Broadcatching as Political Reform

Prof. Michael Froomkin had a neat little post last week about the use of highly-partisan movies to skirt campaign finance laws (Movies as a Campaign Finance Law End-Run). The basic idea is to make a partisan movie, such as Michael Moore's virulently anti-Bush film Farenheit 9/11, and then advertise the heck out of it prior to an election. The 30-sec trailers for the movie could be as effective as campaign commercials as anything the candidates and the campaigns "officially" run. As Froomkin notes, this will be a "loophole it will be next to impossible to close."

It is funny, you know. The advent of campaign finance laws have tracked closely with the advent of traditional broadcast mass media. The money is raised for massive television ad buys, not print ad buys or billboards or a whole bunch of other things. I don't think the Democrats lose sleep over the fact that the Republicans can out spend them with regard to Washington Times page buys. But what is the common solution to the television ad problem? All sorts of arcane, loophole-ridden, cynicism-increasing, lack of respect for law fomenting, First Amendment-threatening regulation of how money is to be raised and spent (basically for television advertisements).

I look at this and I'm baffled. If the problem is the need to raise lots of money to run an expensive television-ad based election campaign, maybe the problem isn't campaign finance but the durn fool way we've regulated our broadcast medium. Rather than see the problem as one of campaign finance, why don't we see the problem as one of television regulation? If the major networks weren't bottlenecks and gatekeepers for the most popular medium of all, I don't think we'd have 1/10 the problem with campaign ad buys (and the money raised) that we have now. Read on...

In a system of broadcatching, campaigns could release commercials and video playlists would incorporate the commercials based on desire, rather than exchange of money. If I saw a campaign commercial it would be because my trusted social network recommended it to me, not because somebody paid them to distribute it. Sure, politicians would pay to have their commercials associated with particular programming, but it would be a snap for someone else to add a playlist that included the countercommercial as well. In such a case it would be difficult to outspend the opposition. For every commercial they pay to place, the opposition can match with unpaid commercial placements. It would be a battle of the playlists, not a battle of buying network time.

If there were no longer channels or networks to speak of, if we watched the television smorgasboard we wanted from an essentially unlimited variety of sources, then each individual program would have more say over its editorial position with regard to commercials. No one can force the New York Times to run a political ad, let alone run a political ad at favorable rates, unlike television networks, which are required to run campaign advertising at favorable rates. The justification for such video regulation doesn't exist in a broadcatching world.

I imagine that we would have relatively politically neutral video playlists from groups like the League of Women Voters that would feature ads from both parties. Lots of organizations, some partisan, others not, would also promote their video playlists. The landscape would be much different and I don't think that massive television advertising budgets would give near the same advantage to well-financed politicians that they do now.

Reform television regulation, not campaign finance!