Do It Yourself Campaign Reform: Turn Off Your TV!

In one respect, yesterday’s Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to buy what are in effect campaign advertisements for political candidates, without any restraint on amount spent or source of money, was a tragedy for democracy. Campaign finance reform is, in effect, dead. Candidates and their campaigns may not themselves take hundreds of thousands of dollars of money from corporations, but the corporations will now be allowed to spend that much money on the behalf of candidates, earning the allegiance of those candidates through advertisements that explicitly support the candidates. It isn’t a direct bribe into the pocket of a candidate, but it has the same effect.

There is a weak link in this chain of corruption, however, and you hold that link in your hands. This form of corruption only works if people are there to watch or listen to the advertisements that corporations buy on behalf of candidates. If people don’t watch television, listen to commercial radio, or visit big web sites that run advertisements, then there’s no amount of money that corporations can spend to get their message across. So long as people are getting their information and entertainment outside of the mainstream media, they’re out of the shouting range of the corporate campaigning.

You’ve got a choice. You can continue to buy cable television programming, along with its corporate advertising. You continue to listen to commercial radio. You can be a consumer of the mainstream media.

You can also say no.

If you don’t want the corporations to be able to buy elected officials in our government, then opt out of their corrupt media system. Turn off your TV. Get DVDs or online video for entertainment instead. Don’t subscribe to the news weekly magazines like Time and Newsweek, which are out of date by the time they get into your mailbox anyway. Don’t frequent the big web sites that take advertisements. Find your own way around the massive, rich alternative media that exists out there without advertisements.

You have the power to make corporate political campaign advertisements irrelevant. You have to make a choice. Which do you care about most, American democracy or American Idol?

Vote. Now.