<9204061613.AA28442@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: Computer Science Department,  Stanford University.
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics
Date:         Thu, 9 Apr 1992 12:07:53 -0700
From:         Andy Freeman <andy@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Banning Political Ads

> > The pot legalization folks have had very little success in getting
> > their message out through the news.  Most of the current (albeit
> > meager) coverage comes out of their efforts to place an ad.  Abolishing
> > ads cuts them out quite effectively....
>
>Flat out wrong.
>
>The pot legalization have had even less success in getting their
>message out through paid ads.  So far they have had
>zero success with paid ads while they have received numerous news
>mentions.  I think I win that point.

MacRae didn't read the second to last sentence that he quoted.  The
news coverage came about because of the pot legalizers attempt to buy
an ad.  If that was illegal, as MacRae would like, how much coverage
would they have gotten for having their ad refused?  Would they have
even tried to place an ad?  MacRae loses that point.

> > >I trust the news organizations far more than I trust the sales managers.
> >
> > I don't trust the news organizations enough to give them complete
> > power.
>
>Neither do I, that is why I have never proposed doing so.  So why
>bother to mention it?

There are only two ways to get a message on TV.  The first is to pay
for it directly and the second is to have it broadcast for free,
either as news or as part of a program paid for by someone else.
MacRae wants to ban paid political uses of TV, so that leaves news
access only, which is controlled somewhat by news organizations and
somewhat by management that has an opinion.  (Management without an
opinion will sell access.)

>> MacRae has argued that we should ban paid TV coverage because it has
>> certain properties.  Now we find that the properties don't matter,
>> that he doesn't want to restrict other political speech with the same
>> properties.
>
>The 'properties' you mention are the fact that broadcast ads suck up
>over 80% of the money required to campaign.  I know of no other medium
>with that property, do you?

That's not the objectionable property.  MacRae complains that it is
both expensive AND insubstantive.  Surely he's not going to argue
that % expenditure alone is important (because something else
will become "most" if political TV is banned).

> > As I've written every time I've posted the arithmetic; it merely
> > proves that significant personal contact is impossible in nationwide
> > elections (as well as many local or state elections) for reasons that
> > have nothing to do with the existence of TV.  (See the very next thing
> > that MacRae quoted.)
>
>Yet you have still to explain how other countries (GB for example) and
>our own country managed to have elections without paid broadcast
>advertising.  You can't go on showing that it is impossible to hold
>such elections without explaining their existence.  Or do you deny that
>England is having an election this week?

I've never written that paid political broadcasts were necessary.
I've only written that significant personal contact is impossible for
elections with large voter populations, in response to MacRae's claim
that abolishing TV would cause or allow significant contact between
candidates and voters. I don't know what part of those sentences
MacRae is having difficulty understanding, but it is obvious that he's
having some difficulty.  Just reread the quoted sections....

> > I also haven't proved that political parties or newspapers are either.
> > (Considering that they aren't....)  Instead, I've responded to
> > MacRae's actual arguments about the properties of TV and the changes
> > that one can expect from restricting it.
>
>The changes would be (as I have said before) ...
>
>       1.) Cheaper campaigns

How does abolishing paid TV make it cheaper for candidates to get name
recognition, let alone to get their views out?  (If there were
cheapter alternatives, wouldn't they be using them?)  Banning TV
doesn't create other options.

>       2.) More substance in the candidates speechs (because the
>           need for sound bites would be gone.)

Yeah, right.  Those debates and the speeches sure demonstrate that
point.  Candidates spend 10 minutes trying to come up with some phrase
that TV news will use in the coverage.  TV news is basically sound
bites; the only difference between them and short paid spots is in who
choses them.

>If it is true that you now agree that tv and radio ads are not
>required for elections, what is wrong with trying out this
>proposal?  What is the worse that could happen?

Campaigns would become more expensive (TV is more efficient than the
alternatives), less informative (less effective spending has to reduce
the amount of info transferred unless the budgets explode), or both.
(That's the likely result.)  The newscritters will control the debate
even more than they do now.  It will become important for political
organizations to BUY TV stations (because the news staff gets to
choose) instead of renting and sharing them.

Which of these are "good"?

> > >Was any of it carried in any newspapers or as part of any broadcast
> > >news?  IF not, why not?
> >
> > And what would that prove?  (Remember the pot legalizers....)
>
>It would suggest to me that his ideas were not worth reporting.  Are
>you suggesting otherwise?

It says only that the news media didn't cover LaRouche.  He may be a
loon (I think he is) or he may just be outside the mainstream (the pot
legalizers are).  It might be "good" to stifle LaRouche, but the media
is never that selective.

-andy
--
UUCP:    {arpa gateways, sun, decwrl, uunet, rutgers}!cs.stanford.edu!andy
ARPA:    andy@cs.stanford.edu
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU