Rebuffed on an earlier bid to regulate the media’s influence on elections, Democrats on the Federal Election Commission are now openly contemplating restrictions on U.S. media with foreign ownership, including the New York Times.
In an extraordinary assault on American firms with foreign ownership, the FEC Democrats are eager to block contributions from companies like the Times, whose top shareholder is Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, and presumably others like Ben & Jerry’s, owned by European conglomerate Unilever, and Fiat Chrysler.
During a Thursday hearing, Democratic FEC Commissioners Ellen Weintraub and Ann Ravel pushed for a rule targeting foreign owners of U.S. companies, claiming that they can unlawfully influence elections with contributions and other efforts available to American-owned firms.
Republicans pushed back, suggesting that the effort was too wide-ranging and an attack on Americans who work for those companies.
They focused on how the rule would hit media like the Times that have foreign ownership, and concluded that it was a backdoor bid to limit free speech and undercut the so-called “media exemption” from FEC regulation and meddling.
“That, to me, is certainly not something that the federal government should be engaged in doing, and it sort of falls into the, again, I’m trying to be respectful, it falls into the category of, you know, another attempt to restrict speech,” said Republican Commissioner Caroline Hunter.
Regulating the Times came up when Republican Commissioner Lee E. Goodman pressed Weintraub on her effort and how it would impact the paper, and other foreign owned media.
GOODMAN: So, you would consider, your proposal would contemplate taking up then foreign ownership of the New York Times as potentially tainting the New York Times?
WEINTRAUB: If you want to consider media entities and the foreign national, I am willing to consider that.
She also added, “In a rule-making, we could set new rules. That’s the whole point of a rule-making, and if you want to raise the issue in that rule-making, I think it’s actually a very interesting issue that we have not taken a position on yet, what happens, how do the rules on media ownership, on the media exemption and the, um, foreign national ban, what’s the interplay between those? I don’t think that’s a topic that the Commission has addressed yet, but we could consider it in this rule-making.”
That stunned Goodman, who has led a three-year fight against Democratic efforts to restrict and regulate conservative media, and who has earlier warned of Democratic efforts to regulate the Internet and to block conservative media, in particular, from distributing free stories in the key months before the election.
The new rule pushed by Democrats would likely bar the Times from endorsing candidates too, since that would be an illegal foreign contribution of sorts to the candidate.
“I was surprised by Commissioner Weintraub’s suggestion that the New York Times might be regulated as a foreign corporation,” he told Secrets after the FEC meeting ended.
“The government should not presume the disloyalty of American citizens who work for Chrysler in Detroit or Ben & Jerry’s in Vermont. Congress has prohibited foreigners from making contributions to candidates and the FEC has a strong record of enforcing that law,” Goodman added.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
