influence election outcomes out of whole cloth. There is surely no originalist interpretation to support this outcome, since the court created the rights only in recent decades. Nor can the outcome be justified in light of the underlying purpose and spirit of the First Amendment. Corporations are state-created entities, not real people. They do not have expressive interests like humans; and, unlike humans, they are uniquely motivated by a singular focus on their economic bottom line. Corporate spending on elections defeats rather than advances the democratic thrust of the First Amendment.

I couldn't agree more. When corporations are protected by the First Amendment and are viewed as having interests that are comparable to the average citizen, you are just asking for more of an alliance between business and politics. The influence of lobbyists and corporations have been felt for years on issues of policy and even in elections, but this ruling today opens up the door for a tidal wave of corporate dollars to be spent on candidates that will stand up for policies that will not interrupt the bottom line.

Democracy did take a hit today and all those who value greater public participation in the political process should have serious concerns.

The Fairness Doctrine, the Broadcaster Freedom Act, and the Expansion of Public Discourse

Martha Zoller has a new column that I happened to run across today that voices its support for the "Broadcaster Freedom Act". The "Broadcaster Freedom Act" will effectively bar the FCC from making any new rules or regulations that would reinstate or re-implement standards once set in the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine was established in 1949 to provide for a more balanced discourse on controversial issues that were discussed on public airwaves. The belief was that there were fewer broadcast licenses than there were people who would like to have them, therefore licensees accept certain public responsibility for the use of the airwaves. Given this acceptance of public responsibility, the Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to devote some of their time to discussion of issues in the public interest and to give airtime to opposing viewpoints. Broadcasters could air opposing views in many different formats (news segments, editorial spots, etc.) but were not required to air the opposing views within the same program. The Fairness Doctrine also didn't require broadcasters programming to be split down a 50/50 line, but merely provide a balance in discussion of issues in the public interest.

The Fairness Doctrine stopped being enforced in the mid-1980's when then FCC Chair Mark Fowler expressed the belief that the view of broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced with the view of broadcasters as marketplace participants. In other words, Fowler advocated the position that content being broadcast on the airwaves should be left to the "free-market". Fowler would also argue, as does Martha Zoller, that the Fairness Doctrine limited free speech by giving the government control over a station's editorial content. Zoller states:

We must protect the free market everywhere it is being assaulted, and talk radio is a free speech market that should be left alone by regulation.

We must remember when discussing this issue, that the airwaves belong to the public and that broadcasters should serve the public interest. Since the end of the Fairness Doctrine we have seen continued concentration of the media into the hands of just a few companies. Though some would argue that we have more channels now with the existence of cable, I am reminded of Senator Byron Dorgan's observation that this is like many voices coming from the same ventriloquist. We have seen opinion and viewpoints become more limited on the airwaves, not expanded since things have been turned over to the "free-market". You can see this firsthand in the coverage in the lead-up to the Iraq War and in the "post-9/11 world" where dissenting opinion was suppressed. Zoller further claims in her article:

The marketplace doesn’t want liberal talk radio. There have been some shows that have done well, but the numbers are not in their favor. This year at the Talkers New Media Seminar, there were more liberal/progressive/independent hosts represented, but the bread and butter still goes to conservative talk because conservatives are so under-represented in the rest of the media market.

When we discuss topics such as the public airwaves, which are owned by the public and should serve in the interest of the public, it is not productive to speak about such topics as "products" subjected to the "marketplace". Public forums for debate, discussion, and the expansion of ideas are fundamental to democracy and speaking about different viewpoints as if we are choosing between brands of soda pop, is grossly missing the point. Simply stating that the public "doesn't want" the other view is no excuse for its suppression and in a society that benefits from debating all viewpoints, it is completely necessary to further open up the level of discourse.

Media consolidation has hurt democracy and it is not productive to think about the issue in terms of a "liberal" or a "conservative" media, but rather recognize that our media outlets are largely stenographers to power. Our media outlets produce sanitized infotainment that passes as news and keeps advertisers coming back for more. Perhaps it is more beneficial to look at this issue of "Fairness" through the eyes of a 1969 Supreme Court decision that upheld the Fairness Doctrine:

A license permits broadcasting, but the licensee has no constitutional right to be the one who holds the license or to monopolize a...frequency to the exclusion of his fellow citizens. There is nothing in the First Amendment which prevents the Government from requiring a licensee to share his frequency with others.... It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.

— U.S. Supreme Court, upholding the constitutionality of the Fairness Doctrine in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 1969