If you read the news to be informed, you may want to skip articles about campaign finance. As the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in McCutcheon v. FEC on October 8, a storm of bad journalism was unleashed upon an unsuspecting nation. Once again, the media showed itself to be woefully ignorant about campaign finance. Some lowlights:
USA Today, not wanting its readers to have to think for themselves, presented one of the central disputes of the case as a self-evident proclamation: “History says the outcome [of removing limits] — corruption — is not in doubt.” I wonder what research USA Today put into this claim (they don’t say). Of course, CCP’s research has found no correlation between contribution limits and corruption, and academic research has also found no correlation between campaign finance reforms, including contribution limits, and corruption in the fifty states. As CCP has further noted, 37 states do not have aggregate limits, and there is no noticeable difference in corruption between states with aggregate limits and states without them. Much of the oral argument in McCutcheon focused on the question of whether or not aggregate limits reduce corruption, but you wouldn’t know it from reading USA Today.
The Huffington Post made a similar slip, in a column by Spencer Overton, a Senior Fellow at the pro-“reform” group Demos. Overton takes the “zombie apocalypse” hypothetical used to justify the limits at face value, writing: “This is not a “wild hypothetical” as Justice Alito suggested–but political reality.” Overton apparently feels no need to demonstrate the plausibility of his claim, even though that is one of the most controversial aspects of McCutcheon. CCP has explained time and again how the hypothetical scenarios used to support the aggregate limit on contributions are implausible to the point of being absurd, as have others.
Of course, evidence of government corruption is everywhere if you define corruption as everything you dislike about government. The Detroit Free Press came dangerously close to that when it tried to blame “money in politics” for the current federal government shutdown in a plea to uphold aggregate limits. It’s more jeremiad than argument, asking hyperbolic questions such as “How many more such fiascoes will the public be forced to endure if the court rejects all limits on political spending?” Perhaps The Free Press, which is owned by the largest newspaper company in the country (Gannett), should shoulder some blame itself for the poor state of politics and political discourse today. Its own “inordinate” influence rarely receives scrutiny.
Another fundamental mistake common in reporting on McCutcheon is conflation of political access with corruption. The Charlotte Observer gave the best example of this, writing, “Does anyone really believe anymore that political access cannot be bought and sold? Is more money from a handful of people what our political system needs?” No one disputes that political access can result from large contributions, but that’s entirely irrelevant. Corruption means a quid-pro-quo, typically in the form of a contribution being made in exchange for a legislator’s vote on a particular piece of legislation. If access alone were corrupting, we’d have to hermetically seal off our elected officials from the outside world, lest they ever be influenced by anything.
As elemental an error as The Charlotte Observer makes, it’s not even the most obvious example of the media calling a spade a club in its McCutcheon coverage. That honor goes to The New York Times, which hilariously claimed that “Sensible contribution limits do not limit speech.” Limits don’t limit? Now that’s news.
With rare exception, media coverage has failed to address the important First Amendment questions in the case. What limits can government place on political speech, and for what reasons? These questions can’t be ignored.
Then again, maybe it’s too much to ask the media to get campaign finance law right when the government can’t either. Responding to a question about last Tuesday’s oral arguments, President Obama said “I mean, essentially it would say anything goes; there are no rules in terms of how to finance campaigns.” That statement is ludicrously false, and even advocates of greater restrictions on campaign finance called him out on it.
We can hope that politicians and journalists will one day learn to talk about campaign finance in a more informed, evenhanded manner. But we’re not holding our breath. If you want to learn more about McCutcheon v. FEC from a source you can trust, you can explore CCP’s extensive coverage here.
