Free TV for Candidates Is in the Public Interest

President Clinton has given the strongest push yet to the effort to require broadcasters to provide free television time to candidates in federal elections, a change that among other things would lighten the poisonous burden on office-seekers of raising huge amounts of money to pay for costly TV ads. Clinton has linked the free air time issue to the granting of federal licenses to broadcasters who are preparing to move into a new era of transmitting via high-definition digital technology. But why wait? Free air time for candidates isn’t something to plead or bargain for. It’s something that should be required.

The Federal Communications Commission regulates broadcasting under a law mandating it to assure that the industry serves the “public interest, convenience and necessity.” FCC Chairman Reed Hundt says the commission already has “the power, precedent and procedures to issue a rule ordering free air time access by candidates.” That rule should be issued now, so that free air time is available by next year’s congressional campaign.

Broadcasters, of course, claim that any requirement for them to provide free air time constitutes theft, arguing that it would violate the 5th Amendment to the Constitution by depriving them of property without compensation. That contention, we think, is nonsense.

Broadcasters don’t own the airwaves; they are simply licensed to use them, a no-cost grant of power that earns bundles of money, including the hundreds of millions of dollars they reaped selling ads to presidential and congressional candidates in last year’s campaign. The government does not charge them a royalty for their use of the broadcast spectrum. It simply asks that they responsibly serve the public interest. It’s time to hold broadcasters more rigorously to that requirement.

Free time would not eliminate all the squalid and corrupting aspects of political fund-raising and campaigning. But it would reduce pressures on candidates to solicit ever-larger contributions from special-interest sources, and it would let voters see candidates outside the artificial context of slick multimillion-dollar ads. It’s a much needed step on the long road to reforming political campaigning.