| Essays on Civic Renewal Legislating Civil Society
A Walt Whitman Center Project, continued Reclaiming the Public Airwaves
Civic Society & the Media Reclaiming the Public Airwaves is part of the Legislating Civil Society project of the Walt Whitman Center. Reprinted with permission from the Walt Whitman Center, Department of Political Science, Rutgers University. 1995. Abstract Political broadcast reforms and free airtime proposals have been advanced by members of Congress, scholars, and journalists with remarkable frequency over the years. Advocates of various political stripes see in these proposals a concrete way to address many of the ills of the national campaign system. By directly responding to one of the chief culprits of rising campaign costs, radio and television time, proponents of broadcast rate reduction and free airtime legislation find hopeful signs for reducing the near-totalizing role that money seems to play in American politics. This paper explores previous free media proposals and the political, economic, and legal challenges that have continued to spell their demise in an effort to reconceptualize this issue and provide an alternative perspective through which policymakers and citizens can consider such legislation anew. By focusing upon the democratic potentials of communication technologies and privileging the perspective and needs of civil society for public access and civic use of the electromagnetic spectrum, a public resource that is rapidly going the way of other common spaces, this paper argues for a fundamental reorientation of this legislative domain that will encourage the state to act not to empower government and regulatory agencies, but as an agent in the strengthening of civil society. This paper proposes that Congress stipulate, as a condition of licensing, that broadcasters provide a specified amount of time to eligible candidates for public office prior to federal elections, and condition use of this time by candidates on the acceptance of formats which will encourage informative political communications. The legislative means for doing so should not be sought in campaign finance reform, and the reasons for its enactment do not strictly conform to concern about the role of money in elections, but rather issue from a concern for civil society: to secure, foster, and protect the very resources and conditions necessary for citizens to engage in their own self-governance. Paper Outline Part I of this paper discusses the arguments which have been made in support of free airtime requirements. In doing so, it reviews some of the political challenges to these proposals while suggesting the limitations inherent in most of the present reasoning behind free media legislation. Part II provides the beginnings of an alternative conceptualization for a free airtime requirement and delineate the political and constitutional grounds for such a proposal. Throughout this paper civil society is employed as the privileged lens for an analysis of the politics of free media initiatives and the guiding perspective for an alternative legislative proposal. Part III outlines the parameters of a concrete free media proposal written from the perspective of civil society, analyze some of the specific practical and economic difficulties it is likely to confront, and suggest ways in which these questions can be addressed. Ordering Information The entire text of this report is available from the Walt Whitman Center. Contact: Kevin Mattson
Research Director-Walt Whitman Center
Department of Political Science
409 Hickman Hall-Douglas Campus
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ 08903 (908) 932-6861
(908) 932-1922 FAX Back to top
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