Corporate Ownership and News Bias Revisited: Newspaper Coverage of the Supreme Court’s Citizens

United Ruling

CATIE SNOW BAILARD

The clear financial benefits accrued to owners of television stations as a result of the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (FEC) decision opens the door to an important question: Did the degree to which media corporations benefited from the changes in campaign finance law influence their news outlets’ coverage of the Citizens United decision? In other words, is it possible to identify variation in how media outlets covered the Supreme Court decision that correlates with the degree to which those outlets’ parent companies profited from the resulting increase in campaign spending? Answering this question will provide an important and much-too-uncommon opportu- nity to systematically test for bias in news coverage. Replicating the method used by Gilens and Hertzman (2000) in their own test of coverage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, this analysis reveals that newspapers belonging to media corporations that own more television stations covered the Citizens United ruling systematically differently—and more favorably—than those with few or no television stations. This has important implications for the degree to which the news produced by increasingly conglomerated and corporatized media companies may eschew neutral or balanced coverage in favor of news frames that promote their own financial interests.

Keywords campaigns, Citizens United v. FEC, elections, media bias, news, political advertising

“I think Thomas Jefferson would have said, ‘The more speech, the better.’ That’s what the First Amendment is all about, so long as the people know where the speech is coming from.… You can’t separate the speech from the money that facilitates the speech.”

“What the Supreme Court did in Citizens United is to say to these same billionaires: ‘You own and control the economy, you own Wall Street, you own the coal companies, you own the oil companies. Now, for a very small percentage of your wealth, we’re going to give you the opportunity to own the United States government.’”

In Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (2010), the Supreme Court ruled by a 5–4 decision that independent political expenditures by corporations and

Catie Snow Bailard is Assistant Professor, School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University.

Address correspondence to Catie Snow Bailard, Assistant Professor, George Washington University, School of Media and Public Affairs, 805 21st Street NW, Suite #400, Washington, DC 20052. E-mail: cbailard@gwu.edu

Political Communication, 33:583–604, 2016 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1058-4609 print / 1091-7675 online DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2016.1142489

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unions qualified as protected speech under the First Amendment, effectively opening the door to unlimited campaign spending by these groups. Under the new law, any indivi- dual or group could now donate any sum of money to a super political action committee (i.e., Super PAC), who could spend that money as they saw fit to attack or support any candidate or proposition up until Election Day—so long as this spending was indepen- dent of the national parties and the candidates’ own campaigns. This overturned previous restrictions on electioneering put in place by McCain and Feingold’s Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which had limited what could be said and when in advertisements sponsored by these groups. In addition, while current law still requires public disclosure of the identities of contributors to Super PACs, nonprofit corporations and local employee associations that qualify as “social welfare groups,” according to the Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(4), are exempt from disclosure requirements in the wake of the Citizens United ruling.

In the years following this ruling, political spending in elections has mushroomed. The total cost of the 2012 elections topped out at $6.3 billion—an increase of more than 50% over the $4.15 billion price tag of the 2004 elections (Center for Responsive Politics, 2012). A substantial portion of this increase is a result of independent political spending by the outside groups that were empowered by the Citizens United ruling, many of whom did not disclose their donors. Specifically, outside spending in 2012 surpassed $1.3 billion dollars—whereas more than $600 million of this came from Super PACs who are required to disclose the source of their funds, more than $300 million was also spent by the non-disclosing social welfare groups (Center for Responsive Politics, 2012).

As the quotes presented earlier illustrate, Citizens United is a flashpoint for heated debate. While it has drawn scorn from citizens and politicians alike—including a memorable public remonstration of the Supreme Court members by President Barack Obama during a State of the Union address—the ruling also has many strong propo- nents. Supporters of the decision include the National Rifle Association, the United States Chamber of Commerce, analysts with the Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation, and the American Civil Liberties Union. In response to critics’ protests that the ruling would increase government corruption, for example, Cato Institute analysts John Samples and Ilya Shapiro (2010) argued that, although the decision may lead to costlier campaigns, it is important to remember “that none of this money will go directly to candidates for office. It will go instead to broadcasting or otherwise communicating speech about candidates and issues. Such increases in spending should be welcome because studies have shown that more spending—more political communication—leads to better-informed voters.”

Another perspective in the debate regarding the consequences of Citizens United suggests that, whether or not more money in politics is a good thing in theory, the deluge of spending that followed this ruling may not make all that much difference in practice. In this vein, the Sunlight Foundation calculated the “returns on investment” that outside groups received for their 2012 general election spending. They found that, “After outside groups spent more than $1.3 billion in independent expenditures to influence the outcome of the election, we now get to see just what all that money bought them—or didn’t. Turns out some of the smart money wasn’t so smart after all when it came to making political bets” (Young, 2012). For example, of the more than $100 million spent by American Crossroads, only 1.29% of the races that received a portion of their funds ended in the desired result, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce only faring marginally better at 6.9% (Young, 2012).

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Whatever the consequences for the candidates, policy groups, citizens, and the American democratic process prove to be, there is one group that has indisputably benefited from the Citizens United ruling—anyone working in a field associated with the campaign industry. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, nearly $500 million of the $1.3 billion dollars spent by outside groups in the 2012 election was funneled through just six media companies, who typically used the money to produce ads or to purchase the slots where the ads ultimately aired (Dooling, 2012). Other undeniable winners in the deluge of political spending post-Citizens United are the television stations that air these political advertisements. Specifically, in 2012 political groups spent nearly $3.4 billion on television advertising—with $2.8 billion going to local television stations, $104 million spent on national networks, and $467 million spent at cable networks (Lieberman, 2012). According to McChesney and Nichols (2012), “Back in the 1960s and ’70s TV candidate advertising constituted an almost imperceptible part of total TV advertising revenues”; however, in 2012 “political advertising will account for over 20% of TV station ad revenues.” In the words of industry insider Eric Greenburg, “Political advertising and elections are to TV what Christmas is to retail” (quoted in McChesney & Nichols, 2012). Thus, it is not surprising that in the wake of the Citizens United ruling, “Every media channel and media outlet, from local stations to the networks, is licking their lips over this feast of spending.” (Kip Cassino, quoted in Dexheimer, 2012)

The clear financial benefits accrued to owners of television stations as a result of the Citizens United decision opens the door to an important question: Did the degree to which media companies benefited from the changes in campaign finance law influence their news outlets’ coverage of the Citizens United decision? In other words, is it possible to identify variation in how news outlets covered this Supreme Court decision that correlates with the degree to which those outlets’ parent companies profited from the resulting increase in campaign spending?

Answering this question will provide an important and far-too-uncommon opportunity to systematically test for bias in news coverage. In an era when cries of media bias abound, the opportunities to systematically and empirically test for biased coverage remain elusive. Nevertheless, as media consolidation continues apace, whether the interests belonging to the handful of corporations that own the majority of America’s media outlets seep into the news coverage that their outlets produce has clear import in a political system founded on the ideals of robust and informed political deliberation, a marketplace of ideas, and a watchdog press that is vigilant on behalf of citizens.