Public Stewardship
Something that is true that will probably surprise you is that television stations and radio stations can deny political advertising, even based on content. As licensees of the FCC they are required to make equally available airtime for purchase by candidates, but they do not have such an obligation to third party groups. For those subscribing to cable or satellite, I’m pretty sure, but not positive, that advertising for candidates isn’t even required to be made available. As unpopular as third party expenditures are, you would think some stations would curtail them. Indeed some stations did so in the 2008 election, when concerns over upsetting long term advertisers became apparent. After all, elections come to an end, but airtime needs to be sold after elections, too.
So why haven’t stations exercised their stewardship roles? The astute reader might reply censorship. Indeed. Stewardship often involves discernment and that necessarily involves censorship. But censorship is evil. That of course isn’t true. Past scandals involving broadcasts over public access TV stations have shown that there are indeed programs that we are comfortable having censored and having done so deemed our action positively good. But there are some people that will find some advertising inappropriate whereas others will find it appropriate. Perhaps there is a name for this fallacy already, but I’ll call it the denial of the existence of black and white once we have established gray fallacy. Admittedly some things can be more difficult to discern than others and there may be – heaven forfend – disagreement, but sometimes people see gray because they want to see gray and they don’t want to make choices. Needless to say there is plenty of hatchet work out there to sample produced by third party groups. We needn’t stretch credulity to find advertising that positively doesn’t serve the public interest.
But TV and radio stations are businesses. They were not created to preach morality, make us better people, or play an essential role in our political process. They were made to put butts in seats and make the owners money. Except they explicitly weren’t. The public airwaves were sold not just so that corporate interests could be granted monopolies to sponge off the commons but so that their use might enrich the public life. If political information consumes 100 minutes of the broadcast day on a given station, and 70 of those minutes are whored off to third party interests, that means the political debate is being governed by people that are essentially accountable to no one. The claims made in their slots go uncontested except if some media outlet deigns to contest them or they are contested in a different ad. A headline of group makes irresponsible ad that shouldn’t have been aired in the first place if we actually cared about honesty, integrity, and the public interest just doesn’t seem to be appearing anywhere. How this is conducive to a proper functioning democracy escapes me. How this is proper stewardship of the public airwaves escapes me.
A independent guide to political advertising rules is here.
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I’m not sure where this notion of ‘stewardship’ comes from. Is it one that you’ve adopted from a source or is it your own?
A broadcaster’s right to refuse airtime on a content- or viewpoint-basis is an exercise of its First Amendment rights, in turn an extension of its shareholder’s rights. It could not be barred from providing — or obliged to provide — airtime on such a basis. Limited exceptions, regarding obscenity and airtime for candidates — have been carved into this. The latter exception is still quite controversial and somewhat uncertain in its constitutionality. This is naturally in addition to standard speech exceptions, such as threats and false statements of fact. I’m not aware of any accepted legal doctrine that allows for the regulation of airtime on the basis of ‘stewardship’.
Also, I think it does strain credulity to suggest that one might “find advertising that positively doesn’t serve the public interest” — without any dispute or shades of grey. Certainly, the advertisers, at least, would disagree with such an allegation.
All of this does serve the public good. The exercise of rights is not simply an act of wanton self interest. It creates a more complex dialogue — or if you prefer, the somewhat crudely named ‘marketplace of ideas’ — and has been shown to strengthen democracy.
It may seem to you that it would further the public good to suppress advertising that you find worthless or detrimental but you should pause before advocating for any such regime, lest you find yourself on the wrong end of it.
In exchange for obtaining a valuable license to operate a broadcast station using the public airwaves, each radio and television licensee is required by law to operate its station in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.” This means that it must air programming that is responsive to the needs and problems of its local community of license.
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/decdoc/public_and_broadcasting.html