Posted on 09/05/2007 3:33:17 PM PDT by Amerigomag
Applies Media Exemption to Political Blogs
WASHINGTON – The Federal Election Commission announced today that it has unanimously resolved two complaints alleging that Internet blog activity is subject to Commission regulation, finding that the activity is exempt from regulation under the media or volunteer exemption.
In Matter Under Review (MUR) 5928, the Commission determined that Kos Media, L.L.C., which operates the website DailyKos, did not violate the Federal Election Campaign Act. The Commission rejected allegations that the site should be regulated as a political committee because it charges a fee to place advertising on its website and it provides “a gift of free advertising and candidate media services” by posting blog entries that support candidates. The Commission determined that the website falls squarely within the media exemption and is therefore not subject to federal regulation under the Act.
Since 1974, media activity has been explicitly exempted from federal campaign finance regulation. In March 2006, the Commission made clear that this exemption extends to online media publications and that “costs incurred in covering or carrying a news story, commentary, or editorial by any broadcasting station. . . , Web site, newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication, including any Internet or electronic publication,” are not a contribution or expenditure unless the facility is owned by a political party, committee, or candidate. With respect to MUR 5928, the FEC found that Kos Media meets the definition of a media entity and that the activity described in the complaint falls within the media exemption. Thus, activity on the DailyKos website does not constitute a contribution or expenditure that would trigger political committee status. The Commission therefore found no reason to believe Kos Media, DailyKos.com, or Markos Moulitsas Zuniga violated federal campaign finance law.
In MUR 5853, the Commission rejected allegations that Michael L. Grace made unreported expenditures when he leased space on a computer server to create a “blog” which advocated the defeat of Representative Mary Bono in the November 2006 election. The Commission also rejected allegations that Grace coordinated these expenditures with Bono’s opponent in the race, David Roth, and found that no in-kind contributions to Roth’s campaign resulted from Grace’s blogging activity. The Commission also found that the respondent did not fraudulently misrepresent himself in violation of 2U.S.C. § 441h.
The Act exempts from regulation volunteer activity by individuals. In the FEC’s Internet regulations, the Commission clarified that an individual’s use, without compensation, of equipment and personal services for blogging, creating, or hosting a website for the purpose of influencing a Federal election are not expenditures subject to the restrictions of campaign finance law. Even if there were some costs or value associated with Mr. Grace’s blog, these costs are exempt from Commission regulations. The FEC therefore found no reason to believe Mr. Grace or the Roth campaign violated federal campaign finance law.
McCain and Feingold should both be embarrassed for writing that crap legislation.
[And Fred Thompson chaired the committee that passed it to the full Senate. It initially was labeled the McCain-Feingold-Thompson Campaign Finance Reform Act.]
This is good news unless it’s yet another case where any behavior by liberals is OK while far more innocent acts be conservatives are subject to unending scrutiny.
Please cite a source that this has ANYTHING to do with McCain-Feingold.
You do realize that there are OTHER campaign rules, right? These rulings were to do with the Federal Election Campaign Act.
he Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA, Pub.L. 92-225, 86 Stat. 3, enacted 1972-02-07, 2 U.S.C. § 431 et seq.) is a United States federal law which increased disclosure of contributions for federal campaigns, and amended in 1974 to place legal limits on the campaign contributions. The amendment also created the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
I had no idea Fred was making Federal laws back in 1971.
FEC ruling shoves Old Media & Bi-partisan elites back in their place by affirming the people's own 1st Amendment right to freedom of the press
Everything you learned in school about freedom of the press was wrong. The American nation has swallowed the un-American notion that the First Amendment's call for freedom of the press actually granted special rights to a special group of people called "the press." How could that possibly be, given that the country was founded on the belief that there were no "special" people and everyone had the same rights? Moreover, the First Amendment was written at a time when there were no journalists as we think of them now - a time when newspapers were produced mostly in one-man shops by "printers" (not "reporters," "journalists," "columnists," or "editors"), 30 years before the country even had its first full-time reporter.
The truth is that just as in its preceding phrase, the 1st Amendment granted us all freedom of speech so that we could say what was on our minds, in its correct reading we are also granted "free use of the printing press" so that we can publish what is on our minds. In a letter to Noah Webster, Jefferson referred to this vital need for "“free presses," a usage that makes it clear he was talking about machines and not special people.
And yet, out of either ignorance or malice, Old Media and elites on both sides of the aisle supported the indefensible McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill - a bill which increased their free speech and press rights at the expense of everyone else by banning all broadcast political advocacy advertising mentioning candidates' names within 60 days of a federal election. Thankfully, they were just dealt a crushing blow-back when the FEC affirmed lefty blog DailyKos.com's right to political advocacy, establishing that every blog can say whatever it wants during that crucial 60-day period (see Mary Katharine Ham). In other words, all men are created equal and have the same inalienable rights. Bloggers and journalists, same rights. It's an idea that ought to seem more self-evident than revolutionary.
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