Using Political Campaign Laws to Stifle Free Speech

George Will writes in this week's issue of Newsweek about the attempts to use campaign finance laws to stifle opposition and end free speech:

SEATTLE—As the comprehensive and sustained attack on Americans' freedom of political speech intensifies, this city has become a battleground. Campaign-finance "reformers," who advocate ever-increasing government regulation of the quantity, timing and content of political speech, always argue that they want to regulate "only" money, which, they say, leaves speech unaffected. But here they argue that political speech is money, and hence must be regulated. By demanding that the speech of two talk-radio hosts be monetized and strictly limited, reformers reveal the next stage in their stealthy repeal of the First Amendment.

When the state's government imposed a 9.5-cents-per-gallon increase in the gas tax, John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur of station KVI began advocating repeal by initiative. Proponents of repeal put up a Web site, hoping to raise 1,000 volunteers and $25,000. In two days they had 6,500 and $87,000. Needing 224,880 signatures to put repeal on the ballot, they got 400,996.

Appalled by this outburst of grass-roots democracy, some local governments, which stood to gain many millions from the tax, unleashed a law firm that would gain substantially from handling the bond issues the tax would finance. The firm set out to muzzle Carlson and Wilbur, using the state's campaign regulations.

It got a judge to rule that the broadcasters were not just supporters of the repeal campaign, they were agents of it. Why, they had even used the pronoun "we" when referring to proponents of repeal. Their speech constituted political advertising, and their employer was making an "in-kind contribution" to the repeal campaign. The judge said a monetary value must be placed on their speech (he did not say how, he just said to do it that day). The law says reports must be filed and speech limits obeyed or fines imposed.

State law restricts to $5,000 the amount a single giver can contribute in the three weeks before an initiative. If Carlson's and Wilbur's speech were monetized at radio-advertising rates, they would be silenced for all but about 15 minutes in each of the campaign's crucial last three weeks.

Back before about 1988 we had something called the "Fairness Doctrine" which essentially assured that talk radio would be boring because it required every political view to be balanced in terms of time with an opposing view. Rather than monitor the requirements of the Doctrine, talk radio was pretty much confined to local issues and call in relationship shows.

The Reagan Administration repealed the Fairness Doctrine which opened up the airwaves to whomever could get and hold an audience, regardless of their views (to lefties - it's called the "free market"). Along came Rush Limbaugh and the conservative talk radio movement was born. Liberals were also free to create their own shows and networks, and with the exeption of a few local hosts, have pretty much failed miserably. Their downer brand of talk just doesn't play well with the radio market. Who wants to listen to gloom and doom and conspiracy theories all day?

The overwhelming conservative presence in talk radio has resurrected calls by Dems for reinstatment of the Fairness Doctrine, and should the Dems retake Congress, and especially if they take the White House in '08, you can bet there will be an attempt to bring it back and silence their many successful critics. Radio stations, burdened with the reporting and monitoring requirements of such a law, would probably drop most political programming and talk radio would go back to boring local panel discussions. It would pretty much kill off the AM band altogether.

Campaign finance reform as passed by the McCain-Feingold Act and other legislation is stripping away our First Amendment rights to free speech, and unless this tidal wave of regulation is stopped, even routine things like placing a yard sign at your house could be challenged.