WP: FEC Hears Bloggers' Bid to Share Media Exemption

[DeepModem Mom]

FEC Hears Bloggers' Bid to Share Media Exemption
By Brian Faler
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, July 12, 2005; Page A19


They go to the political conventions. They cover the White House. Now, some bloggers want the same special protections from campaign finance laws that the mainstream media enjoy.

A growing number of the online pundits of various political persuasions are urging the Federal Election Commission to explicitly grant them the same wholesale exemptions from regulations governing contributions to political candidates that mainstream reporters, editorial writers and pundits get.

"I'm troubled by the fact that participants in this emerging medium, which allows anyone the opportunity to participate in the national political discourse at a minimum cost, would face stricter regulation and stronger scrutiny -- along with the potential for ruinous legal expenses -- than would participants in media outlets owned by large corporations such as Time Warner, General Electric and Disney," blogger Duncan Black told the FEC at a hearing late last month. Black, under the pen name Atrios, runs the liberal blog Eschaton.

Mike Krempasky, who runs a Republican blog called RedState.org, said at the hearing, "What goal would be served by protecting Rush Limbaugh's multimillion-dollar talk radio program -- but not a self-published blogger with a fraction of the audience?"

It is one of several knotty, sometimes arcane but potentially far-reaching issues the six-member panel is now considering. The agency is taking up the issue after a court ordered it to rewrite a number of its regulations, including ones that had left political activities on the Internet virtually free from government oversight. The court did not tell the FEC how to do it, though, giving the agency the freedom to address whatever issues it chooses....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/11/AR2005071101376.html