Media Self-Interest In Campaign Restrictions

You mean there’s gambling here?

Bob Bauer, counsel to the Democrats in the Senate and House, is a leading lawyer on campaign finance laws. At his blog he reminds us of the self-interest that the major media has in pushing for restrictive campaign finance laws: their profits from the spending and their control of the message received by the American people.

As McGough points out, reform editorialists prefer a race judged by “ideas” and by other non-monetary factors such as “personalities” or “positions.” All candidates in this reformed system, bidding for recognition on these measures, become necessarily more dependent on media coverage and evaluation. We know that, especially in the early phases of a campaign—indeed for the better part of it—the public’s interest is only casual, and impressions of the candidates, their personalities and positions, are conveyed primarily through the media. In a system in which public funding reigns, no one candidate can have the capacity to shape this coverage to his or her advantage with sheer, brute spending. All of the campaigns would then depend heavily on a qualitative media judgment passed on their "seriousness," that is, a judgment passed on the quality of their ideas and positions and personalities. This would be more or less the primary basis for what is now known as the "winnowing" of the field, but even more than now influenced by the press and outside the competitive control of the candidates.

After all, who today decides which candidate has “won” a debate?

This is not a case against public funding, which some will defend on balance with a mix of arguments, but there can be little question that those organizations editorially “outraged” by campaign fundraising are not without an interest in the reforms they advocate. Even if it is not always visible or acknowledged—even to themselves.