On the March 7 CNN Inside Politics, in a piece which also aired March 9 in an abbreviated form on Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz took up how the networks, which ignored a campaign finance reform provision which would have hurt the bottom lines of the local stations they own, are large contributors themselves to House and Senate members.
Picking up on how during the appearance of Enron executives at a House hearing CNN had put on screen how much the Congressman speaking had received from Enron, Kurtz observed: “House Energy Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin does not think it's fair for CNN to be suggesting, implying, or insinuating that there's something wrong with taking corporate contributions. In fact, he says, he's gotten plenty of money from big media companies as well, more than $70,000 since the last election cycle.”
Tauzin told Kurtz: “Well, your network has been a big supporter of mine over the years. And so has NBC and ABC and CBS. Did we hammer you when we thought you were wrong? See, the bottom line is, it doesn't matter whether you have been a friend or foe.”
Kurtz explored his thesis: “The Congressman is right on this point: The networks are big-time givers. Since the 2000 election cycle, NBC's owner, General Electric, has given $3.1 million in federal races; ABC's owner, the Disney Company, $2.6 million; CBS's owner, Viacom, $1.6 million; Fox's owner, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., $1.4 million; Chicago's Tribune Company, which owns numerous TV stations, $112,000. CNN's parent, AOL Time Warner, has doled out $5.6 million, including the period when America Online and Time Warner were separate companies.
“What do these media giants get for their money? The House recently took up an amendment, pushed through the Senate by Robert Torricelli, to force networks and local stations to give deeper advertising discounts to federal candidates at election time. But the National Association of Broadcasters, which has donated $525,000 in the last three years, put on a full-court press. And the House voted overwhelmingly to cut the amendment from the campaign finance bill. Billy Tauzin voted to kill the ad discount [on screen: Got $15,000 from National Association of Broadcasters].”
Kurtz concluded his March 7 story, the transcript of which the MRC’s Ken Shepherd checked against the tape: “Why haven't you heard about this? NBC, ABC and CBS have not carried a word. And cable has barely mentioned the amendment. It seems like we ought to do a better job to make sure that corporate money and media money keep popping up into the story.”
Of course, the fact that those in the newsrooms, whom overwhelmingly favor greater campaign speech regulation, don’t mention how their corporate parents will benefit or not from a particular provision is no surprise since they independently pursue a liberal agenda without regard for what their owners are up to. The corporate executives have no day-to-day say over the content of news programs. They may set budgets, but they don’t decide what a Capitol Hill reporter will report. Network owners come and go, but the same news division personnel remain — Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer are working for their fourth owner, ABC’s news staff under Peter Jennings is under its third owner and neither GE with NBC or Time Warner with CNN has done anything to alter the make-up of the newsroom ideology.
(This update courtesy of the Media Research Center.)
