Issues
Promoting Civic Discourse on Broadcast Media
Summary of MAP's Comments on Broadcaster Proposals to Provide Free Time to Political Candidates
Media Access Project ("MAP") appears before the Commission
to advance the public's "paramount" First Amendment
right to receive access to information from diverse perspectives.
Section 315 is intended to implement this goal by assuring fair
and full coverage of candidates and allowing direct communication
between candidates and their fellow citizens.
- Free time for candidates would
be an important step in the right direction. There is ample reason
to overhaul FCC policies in this area. Bluntly put, MAP believes
that the Commission's overall administration of this area of
the law has been quite poor. The Commission's suggestion in the
Public Notice that the task of determining what constitutes
exempt programming should be ceded to broadcasters themselves
is all too representative of how the Commission has continued
to make bad things worse. It is nothing less than abject surrender
to a self-serving industry which has distinguished itself only
by its obstinate refusal to share its access to scarce spectrum
with American citizens.
- Section 315 of the Communications
Act is designed to balance all citizens' rights to speak and
to be heard when they seek public office with the realities of
the electoral process. In implementing it, the Commission must
recognize the importance of bringing alternative per- spectives
into the political process. The statutory objective is to encourage
dialog within the democratic process, not to stimulate resort
to extra-legal means. These new, and even controversial, ideas
can expand the nation's political gene pool.
- The free time proposal of the
Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition would not trigger the equal
opportunities provisions of Section 315, and the Commission should
so declare.
- Fox Broadcasting Company's requests
seeking to exempt two different proposals for providing free
time to Presidential candidates present a much closer question.
Based on Fox's June 3, 1996 letter to MAP clarifying that Fox
will not interfere with the content of candidates' statements,
MAP supports grant of the request on the basis that these two
categories of programs are "news events." Any ruling
the Commission issues should be narrowly stated and expressly
limited to the facts presented.
- The Commission has followed
an extremely ill-advised and unfortunate course in disingenuously
twisting the language of Section 315. The Commission has actually
ruled that "trash talk" shows like "Sally Jessy
Raphael," "Jerry Springer," and "Rolanda"
are "bona fide news interview" programs. The
Commission should not expand upon this outrageous misreading
of the Communications Act by handing over more discretion to
the same broadcasters who pretend that they cannot define what
is an educational children's program. The FCC should reject all
suggestions that any program a broadcaster says is a news program
shall be treated as a news program.
- The best way to improve political
broadcasting policy is not to redefine the Section 315(a) exemptions
yet again, but instead for the Commission to use its broad discretion
to reinterpret the statutory term "legally qualified candidate."
The present definition, which defers to state and local jurisdictions,
should be narrowed to include only those candidates who meet
several of certain determinable criteria, such as a number of
nominating signatures, raising certain amounts of money from
widely dispersed contributors, public polling results, and other
indicia of a bona fide political campaign. This change
would address the complaints of those who fear that more faithful
adherence to Congressional intent in defining exempt programming
would lead to multiple "equal time" requests.
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