Special Counsel for Gingrich’s Cable Dealings : A company angling to buy PBS puts the Speaker on $200,000 worth of television time--free.

Watch Newt squirm. Once again, Speaker Gingrich has played loose with the ethical rules of Congress and yet another complaint has been filed with the House Ethics Committee.

The problem this time is that Jones Intercable has granted Gingrich 20 free hours, worth $200,000, to air tapes of his highly propagandistic “Renewing American Civilization” course. Clearly, this violates House Rule 43, Clause 4, which prohibits a member from receiving any gifts worth more than $250 from a single source within a year. The rules define a gift as “payment, subscription, advance, forbearance, rendering or deposit of money, services or anything of value.”

Gingrich’s lame excuse for why the cable time should be exempted is that legislators go on news programs like “Meet the Press” all the time without reporting this as a gift. Surely he knows the difference between being interviewed on a news show by independent professionals who are often critical and being given a huge block of free time to be filled at the Speaker’s whim. Politicians expect to pay for that sort of unrestricted time, and their messages are called commercials, not courses.

More serious, the beneficence extended by the cable company to the Speaker clearly violates the Ethics in Government Act of 1989, which states that “No member of Congress shall solicit or accept anything of value from a person . . . whose interests may be substantially affected by the performance or nonperformance of the individual’s official duties.”

Gingrich spokesman Tony Blankley blithely dismisses the charge of conflict of interest by stating that Gingrich’s duties as Speaker prevent him from getting directly involved in legislation involving Jones. Just how dumb do they think the voters are? There are numerous crucial matters before Congress of great interest to cable operators, ranging from telecommunication reform and cable regulation to the privatization of public broadcasting.

How supercilious to suggest that the Speaker has nothing to say on the fate of those bills. As Gingrich stated last month in a speech promising the demise of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, “The power of the Speaker is the power of recognition, and I will not recognize any proposal that will appropriate money for the CPB.”

Forcing the CPB to go private directly serves the stated interest of Jones Intercable in purchasing the Public Broadcasting System. “If they proceed with privatization, then we would want to be in a position to plead our case and be involved in the process,” Glenn Jones, the company’s CEO, wrote in January to Sen. Larry Pressler (R.-S.D.), who is leading the fight to destroy public broadcasting. Jones added that his company would be interested in eventually buying local public-television stations. They are the real prize and Jones Intercable is not alone in chomping at the bit to acquire them. Gingrich’s book publisher, Rupert Murdoch, owns Fox Television, which is constantly attempting to add stations to its expanding network. Both Warner Brothers and Paramount are having trouble finding local stations on which to broadcast their new national networks. Public-television stations, many of which are in the sought-after low-number VHF channels, are the last source of plunder.

Gingrich last month made it very clear that transferring public VHF stations to commercial networks is his goal: “They’re sitting on very valuable assets. Channel 8 in Atlanta is choice spectrum. Sell that slot to a commercial operation, move PBS to Channel 36, and Georgia public broadcasting could live forever on the interest from that trust fund.”

There are obstacles in the law and in Federal Communications Commission regulations on the commercialization of public stations, but abolishing the FCC is also on Gingrich’s agenda. In another possible conflict, Tele-Communications Inc., the nation’s largest cable operator, is planning to carry the conservative National Empowerment Television, which also features Gingrich’s course and his call-in show.

One irony in the possible acquisition of PBS by Jones is not only his stated intention to include commercials in the broadcasts, but also the real prospect that U.S. public broadcasting would be foreign-owned. Last year, Bell Canada International purchased 30% of Jones Intercable; it has an option to take over the company within eight years.

Suddenly the venerable institution of public broadcasting, which stands as an island of good taste in the sea of tawdry broadcasting, is threatened by a hostile takeover. Before this goes further, an independent counsel should be appointed to get to the bottom of this sorry escapade.