NEW YORK, February 6, 2004 -- The murky relationship of money, media and politics becomes crystal clear when it comes to advertising. If a candidate can't deliver cash to buy political spots from local broadcasters, his or her run for office is dead on arrival.

This is compounded by the network news organizations whose journalists in the last week have decamped in droves from the campaigns of lesser-runs to hitch a ride with the "contenders."

MediaChannel/Media Tenor analysis of network coverage in January shows that anointed contestants John Kerry, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark and John Edwards received 93.8 percent of Democratic candidate coverage by CBS, NBC and ABC's nightly newscasts. Candidates Al Sharpton, Joe Lieberman and Dennis Kucinich, on the other hand, garnered a cumulative 6.2 percent of coverage in January.

Back-of-the-pack candidates vying for more exposure in the media mix, must turn to local affiliates to get their messages across to voters. But these broadcast outlets are doing little to help. In the 2002 mid term elections, local television stations jacked up the prices of political ads by an average of more than 50 percent, according to a report by the Alliance for Better Campaigns. The biggest culprit of them all was Fox affiliate KTXL in Sacramento, which hiked advertising rates more than 250 percent prior to the 2002 elections.

"We have no evidence to suggest that local affiliates will behave more honorably in 2004" said Meredith McGehee, president and executive director of the Alliance for Better Campaigns.

McGehee cites these abuses despite a "lowest unit charge" federal statute enacted in 1971 to prevent such pre-election profiteering. Under the statute, broadcasters -- who pay nothing for their licenses to use publicly owned airwaves -- are prohibited from charging candidates more for ad time than they charge their high volume, year-round advertisers. This provision was designed to ensure that candidates are not exploited by market forces for their need to advertise in a compressed period of time prior to an election.

"The statute as currently written and enforced is inadequate," McGehee said. "If there's something the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] can do to enforce it, they have not."

If it worked as intended, this provision would cut the cost of pre-election political communication -- and in so doing, open up the political process to more candidates, provide voters with more information and more choice, and reduce the importance of special interest money.

"Candidates who try to take advantage of the lowest-unit-charge provision risk having their ads bumped to a less desirable time slot if another advertiser is willing to pay more," McGehee said.

David Swanson, who until last week was the press secretary for the Dennis Kucinich campaign, said, "paying money at all for television advertising is unfair and wrong. The public owns these airwaves and there ought to be substantial free airtime for political campaigns."

Thus far, the Dennis Kucinich for President campaign has bought local broadcast ads in New Hampshire, Iowa, Maine, Oklahoma and New Mexico, but their prospects for buying time in the run-up to the March 2 "Super Tuesday" primaries are dimming as higher ad rates are expected to take hold.

In search of a fatter bottom line, broadcast media outlets are squeezing second tier candidates out of the democratic process. As local affiliates hike ad rates to exploit increased demand come voting day, those who can't pay the multi-million-dollar price tag for political ads are declared "unelectable" and left in the dark.

As we enter the middle stretch of the Democratic race, candidates with dwindling war chests have few options but to bow to a media system that dictates who runs and for how much.

Those missing from this process are, of course, the voters themselves.

-- Timothy Karr is executive director of MediaChannel.org, which last week launched Media For Democracy 2004 (www.mediafordemocracy.us), a citizens-powered initiative to hold mainstream media to a higher standard of election coverage.

© MediaChannel.org, 2003. All rights reserved.

= = = = = = =
 ACT NOW:  Tell the FCC to stop the media profiteering
= = = = = = =
 JOIN:  MediaChannel's citizens media movement to hold big media's election coverage to a higher standard.
= = = = = = =
 SUPPORT:  MediaChannel's 2004 campaign by donating to MediaChannel.org
= = = = = = =
 RETURN:  To MediaChannel's Home Page
= = = = = = =