Beware of NBC, LA Times & Your Local Newspaper When You Cast Your Vote

NBC and its parent company General Electric's decision to invite Governor Schwarzenegger, but not his rival for governor onto the Tonight Show, just as absentee ballots arrived in California mailboxes, dramatizes the ways big media companies can clandestinely shape the outcome of elections to the benefit of their bottom lines and their sponsors'.

Schwarzenegger may have been invited on the Tonight Show because he is a friend of host Jay Leno's, but the timing was an irresponsible and inexcusable slap in the face to rules of fairness and equity that once governed television broadcasts. Broadcasters, afterall, rely on a free lease of the public airwaves to make their money.

Until 1987, when the Reagan-era FCC pulled the plug on the "fairness doctrine," broadcasters had an unmistakable duty to provide fairness and equal time to both political sides. NBC is now officially considering a request from Angelides to appear on the Tonight Show under "equal time" and a final answer is due next week, but to date the company has defended its decision.

The Tonight Show controversy should remind voters about the other ways big media work surreptitiously to maintain the political status quo for their bottom line.

Take today's Los Angeles Times editorial against Proposition 89, the California ballot measure to take big money out of politics. The essence of the editorial is special interests have too much control, but Prop 89 unfairly taxes business (albeit 0.2%) to pay for the political campaigns of candidates that reject special interest dollars and unfairly limits corporations expenditures on ballot measures.

So isn't the fact that the newspaper's parent The Tribune Company would be subject to a 0.2% income tax increase relevant to the paper's opposition? Is the Times looking out for voters or its own bottom line? That's the question readers should ask if they tear out their newspapers' recommendations to bring to the polls.

The Tribune also owns television stations like KTLA. Prop 89's limit on ballot measure spending would cut significantly into the gravy train of political advertising KTLA is receiving from oil companies that have spent $52 million opposing Prop 87, a tax on oil producers to pay for alternate fuel development (also opposed by the LA Times), and from tobacco companies that have spent $55 million opposing Prop 86, a tobacco tax to fund health care. The main opposition weapon against Prop 87, in fact, is a television commercial airing editorials from newspapers like the Times weighing in against it

The public is sick of this avalanche of political advertising and turning away from the polls because of it. Prop 89 may solve that problem, but the interests of Tribune company dictates editorials now, not journalists' less biased decision making. Control over the editorials at the LA Time rests with the publisher, not the news editors, after a recent restructuring.

Is it any wonder Americans are also turning away from newspapers and confidence in the media is dropping daily? The main weapon of special interests on both sides of the political aisle (from big business to big labor) against the most significant political reform in American history is big media.

Next week the tv ads against Prop 89 will start running, and will no doubt feature the LA Times editorial. (The pro ads are already up, reminding Californians of Schwarzenegger's promise to eliminate special interest influence during the recall.) Viewers are not likely to make the connection between media endorsements and their financial interests in the political status quo. If they do, however, America will be on the precipice of a major political revolution that Prop 89's successful passage will provoke .