Campaign finance: Corporations, the high court and the Fourth Estate

Campaign finance: Corporations, the high court and the Fourth Estate

Could the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission affect newspaper editorial board's practice of endorsing candidates? Guest columnist Linda B. Campbell discusses the specter raised by Chief Justice John Roberts in his concurring opinion.

By Linda P. Campbell



WHO knew that decades-old campaign-spending limits threatened to prevent newspapers from opinionating on candidates for public office?

That's the hideous boogeyman Chief Justice John Roberts raised last week in justifying the Supreme Court's decision to toss restrictions Congress had placed on direct corporate spending to sway elections.

In arguing to uphold the limits, Roberts wrote in a concurrence, the government put forth "a theory of the First Amendment that would allow censorship not only of television and radio broadcasters, but of pamphlets, posters, the Internet and virtually any other medium that corporations and unions might find useful in expressing their views on matters of public concern."

That theory, he ominously warned, "would empower the government to prohibit newspapers from running editorials or opinion pieces supporting or opposing candidates for office, so long as the newspapers were owned by corporations — as the major ones are."

Roberts' concern for editorialists and the role we play in "the vibrant public discourse that is at the foundation of our democracy" is quite touching.

But, in the almost four decades since Congress started requiring corporations to channel their advocacy spending through political-action committees, has anyone seriously suggested that media conglomerates should have to pay for their election commentary through PACs?

To echo Roberts' language, his claim is one that "I find quite perplexing."

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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2010931240_guest30campbell.html?prmid=op_ed