REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Other People's Politics
In defense of the New York Times.
Two bastions of liberalism are discovering the nasty side of campaign finance reform now that it has landed in their own backyards.
On Sunday, a spokeswoman for the New York Times admitted it had "made a mistake" when it charged the radical group MoveOn.org a special discounted rate for an ad accusing General David Petraeus of betrayal in advance of his Congressional testimony. Meanwhile, DailyKos's Markos Moulitsas Zuniga has faced a Federal Election Commission inquiry into advertising sales at his blog, which has become a force in pushing the Democratic Party to the left on various issues--among them, campaign finance reform.
DailyKos holds forth regularly that "our democracy is in danger" from money in politics and loudly supports McCain-Feingold and other campaign and media restrictions. The New York Times position on campaign finance reform is that it "has not gone far enough," and that more should be done to control donors and prevent changes that would "open the spigots to corporate and special-interest money."
Of course, it's always other people's influence that's a threat to democracy. DailyKos's misadventure was resolved with a Federal Election Commission ruling that allowed it (quite properly) to escape the rules it wants foisted on everybody else. And we certainly defend the Times's right to sign advertising contracts at whatever price it wants to charge--without the FEC combing through its books in search of rate discrepancies.
Unfortunately, the Times's passion for regulating everyone else's speech has now boomeranged, with politicians calling for an investigation into its favor to MoveOn. This is getting to be a bad Times habit: Recall its campaign for a special counsel to investigate media leaks that turned into a probe of its own sources and led to judicial rulings that limited press freedom.
House Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Tom Davis (R., Va.) wants hearings on whether the MoveOn discount represented a contribution in violation of campaign finance laws, and whether those laws are actually enforceable. Mr. Davis is indulging in some partisan opportunism here, and we wish instead that he was explaining that the problem is not that these organizations slipped through some campaign finance net. The problem is the net.
The DailyKos argues that it qualifies for the "commentary" exception under McCain-Feingold, while the Times would presumably qualify under the newspaper exception. Anyone who reads either one quickly figures out that they are both stalwart supporters of the Democratic Party and liberal causes. This is their right, but it's hard to see why their political speech deserves any more special legal protection than that of Big Labor or the NRA. As for the Times's ad discount, we also don't see why it shouldn't be as protected as the paper's inevitable endorsement next year of Hillary Clinton for President. Won't that be an "in-kind" political contribution worth at least a few thousand dollars?
The FEC deserves a pat on the back for backing away from media content oversight. But the real solution here is for the Supreme Court to rediscover its First Amendment principles and strike down campaign finance restrictions. As long as McCain-Feingold is on the books, regulators will be running around damming up leaks wherever they imagine they've found them. Sooner or later they'll come after the press, as maybe the Times and other left-wingers are beginning to figure out.
