May 23 - 30, 1 9 9 6
Don't Quote Me

Media maggots

Free-time movement shows why the public hates the press

by Dan Kennedy

They really do hate our guts, don't they? For the news media, that's the clearest message to emerge from the rush to provide presidential candidates with free airtime.

Network executives, after decades of fattening their bottom lines with paid political ads, have suddenly lined up like dominoes in offering Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, and perhaps other candidates an opportunity to speak directly to voters this fall. The three major networks plus Fox, CNN, and PBS have all made self-congratulatory announcements, with offers ranging from generous (Fox and PBS) to niggardly (CBS and NBC).

The idea is to reduce the influence of money and negative ads, and certainly few would argue with those goals. But there's another idea at work here, too: the notion that the public can best be informed if the candidates are allowed to talk freely, unimpeded by questions from those snide, preening reporters.

"Over the last 20 years, a very substantial portion of the American public has been increasingly irritated at an overbearing press. They're always stepping on the story. They're always getting in the way," says University of Virginia government professor Larry Sabato, a prominent media critic.

Indeed, the media are held in such low esteem that US Senator Bob Smith (R-New Hampshire) blamed Newsweek for the recent suicide of Admiral Mike Boorda, even though the story the magazine was pursuing -- whether Boorda had worn medals he hadn't earned -- was clearly legitimate. Newsweek, in its own coverage of the affair, reported widespread support for Smith's sentiments.

So it's fitting that the main advocate for free airtime is a former journalist who got caught up in the public backlash against the media. In 1987 Paul Taylor, then of the Washington Post, achieved fame of sorts by asking presidential candidate Gary Hart whether he'd ever committed adultery. Taylor does not look back on that moment as a high point in his career. "There's no question that it prompted a whole lot of soul-searching in me," Taylor recently told Time about his role in bringing down Hart's candidacy.

Voters delivered their verdict on that kind of journalism in 1992, when they elected as president a man who apparently had committed adultery repeatedly and with great gusto. Taylor's personal epiphany came earlier this year, when he quit the Post to found, along with TV news icon Walter Cronkite, the Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition. Taylor and Cronkite have been tireless in putting public pressure on the networks, although the speed with which networks signed on suggests that free time also suits their own agendas.

Certainly the media, and especially TV, have a lot to answer for in their coverage of presidential politics. Recent studies show that the average length of network-news soundbites fell from 42.3 seconds to 8.4 seconds between 1968 and 1992, and that TV reporters covering this year's campaign have hogged six times as much face time as the candidates.

As Larry Sabato observes, free time may not be a panacea, but it's an improvement over no free time. And who knows? Maybe voters will actually learn something. The proposals put forth so far, though, are unlikely to return us to the days of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Taylor himself has called the networks' response "a delicious half-loaf."

Trouble is, a half-loaf doesn't make a meal.

* The candidates' appearances will reach few of the people who most need to be reached: alienated voters -- and nonvoters -- who care little about politics. Only Fox and noncommercial PBS will insert free candidate spots into the middle of their prime-time line-ups. Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch deserves the most credit, since he has the most to lose from itchy channel-surfers. Then again, Murdoch may also have the most to gain: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last year bent its foreign-ownership rules on his behalf, and might take his public-spiritedness into account when considering any future favors.

CBS and NBC will run the spots during news programming, thus bypassing the majority of viewers, who don't watch the news. ABC has offered a one-hour, unmoderated prime-time debate during the final week of the campaign. That's likely to make for some compelling television, but if the debate isn't shown elsewhere (traditionally, presidential debates are broadcast on all three major networks), will the alienated masses watch? (Admittedly, in a world of 50-plus cable channels, there's no longer much anyone can do about that.) CNN will show the candidates during Inside Politics, which no one except junkies watches anyway. Of course, no one except junkies tunes into CNN in the first place, except when there's a war or a natural disaster.

* The free spots will do little to eliminate negative advertising. Dole and Clinton will receive $62 million apiece in public funding, and the bulk of that money will be spent as it's always been spent: on television advertising. The free spots, during which the candidates themselves will be required to speak directly to the camera, thus presumably dissuading them from going on the attack, will supplement rather than replace their advertising budgets.

"Every survey shows that a compare-and-contrast [i.e., negative] spot is twice as effective as any positive spot you can put up," says Massachusetts Democratic political consultant Michael Goldman. And when you're way behind, as Dole is, you're going to go with whatever works. Goldman's commonsense solution: make candidates who accept free time reduce their paid advertising by the value of that time.

Nick Paleologos, a movie producer who pushed for free time when he was a Democratic member of the Massachusetts House, would ban paid political commercials and allocate a certain amount of free airtime to each candidate to be used as she or he sees fit -- provided the candidate agrees to participate in televised debates.

"In the end, they will be held accountable for anything they do," Paleologos says. "They won't be able to beat the shit out of each other in their ads and then avoid facing them by refusing to debate."

Paleologos's idea is intriguing but flawed. Certainly televised debates in the past have never discouraged negative ads. Besides, candidates should have to give up something substantial in return for free time. Requiring them to eschew glitzy attack ads in which they don't even appear would be a good place to start.

* Network executives never give up something for nothing. As former FCC economist Thomas Hazlett recently pointed out in an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal, the networks' recent civic-mindedness over free time, as well as their vow to put together a system for rating violent shows, are intimately connected with their desire to get their hands on $12 billion to $38 billion worth of digital licenses, free of charge.

Government officials agreed not to charge the networks for digital airspace several years ago in order to encourage the switch to ultra-sharp high-definition television (HDTV). But the broadcasting industry has since lost interest in HDTV, and is now making plans to use the digital spectrum to move all kinds of information, much of which could be sold at a high profit. Last winter Dole derailed the giveaway and vowed to make the broadcasters pay.

Although that's a step in the right direction, some critics say it's not enough. Richard Parker, a senior fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, at Harvard's Kennedy School, says the digital spectrum shouldn't be sold off. Instead, it should be leased for limited periods.

"Like the Oklahoma land rush, this property can't be replaced once it's gone," Parker says. "If Donald Trump can figure out that it's better to lease than to sell, maybe Uncle Sam should too."

Will a President Dole or Clinton be willing to take a tough stance against those public-spirited network executives who gave them all that free airtime to get their message out?

* State and local politicians need free airtime more than presidential candidates. If there's one thing White House aspirants get plenty of, it's exposure. Candidates campaigning for state and local offices, though, must labor in obscurity. CNN political analyst Bill Schneider notes that this is especially true below the statewide level. "Everyone in Massachusetts will know a lot about Weld and Kerry," Schneider says, referring to the US Senate race. (That will certainly be true if the candidates take New England Cable News up on a recent offer of one hour of free time per week.) "But in congressional races and in local races, no one knows who the challengers are. It's a huge advantage for incumbents."

The way state and local candidates become known is through paid advertising. And unlike presidential candidates, they receive no public funds. Thus, politicians spend much of their time raising money, placing themselves in thrall to special-interest groups. How bad is it? According to Josh Goldstein, research director for the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, winning US Senate candidates in 1994 spent an average of $4.6 million, and House candidates $516,000. That's only going to rise this year.

Going after the money is one of the goals of an initiative being pushed by two public-interest groups, the Commonwealth Coalition and Common Cause of Massachusetts. In the Sixth Congressional District, where Representative Gerry Studds (D-Cohasset) is retiring, the organizations will soon challenge the media to provide free time to the candidates. The candidates, in turn, will be asked to embrace spending caps and refrain from negative campaigning.

The idea, says George Pillsbury, director of the coalition's Money in Politics Project, is to "set us on a path toward lower costs and cleaner campaigns," and to "restore confidence in democracy."

There are those who are skeptical. Massachusetts Republican political consultant Charley Manning says the problem with free airtime is that "fringe candidates" will demand equal time simply by virtue of having gotten on the ballot, whether it be Lyndon LaRouche in the presidential race or obscure independents at the local level.

Manning advocates a laissez-faire solution: making it easier for candidates to raise the money they need by eliminating all regulations except those requiring full disclosure. He points to Steve Forbes, who reportedly told associates that if it weren't for the $1000 limit on campaign contributions, he would have sponsored a Jack Kemp candidacy rather than run himself.

A system that offers up the dilettantish Forbes and keeps a solid veteran such as Kemp on the sidelines clearly needs to be reformed. But every reform creates problems of its own. So it is with free airtime. By seeking to reduce the importance of money, the reformers run the risk of encouraging unknown candidates who lack the skills to build a viable organization. By urging or even requiring candidates to forgo negative ads, the reformers may boost independent sleaze-mongers such as Floyd Brown, who made the infamous Willie Horton commercial with no direct involvement from George Bush's campaign. And by downgrading the role of the news media, the reformers may reduce the public's chances of learning about inconsistencies and contradictions in the candidates' positions.

"I think there is a place for the candidates to present their positions without the interjection of a media that often have different objectives from the candidates," says Northeastern University journalism professor Jerry Berger, a former political reporter. "But there should be no way of dodging the mainstream media. The media have to clean up their act, but they have an important role to play."