SHOULD NEWSPAPERS,
BLOGGERS HAVE TO FILE CAMPAIGN FINANCE REPORTS?
Free
speech. Anonymous speech. As American as apple pie.
The
First Amendment is quite clear on the whole free speech thing: “Congress shall
make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...” And the Founding Fathers were quite clear on
the anonymous speech thing, with James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay
authoring the Federalist Papers under aliases.
And yet
for the past several years, Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller has been on a
crusade to stifle free speech by trying to force non-profit organizations to
disclose the identities of their donors which could, as has happened in the
past, subject those supporters to harassment, intimidation and outright
threats.
Fortunately,
in a lawsuit Miller filed against Americans for Prosperity, Senior District
Judge Robert Estes recently ruled against Miller and declared that AFP is “neither
required to register with the Nevada Secretary of State nor report
contributions and expenditures” to the government.
This
is an important ruling, especially since Miller has sued my organization,
Citizen Outreach, in a similar case. A different
judge ruled against us last summer, but we’re appealing that decision, especially
in light of the AFP decision.
Clearly,
different folks of reasonable mind can come up with different interpretations as
to whether certain advertising constitutes “express advocacy” or “issue
advocacy,” making it painfully obvious that that there is enough ambiguity in
the law to make it virtually impossible for the average citizen to know what
the heck the campaign finance rules are these days.
Equally
troubling, however, is how some members of the media have responded to the AFP
decision; siding with Miller and championing “transparency” (which is not in
the Constitution) over free and anonymous speech. With all due respect, these folks might want
to rethink their position because…they could be next.
Indeed,
there is no special carve-out in the First Amendment for the press. If the government can successfully force
disclosure of donors to non-profit organizations, what’s to stop it from forcing
similar disclosure reporting of the financing for newspapers (which outright
endorse candidates), columnists and blogs?
Indeed,
if the argument is that someone is trying to influence an election by
contributing money anonymously to a non-profit organization, who’s to say
someone isn’t trying to influence an election by “advertising” (wink-wink) in a
newspaper or paying a blogger or columnist?
In
fact, what about “Mr. Transparency” himself, Jon Ralston? His blog is totally political and he
regularly trashes one candidate after another on a daily basis, clearly in an
effort to swing voter opinion.
Who’s
funding him? Who are his
subscribers? How much are they paying
him for his blog and e-newsletter? What
about his advertisers? How much are they
paying him?
And
who are the super-secret anonymous “insiders” he quotes every Sunday? What’s their agenda? Do any of them have an ax to grind with any
of the candidates and political figures Jon regularly crucifies. Are any of them throwing him “consulting” money
for some other purpose?
Inquiring
minds wanna know.
Of
course, I’m totally, unalterably opposed to the idea that newspapers, columnists
and bloggers should have to fill out campaign finance reports and submit them
to the government for public scrutiny. But
that’s the slippery path we’re treading if we continue to allow Secretary Miller
to continue eroding the same privacy protections the authors of the Federalist
Papers enjoyed.
What’s
next? Eliminating secret ballots in
elections? (Oh, snap…unions are already
doing that!)
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“(Nevada
GOP Chairman Michael) McDonald hasn’t created any of (the recent)
controversies, nor is he associated with the (Ron) Paul wing of the party. Why
is the governor boycotting him? I asked,
and Sandoval’s campaign manager wrote some words in an email in reply, none of
which addressed the question.” – Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Steve
Sebelius
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