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May 21, 2013
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 Meet the Media Companies Lobbying Against TransparencyPosted on Apr 20, 2012
By Justin Elliott, ProPublica This piece originally appeared at ProPublica. News organizations cultivate a reputation for demanding transparency, whether by suing for access to government documents, dispatching camera crews to the doorsteps of recalcitrant politicians, or editorializing in favor of open government. But now many of the country’s biggest media companies—which own dozens of newspapers and TV news operations—are flexing their muscle in Washington in a fight against a government initiative to increase transparency of political spending. The corporate owners or sister companies of some of the biggest names in journalism—NBC News, ABC News, Fox News, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Politico, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and dozens of local TV news outlets—are lobbying against a Federal Communications Commission measure to require broadcasters to post political ad data on the Internet. As we have recently detailed, political ad data is public by law but is not widely accessible because it is currently kept only in paper files at individual stations. The FCC has proposed fixing that by requiring broadcasters to post on the Internet details of political ad purchases including the identity of the buyer and the price. Advertisement Over the past few months, several major media companies have dispatched top executives or outside lobbyists to the FCC to oppose the proposed rule or to push a watered down version, disclosure filings show. (The FCC is voting on the issue April 27.) Among them are:
In a speech this week at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski excoriated the broadcasters as working “against transparency and against journalism.” The industry’s opposition to the transparency proposal has sometimes been heated. In filings submitted to the FCC in January and March, Allbritton Senior Vice President Jerald Fritz raised the specter of “‘Soviet-style’ standardization” of ad sales if political ad files are required to be put online in a single format. In a February meeting with the FCC, Walt Disney executives complained about the “logistics and burden” of putting the political ad information online. That same month, executives from Disney along with NBC and News Corp argued in a meeting with FCC officials that posting the political ad file would allow “competitors in the market and commercial advertisers [to] anonymously glean highly sensitive pricing data.” Television stations must by law must offer political candidates the lowest rates on ads. Broadcasters have argued that by making this information available online and not just at stations, it would hurt their ability to negotiate with other advertisers. Advocates for the online disclosure rule have countered that the political ad information is already public by law and the measure would simply make the existing disclosure rules relevant for the Internet age. They have also pointed out that keeping paper files in electronic form should actually be more efficient for stations. Albritton, NBC, and Walt Disney did not respond to requests for comment on the FCC chairman’s charge that they have positioned themselves “against transparency and against journalism.” News Corp. declined to comment. Some media companies have also pushed a watered down proposal to post only some of the public political ad data, and to put it up on individual station websites instead of on a central FCC website. Washington lawyers representing the other companies fighting the rule—Barrington Broadcasting, Belo, Cox, Dispatch, E.W. Scripps, Gannett, Hearst, Meredith Broadcasting, Post-Newsweek Stations, Raycom Media, and Schurz Communications—lobbied FCC officials in February, March, and again this week. The group suggested that instead of putting the full, itemized political ad data online, stations would post aggregate data once a week. “What we were saying is, if you want the public to be informed about what’s being bought at what price, maybe there’s a simpler way to do it,“Mary Jo Manning, an attorney representing the group, told ProPublica. “Transparency is giving people information that is useful.” But when the FCC pressed the group for details on its plan, the stations said they opposed posting even the aggregate data in a single format prescribed by the FCC. They also opposed posting the data on a central FCC website, saying they wanted to post the limited data only on the stations’ own websites. If enacted, both of those stances would make it more difficult to get and analyze the data. Since there is a one-week sunshine period ahead of FCC votes, today is the last day that interested parties will be able to lobby the commission before its public meeting April 27.
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By Investment Fraud Lawyer, May 9, 2012 at 9:26 pm Link to this comment
I would not go so far as to call those media companies hypocritical, but this shows that most of their support for transparency is for self benefit. It was obvious from the start, that why they wanted more transparency is because it gave them better viewership. When the tables are now turned, and revealing political ad data could become required, they will do their best to fight this new ruling.
Report thisBy gerard, May 5, 2012 at 7:08 pm Link to this comment
According to a Democracy Now program subsequent to the scheduling of this article, Robert McChesney announced that figures regarding political ads on TV will be posted at ProPublica.org as soon as they are available. Somebody did some work to pry them loose, I guess.
Report thisBy Robert K. Blechman, April 22, 2012 at 5:43 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
This is the missing link in all discussions about campaign finance reform. The bulk of the torrent of private money that Citizens United has released goes to pay for television advertising or other mass media resources. Lack of public campaign financing is good for the major media companies.
If we required major media outlets to provide a certain amount of free campaign advertising as a condition of their broadcast licensing, and forbid any other advertising, much of the impact of private donations from multi-billioniares would go away. So campaign finance reform needs to main features: 1) Public financing of all campaigns; 2) Free allocated commercial airtime, on an equal basis for all candidates.
Report thisBy gerard, April 21, 2012 at 3:59 pm Link to this comment
P.S.-Did anyone ask them to make a public statement of why they don’t want the figures released to the public in a form complete and simple enough to give the public a clear picture of what goes on behind the scenes? It’s beginningn to look very much like we need a lot more probers, hackers, watchdogs,pat-downs, electronic surveillance monitors and general all-round snoops to protect us from each other.
Report thisNo!
Why not?
Because hell is paved with good pretentions.
By Ed Romano, April 21, 2012 at 10:33 am Link to this comment
What do we think we might expect from a corporate dominated media ? Check out Democracy Now if you want
Report thisnews that isn’t propaganda….it’s on the net….and you can buy a little device called a ROKU ( got mine at Best Buy ). This is a cheap unit that allows you get, among other shows, Democracy Now on yout TV.
By gerard, April 20, 2012 at 4:11 pm Link to this comment
What may have been done to prevent this important problem from getting wider audience before the
Report thiseuphemistical “sunshine period” is nearly over? Who colluded in this delay and if so, why? And would anybody significant have posed some objections even so? A flaccid public and a conniving elite media is a very effective democracy-ruining arrangement. And then of course, there’s the FCC that couldn’t care less about contacting the Muppets—or those smart college kids who call themselves Occupy Media who might have had something helpful to say. No?