BOB GARFIELD: In the leadup to the Supreme Court's decision this week the National Rifle Association's Vice President Wayne LaPierre told the Associated Press that if the NRA is held to the advertising provisions in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, it will expand its own news operation and call itself a media outlet in order to get around those provisions. The NRA, according to the Boston Globe, spent about 20 million dollars in the year 2000 to, quote, "inform voters and influence the outcome of campaigns." Jim Babka responded to this notion with a story on world net daily dot com called "The deliciously absurd plan of the NRA." He is the president of the American Liberty Foundation and Real Campaign Reform dot org and joins me from WKSU in Ohio. Jim, welcome to On the Media.
JIM BABKA: Thank you, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: Well, the notion of the National Rifle Association as some sort of media organization is clearly absurd on the face of it. Tell me what makes it "deliciously absurd."
JIM BABKA: Well, I think they were being absurd to illustrate a point, and that is that false lines have been drawn in this Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act decision that gives special or confers special privileges on the institutional press, whereas Joe Mimeograph or even a big organization like the NRA has had their free press rights restricted in this decision.
BOB GARFIELD: Looking forward for the moment -- let's say it's early fall, 2004. We're 60 days from the presidential election. What does an organization like the NRA or the American Civil Liberties Union, which was a strange bedfellow with the NRA in this argument, what will they want to do and what will they have to do in order to get their messages out?
JIM BABKA: Well, they're going to have to go through a whole bunch of new hurdles. They're going to have to start to act in the same way that many of the other people participating in the political process will do. They're going to have to first get a permit from government to be able to participate in the political process. They're going to need to set up an entity or an organization -- and for the NRA maybe this isn't such a huge hurdle, because they're such a big, powerful organization --but there's scores of little tiny organizations that are now going to have to hire additional attorneys, accountants and FEC specialists who are going to have to help them assemble the, the reporting information that they need to comply with the law. Now they will have to treat their advertising entries -- be they radio or television -- as if they were hard money contributions to a political campaign, limited in the same way and reporting requirements that are very similar. And this, by the way, will limit their ability to raise as much money as they would have been able to before to get their ads out, more than likely.
BOB GARFIELD: I'm assuming that you don't believe that the NRA as a media entity would be a fair broker of ideas -- and yet, you think that their claim under the terms of the Campaign Finance Reform Act are legitimate. How do you reconcile those two ideas?
JIM BABKA: I think the distinction between freedom of the press rights for the institutional media and for individuals is, is a false dichotomy. If, let's say, I was running for office, and I chose to go out and make a radio ad or a TV ad, they're designed to get the word out to the voters about why they should consider my campaign. When the NRA goes or the ACLU and issues a communication that is designed to inform the voters of the voting record of a particular candidate, be it a radio ad or a TV ad, in the final days of the campaign -- which is what got regulated here -- the final days of the campaign when most voters are paying attention -- they are providing an important democratic service. And let's be honest here -- not every single time that the media covers a situation does bias fail to creep in, in a given situation. The fact of the matter is that the campaign and the interests groups that have issues at stake in the race should have the ability to counteract that by buying the time necessary to correct what they believe has, has been a mis-reported representation.
BOB GARFIELD: Okay. But that issue has been adjudicated, so how can the NRA get around it by becoming a media organization?
JIM BABKA: They could buy a network if they wanted to. They're already a very large publishing house. They publish, you know, five or six different magazines.
BOB GARFIELD: So you think that within the scope of the Supreme Court's decision there's room there for the NRA to claim to be a media organization as defined by the Supreme Court?
JIM BABKA: Yeah, I definitely think that they can find a way to do that. They can choose to create a -their own media empire, if that's the way that it's going to be required, and I think that, you know, the New York Times and some of the other media organizations that beat the drum very loudly for the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform should have been careful what they wished for -- they might actually get it. People may begin treating editors of newspapers and program directors of news broadcasting stations the same way they treat politicians. They may begin lobbying them for the type of coverage necessary, because the media now has a much larger role in proportion to the rest of the citizenry.
BOB GARFIELD: All right, but let's just step into reality here for a moment. You don't imagine, do you, that the NRA is a media organization by anyone's definition, do you?
JIM BABKA: Well if that's what it's going to take for them to be able to get their message out, then why not?
BOB GARFIELD: All right. Well, Jim, thanks very much.
JIM BABKA: Thank you, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD: Jim Babka is the president of the American Liberty Foundation and Real Campaign Reform dot org, and we'll link to his article from our site.
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