Washington Examiner Runs Q&A with FEC Commissioner Goodman

Here:

Examiner: It’s popular in academia, the media and generally in popular culture to say there needs to be more regulation of federal campaign spending. Do you feel you’re in the minority?

Goodman: If we’re talking about the right of The New York Times, the Washington Examiner or Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post to spend large amounts of corporate money to publish editorial opinion about elected politicians and public officials like me, I’m clearly in the majority of public opinion. If we talk about protecting the free speech rights of online bloggers, Drudge Report and YouTube videos, I’m also in the majority.

Now if we could just get the major press organizations to support everyone else’s right to speak, we might move public opinion to appreciate the free speech rights at stake in the debate over super PACs.

The rest of us are not as well-funded as The New York Times, Washington Post or the Washington Examiner, and we cannot own a printing press or a broadcast facility. The way in which we disseminate our information through a printing press is by renting inches in the press owner’s publication, or seconds of a broadcast.

All a super PAC really does is rent 30 seconds of a television station’s broadcast time or print inches in the Washington Post. First Amendment rights should not turn on whether I own the printing press or rent the printing press.

Share this: