9 days before South Carolina’s primary when comedian Stephen Colbert announced his presidential bid
157,876 dollars spent by Colbert Super PAC on ads in SC; one urged voters to support Herman Cain, who was by then out of the race, after Colbert was unable get on the ballot
6,000+ number of votes received by Cain in SC—more than Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, and Jon Huntsman combined
45 number of votes Cain received in the Iowa Caucus
62 million+ dollars raised by the nine richest Super PACs in 2011
48 percentage of that money that came from 22 donors
This is such a phony issue. The news coverage of the the primaries by 'corporations' which own news divisions has been 'negative', too. No campaign 'attack ad' during the South Carolina primary stooped as low as the interview with Gingrich's ex-wife by Brian Ross, with the resources of ABC News, a subsidiary of the Disney Company, expended for this purpose. Someone tell me the difference between Stephen Colbert, who works for a corporation which expends resources in a politically partisan manner, and someone in a campaign ad. It's all 'information'.
The mainstream media is acting on self-interest, not principle, in its war on 'Super-PACs'. Big Media is no different from a Super-PAC. Voters don't make that big a distinction between a negative campaign ad and a '60 Minutes' segment slagging some candidate during the election season, however much mainstream journalists may delude themselves otherwise. It's all 'information', good, bad, or indifferent, as I say.
No writer, from the Supreme Court to The NY Times to CJR, has been able to explain why 'media corporations' should have First Amendment rights, but 'non-media' corporations should not. They can't. In the Citizens United case, Elena Kagan conceded, and four Supreme Court justices accepted, that the government has the right to ban any book, documentary, pamphlet, or whatever, in the name of 'campaign finance reform' if said book, documentary, etc., is produced by a 'corporation' - which accounts for almost all the political discourse in this country. Even Columbia University is a corporation, and several articles in today's posting could easily be interpreted as 'campaign speech' by a corporate product against a candidate. The 'Citizens United' issue, one recalls was whether a company could be fined for producing a documentary unflattering to Hillary Clinton.
I confess I'm still capable of shock that supposedly liberal-minded writers have avoided discussing this issue on First Amendment grounds - so strong is political ideology. (Michael Kinsley and Richard Cohen honorably excepted.) Would a Republican administration making such an argument against a 'Big Corporate Media' critical of Republican adminstrations (as Big Corporate Media tends to be) have been met with such indifference by journalists? Just wondering.
#1 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Thu 8 Mar 2012 at 12:38 PM