This is very good news. The House committee that had voted previously to overrule a new FCC rule that requires TV stations to make their records of political campaign ad buys available online has withdrawn that amendment from the bill.
On Wednesday, the House Appropriations Committee withdrew a measure that would have prevented the Federal Communications Commission from carrying out its new rule requiring broadcasters to put political ad spending records online. Instead, the House adopted a new measure requiring the Government Accountability Office to study the issue.
The provision in the 2013 Financial Services bill removes an earlier measure that would have prevented the FCC from using federal funds to implement the online-posting rule. Broadcasters are already legally required to maintain data on political ad spending, but this information is currently maintained only in paper form at the TV stations themselves.
If signed into law, the draft appropriations bill would require the GAO to analyze the data kept by the FCC and the Federal Election Commission to determine whether there is any duplication of costs to maintain them. The GAO is also tasked with evaluating whether publicizing the information on political ads will have any impact on pricing throughout the market. The GAO study is not expected to delay implementation of the FCC’s rule.
This new rule will make it much easier to track campaign spending, especially ads taken out by SuperPACs, 527s and other third-party organizations.
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abb3w
June 25, 2012 at 12:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is good news; but when does the new rule kick in for that first couple hundred broadcasters? Pre-November?
AsqJames
June 25, 2012 at 12:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Sorry, I’m not buying that part. I simply can’t imagine a TV station in the year 2012 does not have a computer-based accounts system. Maybe there’s no simple
SELECT * FROM AD_SALES WHERE Category = "Political"option, but there’s no way it should be more than a couple of hours work to extract the required data from any reasonable system.ArtK
June 25, 2012 at 1:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ AsqJames
The point is that the current law only requires them to keep these as paper records and to make them available on paper. Of course they have electronic accounting systems. That loophole allows the broadcasters to throw up roadblocks to any investigation.
The purpose of the new legislation is to remove that loophole so that we can do a SELECT *.
AsqJames
June 25, 2012 at 1:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
ArtK,
Thanks, I assumed something like that would be the case. The point is the report Ed quotes is (being kind) misleadingly worded.
It’s also a failure of journalism in my eyes – upon hearing that TV stations currently only maintain paper records I’d expect any reasonably intelligent & inquiring mind with a modicum of understanding of the modern world to cry call bullsh*t. If that person calls him/herself a journalist I’d expect them to point this out in their subsequent reporting, not just dutifully scribble down what they’re told and pass it off as “journalism”.