News Flash: Anchor Stands Against "Unfair" Campaign Spending
By Jeff Cohen
Created Jun 23 2008 - 8:58am
There was real emotion in his voice when ABC News anchor Charles Gibson
used
Friday night's newscast to stand up for little-guy McCain against
online-fundraising powerhouse Barack Obama. By opting out of public
financing, Gibson intoned, the Democrat could obtain "two times, three
times, four times, as much money as John McCain."
"Let me ask you a question about basic fairness," Gibson implored of his
top
D.C. correspondent George Stephanopoulos. "People in this country like to
believe that people play on a level playing field and that a campaign will
be about ideas and personality; if you start with that much more money, is
it basically fair?"
It was more a statement than a question, like Brit Hume anchoring at Fox.
(ABC has gone Fox-like in crusading over "Obama's Switch" and "Back Flip"
and "Flip-Flop" on public financing.)
Gibson's egalitarian "fretting" about fairness [1] was too much for
right-wing media critic Brent Baker, who belittled the anchor and McCain:
"If Obama can raise more than his opponent, it just reflects greater
enthusiasm for him. And there's hardly any nobility in taking taxpayer
money
when you know you'll be challenged to raise a larger amount voluntarily."
To me, the good news is that a network anchor was giving prominence to the
plight of underfinanced candidates.
The bad news is that it's taken years to see an anchor make such a stand.
And that Gibson (like other media voices in recent days) is making his
stand
for "fairness" against a candidate who has attracted 3 million
contributions
from 1.5 million donors giving an average donation of $91. In other words,
against a candidate who is arguably less beholden to big-moneyed interests
than McCain.
I have mixed emotions about big media's newfound concern for under-funded
candidates. Beginning in 1992, Norman Solomon and I used our
nationally-syndicated column to criticize mainstream media for their
failure
to focus on campaign spending inequities and the elite funders of
cor****ate-friendly politicians.
Days after the 1992 election, we wrote [2] that "national media seemed
almost clueless to explain the triumph" of endangered U.S. Senate
in***bents - with the New York Times blandly noting that many in***bents
"somehow managed to survive." We mentioned several narrowly victorious
Senators like cor****ate-backed ***-harasser Bob Packwood of Oregon, who
outspent his Democratic challenger by more than 3 to 1. And
ethically-challenged Al D'Amato of New York, who outspent his liberal
opponent 2 to 1. Our column - titled "We Need Term Limits for Political
Pundits" - concluded that "big bucks special interests dominating
Wa****ngton
are almost a taboo subject."
In that column and others, we urged political journalists to calculate and
re****t which candidates won more "votes per dollar spent" - arguing that
the
"VPDS count would make it clear that many in***bents would have been
defeated if not for their advantage in dollars."
So here we are in 2008, and we're witnessing an apparent flip-flop in
mainstream news - with bleeding-heart appeals to "fairness" on behalf of
the
less-funded McCain enough to make a right-winger cringe. From the same
outlets that spent decades wor****pping a politician's cor****ate
fundraising
prowess as a sign of that candidate's strength, seriousness, viability.
When longtime media lapdogs on campaign inequities transform into fierce
watchdogs in the face of Obama's online fundraising clout, the public is
wise to be suspicious. Are these elite voices truly upset because Obama
****fted his position? Are they upset all of a sudden that one candidate
has
a financial advantage over another?
Or is this just the fear and loathing of the Netroots resurfacing - like
when establishment pundits went hysterical as Joe Lieberman lost the
Democratic primary in 2006?
Here is an upstart candidate - like Dean in 2003 - with a powerful
grassroots funding base that goes way beyond the cor****ate sponsors of the
nightly news. To the old-line media establishment, that's scary.
If network anchors want to be taken seriously on campaign "fairness," they
might propose common-sense reforms. For starters: free TV and radio
airtime
to candidates.
--
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I
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Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an op****tunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are
at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
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