New York Times Stance Reflects Conflict of Interest

Re: “The Flaw in Buckley v. Valeo,” New York Times Editorial, February 8, 2000:

The Supreme Court’s free-speech rationalizations for prohibiting political campaign spending limits, in Buckley v. Valeo, may have been “spurious,” as the Times asserts in the above editorial. But instituting spending limits would leave one sector completely unfettered, and potentially unchallengeable, in the contest for public opinion: the news media.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R - KY), in the Senate debate on campaign finance reform last October, spoke of the New York Times’ frequent editorial support for reform as “issue advocacy, if you will, paid for by corporate soft money.” Citing public opinion polls, he went on to claim that “70 percent believe reporter bias influences the coverage of politics,” and “61 percent believe the candidate preferred by a reporter will beat the candidate with more money.”

The ownership of the mainstream news media has become increasingly narrow in recent years. If reform fails to address this problem, it will merely substitute one elite for another. In addition to upholding diversity of ownership, bold reform should eliminate affiliations between news and any unrelated business, since these can only corrupt objectivity.