xTYBALTx

Well, you can't stand so close to the polling station as to interfere with people voting. But you can (and people DO, believe me they do!) drive around town or walk around town with a megaphone telling people to vote. If you live in an area with contested elections, you've probably experienced the joy of an idiot with a megaphone driving through your neighborhood at 9am election Tuesday.

In any event, the reason for restricting anyone with a megaphone, whether they're in the street near houses or near a polling station is that they're "disturbing the peace" or whatever. It's not the content of the message being regulated when kicking the megaphone-weilder out, it's rather the delivery. He could be talking about football or Jesus and still be detained.

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Current good song: Justice - Stress

Steeler

Just to clarify, the public broadcast airwaves are considered a public resource. Broadcast stations must obtain a license from the FCC and adhere to certain guidelines if they want to send a signal. That is why we have things like language restrictions before 10PM, equal time for political content, and public access. Cable exists in a grey area. Since it is a pay service, it is not nominally governed by the FCC, however since the broadcast stations provide content for both network and cable, they are aware that Congress could extend (after a long and bloody battle) that authority over cable as well.

Not that it matters, since in the current corporatist environment, most restrictions on the business and political end of media have been weakened or eliminated. There is little to no civic mindedness at any of the major "content providers" these days.

Campaign finance reform really can't address the problem that anybody with sufficient money can say whatever they damn well please, true or not, through a national outlet, without rebuttal. You'd need to redesign the entire political and corporate structure from the ground up to fix that without undermining some of the basic freedoms we like to think we have in this country.

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CingularDuality

Didn't we see the intarweb change all this during the last Presidential race?

Is television really so influential amongst actual voters?

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Steeler

The Innertron is changing the process, but the majority of Americans still get their news and "information" from network TV.

Also, while the cost of the Internet is low compared to broadcast, access to it is still primarily a middle to upper class technically-minded thing. It just doesn't have the universal demographic reach of network, or even cable. Managing a controlled, disciplined message campaign requires a lot of infrastructure spanning multiple media. That costs cash money.

Money also gets you less concrete campaigning tools, like influence, or a spot in a reporter's Rolodex.

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xTYBALTx

So we have freedom of speech as long as we're fair and balanced, are working towards the betterment of our society [as defined by someone else], and don't use money to our advantage?

I think I remember reading that in the Constitution somewhere... And I sure hope that GW Bush cracks down on the next series of WTO or Iraq protesters for failing to present the other side. Maybe we do have some lessons to learn from Putin!

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Current good song: Justice - Stress

Hambergler

I think it's embarrassing for our democratic process to have big companies outwardly give politicians millions. And then say there is no favoritism.

Anyone can argue that McCain-Feingold is a BS proxy and all the money goes to the candidate anyway, but I disagree. I think there are accounting measures put into place to keep track of hard/soft money. I don't think there should be a bottomless well of corporate campaign contributions. The huge problem I see is that there should have been a distinction made between corporations and nonprofit corporations. I think it's going that way now anyway.

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JAMerica

I don't think each individual has to provide a balanced point of view, but access to the medium should be fair. BTW, I think all discussion and debate , no matter how much I disagree, is towards the betterment of society so I think everyone has this covered.

Well anti-war protesters have been denied the right to purchase tv time in the states, despite having the money, so I guess this wish may have already been granted (these are just two examples that I googled quickly) :

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/...in789020.shtml

And here is an instance where a commercial supporting the war in Iraq was denied.
http://newsbusters.org/node/4142

I don't think either situation is acceptable. If a person honestly believes in free speech as a right, how can they allow one point of view and deny another?

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Jamerius (Feral Druid)

Steeler

Broadcast radio and network TV, at one time, were required by law to allow citizen and equal political access precisely to preserve our freedom of speech. Or rather, to prevent a few moneyed sources from dominating the marketplace of ideas. The platonic ideal of broadcast media was an open forum wherein all speech was presented and the best ideas would rise to prominence. The actual implementation of that system is less shiny.

I don't like the idea of shutting down political ads to prevent abuse, but I also don't like the idea of the media gatekeepers deciding what gets on the air and what doesn't for something so critical as the conduct of American Democracy. What I would like CFR to do is basically make it easy for the average citizen to see who has paid for a candidiate's campaign, and who they are likely to owe allegiance to. I'd also like to see finance laws given a bit more teeth, so that candidates cannot funnel campaign cash into other fields, like DeLay dumped all of his remaining cash after the election into his legal defense fund.

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xTYBALTx

Because TV stations are free to refuse service to anyone. You are free to advertise your beliefs, but I am free to refuse to do business with you.

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Current good song: Justice - Stress

xTYBALTx

Let's limit our discussion to cable and satellite feeds so as not to bring "the people's" ownership of the airwaves into this.

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Current good song: Justice - Stress

Kerostasis

There was a point in our history when your selection of broadcast media was very limited. If you couldn't get one of the Big Three networks to do business with you, then you weren't getting on the air.

But that's not the case anymore. We have been blessed with such a proliferation of media outlets (probably a mixed blessing, but still) that even if the owners of one place won't showcase your views, you can nearly always walk down the street to find another place which will. In this environment, laws which limit which views the owners are allowed to show in attempts to acheive "fairness" are misguided at best and oppressive at worst.

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Diceman

What about media consolidation? Doesn't that have a material effect on the number of places that one can go to have their views broadcast? If so, does that show that there still can be made a good case for laws requiring "fairness" (through the various means)? If not, why not?

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Kerostasis

I think that is an issue that can be considered, but at present I don't think media consolidation has progressed far enough to represent a significant danger of censorship. For example, JAMerica posted a link mentioning the time a single television station in Utah denied Cindy Sheehan's anti-war commercial. But at the same time, every other station she went to accepted it. She wasn't censored, she still got her message out.

As long as we've got left-leaning media conglomerates competing against right-leaning media conglomerates, I'm not too worried. If one of them wins and drives the rest out of business, so all the news leans in one direction, then I'll be worried. But I don't think thats likely to happen any time soon.

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Steeler

They all lean toward cash. Roger Ailes may be the exception, but then he can currently lean both right and toward his wallet at the same time.

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Kerostasis

Er, right, I guess I wasn't thinking totally clearly there. I'll agree most media outlets' leaning is defined more by cash than by political affiliation. But thats just another level of safeguard...so long as you have some cash to offer them, most outlets will be happy to accomodate you regardless of your politics.

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