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Thu. Aug 21, 2003

Terminator 4: Special Dispensation

Terminator 4: Special Dispensation – Jeff Jarvis is rather upset, and organizing a campaign: “Thanks to the innane FCC equal-time rule—and to his company’s spineless lawyers and bosses—Howard Stern was forced to cancel an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger this morning [...] But the voters won’t get to hear what Schwarzenegger has to say under questioning because of the equal time rule.”

Some would argue that the voters won’t hear what Schwarzenegger has to say under questioning because he’s refused to do any substantive interviews with real journalists. Real news shows aren’t subject to the equal time provision. But they also ask real questions.

“Stern’s dimwitted station manager and wimpy lawyers said that if he talked to Arnold, he’d have to talk to all 130 candidates. Stern begged them to fight and get an FCC exemption but they didn’t.”

Come now, do you really think one of the stodgiest bureaucracies in the government can issue an exemption on any Congressional law in the course of one day, or even a Washington Week? Even if the station’s lawyers agreed to beg very nicely?

Arnie and Howie don’t get Special Celebrity Dispensation on a law that has been clear, tried, and tested for decades: “The equal time, or more accurately, the equal opportunity provision of the Communications Act requires radio and television stations and cable systems which originate their own programming to treat legally qualified political candidates equally when it comes to selling or giving away air time.”

And for 30 years, it was exactly that broad. Eventually they made some specific exemptions: “A major amendment to Section 315 came in 1959 following a controversial Federal Communications Commission (FCC) interpretation of the equal time provision [...] Stations who gave time to candidates on regularly scheduled newscasts, news interviews shows, documentaries (assuming the candidate wasn’t the primary focus of the documentary), or on-the-spot news events would not have to offer equal time to other candidates for that office. ”

Now, I’ll admit, I haven’t heard Howard’s show in a long time, so it’s possible things have changed. But I don’t think Howard is doing a radio syndicated version of Face the Nation (maybe “Sit On The Nation’s Face”?), nor do I think he’s doing documentaries or covering on-the-spot news. He’s a radio shock jock, probably The Original, who syndicates his special brand of “entertainment” and thrives on controversy. He is not known for his probing interviews of political candidates. At all. Don’t even try to kid us.

But even if I haven’t heard Howard lately, I am quite experienced with the specifics of this law: “Section 315 also prohibits a station from censoring what a candidate says when he or she appears on the air (unless it is in one of the exempt formats). Thus, a few years ago when a self-avowed segregationist was running for the governorship of Georgia, the FCC rejected citizen complaints over the candidate’s use in his ads of derogatory language towards African-Americans [...] Section 315 commands that as the election approaches, stations must offer candidates the rate it offers its most favored advertiser.”

It was not “a few years ago,” it was over two decades. I am intimately familiar with these laws because I worked at a radio station in Macon when J. B. Stoner ran for Governor of Georgia. His campaign bought ads on my station, and they didn’t just reek of white supremacist idiocy, they actually used the infamous “N-word.”

We were going to refuse to run them, but you quickly run up against the fact that if you do that, you’ve threatened your license to continue broadcasting. The law is very specific. You have to sell them the air time, you cannot edit even one word, and you have to sell it to them at your absolute cheapest rate (in our case, our biggest client bought hundreds of ads a week in 3 month chunks, getting a volume-discounted price per ad … which we had to give to J. B. Stoner). Our hands were legally bound.

It ate me up to play those ads. To follow the law. But karma is a wondrous and amazing thing. Shortly after that, Stoner went to jail, convicted of conspiring to bomb a black church back in the year I was born, 1958.

However, if the FCC wouldn’t budge one inch in such extreme circumstances, should we kid ourselves that they should completely fall over for Arnie and Howie?

Back to Jeff: “Instead of assuring that we are better informed, we are less informed. That is the government infringing free speech and the free market of ideas. That is wrong.”

Wow. To me, what is wrong is that a man whose most regular interview guests are probably topless lesbians suddenly expects to be considered on the same terms as responsible journalists. Or, to be exempt from the law that governs all others.

And when longstanding Congressional law deprives a candidate of one particular venue (say, inside the door of the precinct where people are voting?), they are not infringing their free speech. Arnold could get reams of free print and countless hours of free TV time to state his views … at the snap of his fingers. All he has to do is play by the rules … the law ... and be engaged on the issues by the same journalists engaging Gray Davis. He has so far been reluctant. His loss, not ours. And not a violation of the Constitution.

Besides, Jay Leno pulled it off. After Arnold made his announcement on the show, they offered to have one night where all the other candidates showed up to comprise his studio audience (there were indications of 600 of them at that time). All you have to do is offer, and you’ve fulfilled your obligation. How many of those 130 would pay to fly to New York to be on Howard’s show? And if Howard suddenly wants to be a “political player,” it comes with some baggage. All the way across the country.

Surely someone as creative as Howard can come up with an out of the box solution to this. Sounds like a perfect excuse to broadcast from California for a week, to me. A “Candidate Gang Bang,” or something equally appropriate to his shtick.

Alternately, you can whine about longstanding law you haven’t got a hope in hell of changing, and get lots of coverage from it. Sounds like the expedient solution to me.