Corruption Breeds Corruption: FECA Crowns the Royal Press

Reader comment on: Krugman Rewrites Nixon History

Submitted by Michael Lewis (United States), Mar 18, 2011 16:29

The Newspaper Preservation Act was working its way through congress and was designed to grant antitrust relief to the affected newspapers. Richard Nixon and his, Attorney General, were on record as strongly opposed to the passage of the Newspaper Preservation Act.

A newspaper executive wrote a letter to President Nixon as his re-election approached. The letter reminded President Nixon that the nation's largest Newspaper chains published in those states that had the largest number of electoral votes. The carefully worded letter reminded President Nixon that it could be difficult to be re-elected without their editorial support.

President Nixon reversed his position and used his political skills to convince congress to pass the Newspaper Preservation Act.

[See pgs.95-99] The Media Monopoly 5th edition paperback by Professor Ben HBagdikian.

The newly minted campaign laws should have castigated the 4th estate as well as Nixon? Instead the Federal Election Campaign Reform Act exempted them and created the 'Royal Corporate Press':

The following reference to the Press Exemption is excerpted from a letter by Senator Mitch McConnell

Section 431(9)(B)(i) makes a distinction where there is no real difference: the media is extremely powerful by any measure, a "special interest" by any definition, and heavily engaged in the "issue advocacy" and "independent expenditure" realms of political persuasion that most editorial boards find so objectionable when anyone other than a media outlet engages in it. To illustrate the absurdity of this special exemption the media enjoys, I frequently cite as an example the fact that if the RNC bought NBC from GE the FEC would regulate the evening news and, under the McCain-Feingold "reform" bill, Tom Brokaw could not mention a candidate 60 days before an election. This is patently absurd.

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