This has the potential to greatly affect the American political environment, in a very positive way, in my opinion.
Of course, I am always of the view that the more information we have the better, and that, even though many political leaders would like to have us
believe otherwise, yes, in fact, "we CAN handle the truth".
The FCC decision will force broadcast networks to make public the cost of campaign ads, who is buying them, and whether a particular corporation
accepts and/or rejects ads because of the political party they represent.
(This may go a long way in clarifying the often discussed viewpoints that certain media corporation hold biases toward or against particular political
movements, as is often brought up here on ATS!)
A crucial part of the discussion points out that political ad revenue is a HUGE percentage of revenue for media corporations. In fact, political
campaign donations are pretty much funneled directly to the media corporations in the form of ad purchases.
The "conspiracy" angle here is that the media has every reason to want long, drawn-out campaigns and no interest in doing any "real" political
journalism, at the risk of losing one of its biggest clients.
At +/- 4:25 Robert McChesney explains how this situation has meant the death of real political journalism (which as an essential part to true
"democracy") as the coverage we see in mainstream media equates to nothing more than analyses of how well the ad campaigns have affected public
opinion.
Anyhow, this should lead to some very interesting information which will, if nothing else, help us to see who the candidates will be owing "favors"
to once the campaign is complete.
Originally posted by benrl
Im actually surprised, the FCC doing something productive for a change.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
They said that the information should be made public... whether or not they do anything with that information is a whole other matter!
As I said earlier, this is a step in the right direction, but as is always the case with government, they move forward in very hesitant, dragging
their heals, baby type steps!
*(Unless, of course there is a potential pay-off, then they are totally gung-ho over "what was the topic again?... Oh yeah, I have always had deep
support THAT!".)