Source: https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2014/08/07/media-misses-expanding-influence-of-citizens-un/200334
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 14:07:00+00:00

Document:
Nightly network newscasts and Sunday morning talk shows have largely failed to connect two recent Supreme Court decisions to Citizens United v. FEC, the case that radically expanded the legal concept of "corporate personhood" -- the idea that corporations have constitutional rights. This has left viewers with an incomplete understanding of how the Court applied this dangerous precedent to campaign finance and reproductive rights law.
[I]n a 5-4 ruling in McCutcheon v. FEC, the Roberts Court dealt another blow to our Constitution's promise of democracy, striking down aggregate contribution limits designed to prevent massive campaign contributions to candidates, parties and PACs.
Four years ago, in Citizens United v. FEC, the Roberts Court turned our Constitution's system of democracy of, by, and for the people on its head, ruling that money is speech, corporations are part of "We the People," and the government's anti-corruption interest only extends to preventing bribery. In an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, McCutcheon doubles down on Citizens United, making that ruling even worse.
In McCutcheon, the justices struck down federal campaign contribution regulation for the first time in history, opening the floodgates and allowing Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers and fat cats across the political spectrum to contribute millions of dollars to elect candidates to do their bidding. Justice Clarence Thomas would have gone even further, voting to strike down all contribution limits.
The Sunday Shows And Evening News Broadcasts Often Missed The Connection Between Citizens United And McCutcheon. Out of eight Sunday show and network evening news segments that discussed McCutcheon and its ramifications on campaign finance law, Citizens United or corporate personhood was referenced in just half.
For more on McCutcheon, see here, here, and here.
Hobby Lobby, a corporation, says that forcing it to provide [contraceptive] coverage would violate its religious beliefs.
"The stakes here, symbolically and politically, are very high," said Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia, citing the clash between religious teachings and the [Obama] administration's embattled health care law.
In ruling for Hobby Lobby, the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit said it had applied "the First Amendment logic of Citizens United."
The Sunday Shows' And Evening News Broadcasts Frequently Ignored The Connection Between Citizens United and Hobby Lobby. Out of 20 segments that discussed Hobby Lobby and its effect on reproductive rights, only six noted the connection between Hobby Lobby and Citizens United and the expanding concept of corporate personhood.
For more on Hobby Lobby, see here, here, here, and here.
This report analyzes coverage of the Supreme Court's most recent term on four Sunday morning talk shows (ABC's This Week, CBS's Face the Nation, NBC's Meet the Press, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday) and three nightly news programs (ABC World News, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News -- Fox has no evening news broadcast). Our analysis includes any segment that discussed the Supreme Court's ("Supreme Court") decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby or McCutcheon v. FEC ("Hobby Lobby" and "McCutcheon") and whether those segments referenced Citizens United v. FEC or the concept of corporate personhood between February 19, 2013 and August 5, 2014, a time period that reflects when the justices decided to hear these cases through the end of the term.
Phrases such as "campaign finance," "contraception mandate," "employer" and "birth control," and "employer" and contracept! were also included, in the event a broadcast did not refer to the cases by name in the segment.
Transcripts from Nexis were used to analyze these segments.

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