Political Ads: Do Minority Media Outlets Benefit?

[Commentary] With less than two weeks remaining before Election Day, the presidential candidates and Super PACs have spent nearly $1 billion on advertising, enriching broadcast station owners. But without unraveling confusing datasets from at least two separate federal agencies, it is almost impossible for the average person to determine how much of that money is being spent on broadcast stations owned by minorities. While the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) requires anyone buying broadcast advertising time in excess of $10,000 on behalf of a political candidate to report, within 24 hours, the “amount of each disbursement of more than $200 … and the identification of the person to whom the disbursement was made,” it is almost impossible to cross-reference this data with data the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) collects on minority station ownership.

[Miller is Deputy Director and Senior Policy Counsel of the Media and Technology Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies]