Broadcasters Expand Political-Ad Reporting Proposal as FCC Votes Friday

The requirement could come in an order set for a vote at Friday’s commissioner meeting (CD April 23 p1). Groups that want LUCs disclosed online reported speaking with officials on the agency’s eighth floor last week, before the issuance of a sunshine notice Friday afternoon barred further lobbying on the Media Bureau public-file order. The new industry plan posted Monday in docket 00-168 (http://xrl.us/bm4usf) would require all TV stations to post the information on the commission’s website and not let them just put it on their individual websites, which was an earlier option (CD Feb 17 p5). It also makes other proposals that are expanded from earlier commitments. A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski seems to “favor” Web disclosure of the entire political file, and it’s unclear what Commissioner Mignon Clyburn will decide, said Free Press Senior Policy Counsel Corie Wright. “There will be a lot of dissatisfaction among the public interest and transparency communities if the end result is anything less than full online access and transparency for the public,” she said of not disclosing the LUC rate online. “The public deserves online access to the full political file, not the watered-down version that broadcasters seek."

Broadcasters’ new plan proposes updating political-ad disclosures more frequently than under a February accord (http://xrl.us/bmshpc) floated by a smaller group of TV-station owners. The new deal would mandate the information be updated every other day during the LUC period, with daily updates during the final seven days before an election. That compares to the earlier proposal to refresh the online disclosures once weekly during the LUC period, and also the day before an election. TV stations must charge candidates LUC rates (http://xrl.us/bm4u9r) for federal, state and municipal races during the 60 days before general elections and starting 45 days before primaries, noted broadcast lawyer David Oxenford of Davis Wright.

The backers of the plan also expanded to all the owners of the Big Four broadcast networks and Univision, up from none of the Big Four in February and two of them last week. The broadcaster associations of each state are being asked to support the new pact, a filing said. The backers said they'd disclose the total amount of ad buys made by candidates and those defined as “issue ads” under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act that’s best known for Senate sponsors John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, a Democrat who then represented Wisconsin. “This proposal is a win-win solution that provides transparency concerning political candidate spending while avoiding the anti-competitive impact of online disclosure of per-spot rate information,” the 16 companies and NAB said. “Our proposal represents a common ground among us in an effort to provide the Commission with a specific proposal before the Sunshine Period goes into effect, but we would be willing to discuss questions or minor adjustments to this proposal with the Commission if it wishes to do so."

Backers of LUC disclosure don’t want the FCC to back down from what’s in the initial version of the draft public- and political-file order that circulated a few weeks ago. The Public Interest Public Airwaves Coalition in recent years has “made substantial concessions designed to reduce burdens on broadcasters and respond to their objections,” Prof. Angela Campbell of Georgetown University’s Institute for Public Representation reported (http://xrl.us/bm4uy8) telling an aide to Clyburn on Friday. “It seems like the Commission will not require as much disclosure as fast as we would like. Still, it is an extremely important step forward” and should “be adopted without any further compromise, weakening or delay,” Campbell wrote. The coalition’s members include the Campaign Legal Center, Free Press and New America Foundation.

Listing the total amount of political ad buys and not what each spot costs is “unacceptable for many reasons,” the coalition said. “The totals cannot be verified without visiting the stations and looking at the paper files.” The “vigor with which the broadcasters are objecting to the FCC’s proposals suggests they have something to hide,” the coalition said. “Are they afraid if the FCC and the public knew how much they get for running these ads it would undermine their claims that they need the Commission to relax the ownership rules to remain profitable?” All political broadcasting rules should “be transferred in full to the online space,” coalition member United Church of Christ reported (http://xrl.us/bm4uyy) telling an aide to Clyburn. “There is no reason to water down the existing disclosure rules in the online environment."

Broadcasters and public-interest groups have some commonalities. Nonprofits aren’t opposing a section of the draft order that would exempt all but Big Four affiliates in top markets and all stations in smaller markets from disclosing any political-file data online for two years. The phase-in period is “intended to accommodate smaller stations and stations in smaller markets and Spanish language stations,” the 16 broadcasters and NAB said. Although Media Access Project Senior Vice President Andrew Schwartzman is “skeptical” the disclosure rules “will cause significant burdens for any station,” there’s “no opposition on the part of public interest groups to a phase-in that gives smaller stations an extended period of time to prepare for the implementation of online publication,” he reported (http://xrl.us/bm4uyu) telling Clyburn’s aide. The Sunlight Foundation, which seeks greater government disclosure, doesn’t think stations can “cherry pick the quality or type of information to be made public” in political files, Executive Director Ellen Miller wrote Genachowski (http://xrl.us/bm4uz5). “The FCC must not limit, through its rules, public access to only those members of the public who have the ability and resources to enter a broadcast station and demand to see the paper documents.” The “trade secrets” of companies that sell election spots will be “exposed” by the proposal in the rulemaking notice to disclose the political file online, said Republican political-ad firm Target Enterprises (http://xrl.us/bm4uzz).