[Sosfbay-discuss] Media Moves -- Can We Finally End the Stranglehold?

[Andrea Dorey]

NAB-bing the Election

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/take_back_the_airwaves/

Posted on Apr 10, 2007

By Amy Goodman

As the TV pundits on the networks gab about the tens of millions of  
dollars raised by the top presidential candidates, what they don’t  
talk about is where that money is going: to their own networks.

Money is now considered the single most important factor in our  
electoral process. Ideas and issues take a back seat to the bottom  
line. This prostitution of our electoral process has one key culprit:  
television advertising...



Some bold members of Congress have tried throughout the decades to  
end this stranglehold on the political process. Sen. Bill Bradley  
tried in the 1990s...



In 2003, Sen. Russ Feingold, along with Sens. Richard Durbin, Jon  
Corzine and John McCain, submitted the Our Democracy, Our Airwaves  
Act, which proposed a system of advertising vouchers for candidates...



Now Durbin is taking another crack at the NAB. He has introduced the  
Fair Elections Now Act, which would both grant vouchers for broadcast  
ads and mandate a 20 percent discount beyond the lowest unit cost of  
ads near primary and election times.

While the public airwaves are sold off to the highest campaign  
bidders (often to push negative ads, but that is another issue), the  
broadcasters fail miserably to report on the campaigns. After all, if  
the broadcasters fulfilled their public-interest obligations and  
actually reported fully and consistently on the various candidates  
and their issues, and not just on the campaign horse race, then there  
would be less need for campaigns to buy ads in the first place...



The American public is being robbed by the National Association of  
Broadcasters.  It’s time to take back the airwaves.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/ 
radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.

© 2007 Amy Goodman; distributed by King Features Syndicate
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