Recommendation 6: Improving the Quality of Political Discourse

(6c) Blanket bans on the sale of air time to all state and local political candidates should be prohibited.

Candidates have turned to television advertising, especially on broadcast television, because in many areas, it is the best medium to reach voters. They will continue to do so. At the same time, broadcast television remains the medium of choice for voters to learn about the campaigns and the candidates. Thus, any significant change in the campaign finance system will have to address the issue of the role of television. But no reasonable campaign finance reform can focus on television alone, or put the central burden for improving our political system on the backs of broadcasters. Reform must look at all the elements of the campaign system, recognizing broadcasting as one of them, albeit a vital one.

With some exceptions, broadcasters have played a major role in providing coverage, airtime and resources to enhance campaigns and provide voters with information about candidates and campaigns. The public interest is clearly served by a substantial role for broadcasters in this area. The digital age provides an opportunity to find enhanced ways for broadcasters to serve this interest. We believe that a better balance can be struck which can serve broadcasters, the political system and the public interest as well.

Broadcasters have frequently shown a commitment to providing a voice for candidates so that voters can evaluate their alternatives and so that campaigns can have an appropriate level of real debate and give-and-take to enhance the electoral and governing processes. Innovations by the major networks and station groups like Belo, Hubbard, and Post-Newsweek have been models for other broadcasters. These efforts should be replicated and expanded upon. The industry should redouble its efforts to enhance campaign discourse.

In a democracy that aspires to be deliberative, television can do a great deal if it deals with political issues in a serious way. Engagement with serious issues can be educative; it can increase citizen involvement in political issues; it can make citizens better able to choose. Efforts in this regard should be designed not just to reduce some of the problems faced by candidates with limited resources, but also as a method to ensure that the broadcasting system, private as well as public, helps to promote democratic ideals. To these ends, we recommend three steps in the area of political discourse:

6a. A Broadcast Industry Challenge to Congress on Campaign Finance Reform

The Advisory Committee recommends the following options to consider:

• 1. Repeal the “lowest unit rate” requirement in return for some free time. One option would be an exchange: the repeal of lowest unit rate in return for a commitment by broadcasters to provide some free time (one suggestion is 1 minute of comparable free time for each 2 minutes of time sold) in return for paid time at market rates. The so-called lowest unit rate, the mandated discount advertising rate for candidates(10) , is a complex and cumbersome system that clearly does not work very well. It does not work for candidates, who are confused by the system, and whose time-buying practices often make the lowest unit rate meaningless or superfluous. It can be a bureaucratic nightmare for broadcasters, with extensive reporting requirements and frequent lawsuits from candidates convinced they are being cheated. In the digital age, lowest unit rate becomes even more cumbersome and costly. With the uncertainty and fluidity that will characterize commercial time and time-buying in the digital era, it makes sense to let the market dictate the costs of campaign commercial time. But a simple repeal of lowest unit rate would exacerbate the costs of campaigns, not make it easier to create more opportunities for discourse. The best approach would be to exchange the repeal of lowest unit rate for a simple and better approach on political time—one in which those broadcasters who would be able to air political advertisements at market rates would provide some free time for the paid political time they sell at market rates. Congress could legislate the details of this system, or could delegate the duty to the FCC as the expert agency. To be sure, this simple exchange would not solve the money chase or reduce overall the costs of campaigns. In the context of an overall campaign finance reform that addressed such issues as soft money and overall contribution limits, this change could be a significant component to making the system work better.
• 2. Create a broadcast bank, providing money or vouchers for time for candidates and parties. A second option would be the creation of a broadcast bank, money or vouchers that could be distributed to parties and candidates for the purchase of radio and television time. The broadcast bank could be funded in many ways. Some resources could come from the fees paid by broadcasters for multiplexing or for ancillary and supplementary services. One component could be from a provision of time by broadcasters as their contribution to overall campaign reform.
  How would the time be distributed? One model would have half the time going to the political parties to distribute to candidates as they see fit, and half the time going to candidates who raise sums from small individual donors, as matching grants. Those details, of course, would have to be legislated by Congress or delegated by Congress to the FCC as the expert agency.
• 3. Change requirements governing sale and use of discounted broadcast time to shorten the time period of its availability and expand the length of the candidate’s appearance on the air. There are other options involving broadcasting that could improve the campaign process, perhaps in conjunction with the ones above. One would be for Congress to shorten the period of time during which broadcasters must sell time to candidates. Another is to require that candidates appear in the commercials they air. Many feel that a candidate stating his or her own case, rather than through the kinds of slickly produced, almost anonymous ads that so predominate today, would greatly reduce the negative tone of current campaigns.

There are undoubtedly other ideas for broadcasters to fulfill their part of this bargain if their challenge succeeds. But the challenge obviously requires a clear, unambiguous, and meaningful statement by the NAB and/or a representative coalition of important individual broadcasters and broadcast groups for this recommendation for voluntary action to succeed. The acceptance of this recommendation by the broadcasters on the Advisory Committee, who represent many facets of the industry, is a heartening sign that the industry will indeed respond by organizing such a challenge, thus avoiding the criticism that the promise of voluntary action is a hollow one.

6b. Airtime for Candidate-Centered Discourse

We recommend that Congress give the FCC the authority to waive the “equal opportunities” requirements of Section 315(a) of the Communications Act where it is necessary to allow the broadcasters to give time only to major candidates in a race, or to give time only to one candidate if one or more opponents decline the offer of time.(11) Stations would choose the format(s), with experimentation encouraged. Formats might include giving candidates one minute of airtime to get a message across; conducting “mini-debates;” or doing brief interviews with the candidates. The 5 minutes need not be in a contiguous block, but we hope the 5 minutes will not be subdivided into such short segments that serious discourse is precluded. This candidate-centered discourse could occur within station newscasts, but would not have to do so. If broadcasters chose to make the time available within newscasts, they could provide the 5 minutes each night without giving up a single minute of commercial time. We do not intend for this recommendation to supersede the fine efforts of many broadcasters to improve political discourse in their own communities; we hope the proverbial thousand flowers bloom. But we see many advantages in the widespread adoption of this plan. For a modest commitment of time during a brief period each election cycle, broadcasters could provide an immense contribution to the political process and campaign discourse. If every station made this commitment during the period when voters pay the most attention to elections, it would send a powerful signal that elections matter. Not all stations would choose the same races and candidates to cover, but no doubt there would be considerable overlap. In this way, many candidates who otherwise would have no opportunity at all to address a larger audience would be given that chance, probably on several occasions at different times, and via different formats; likewise, many important races that are ignored in campaign season would have a chance to be covered.

We further urge that this commitment, of five minutes a night for thirty nights, be adopted by cable, satellite, radio and other video and audio programmers. And we recommend that this effort not be delayed until the full implementation of digital broadcasting; efforts in this regard should begin in 2000, allowing experimentation with formats and lengths to go on before the digital era.

6c. Blanket Bans of the Sale of Air Time to All State and Local Candidates

But the need to balance the demands from applicants for commercial time should not be used to justify a blanket ban on all advertising for State and local offices. Broad blanket policies of this sort make it difficult for local citizens to be informed about the political races that may have the greatest impact on their lives.

Endnotes

9) Norman J. Ornstein, CAMPAIGN FINANCE: AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE 15-16 (1997).

10) 47 U. S. C. §315(b)(1), (2).

11) With certain exceptions, the Communications Act of 1934 requires that “[i]f any licensee shall permit any person who is a legally qualified candidate for any public office to use a broadcasting station, he shall afford equal opportunities to all other such candidates for that office in the use of such broadcasting station.” 47 U. S. C. §315 (a).

• Statement of Charles Benton, Frank M. Blythe, Peggy Charren, Frank H. Cruz, Richard Masur, Newton N. Minow, Jose Luis Ruiz, Shelby Schuck Scott, Gigi B. Sohn, Karen Peltz Strauss, and James Yee; Cass R. Sunstein and Robert D. Glaser join
• Statement of Newton N. Minow, dissenting to Recommendation 6: Improving the Quality of Political Discourse, in which Charles Benton, Frank M. Blythe, and James Yee join

Additional Links

• Alliance for Better Campaigns
  • Reaction to the Report

www.benton.org/PIAC/rec6.html
Posted 12/29/98