Media calls for exemption to ethics law

Published on March 13, 2008
by Michael Schrimpf

File Under: Faulty Assumptions, Lobbying Regulation

Roll Call published an editorial ($) yesterday ridiculing the new ethics law that bars some journalists from taking members of Congress or their staffers to lunch.

Put simply, if a journalist is employed by a news organization that employs lobbyists they can not take a Hill source to lunch. But these new rules do not apply to media outlets that do not employ lobbysists.

The editorial maintains, therefore, that the new law "does provide a marginal advantage for reporters not covered by the ban."

The editorial goes on to note that "Greg Keeley, president of the Senate Press Secretaries Association and spokesman for Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), had it right when he told Roll Call that the rules are 'too complicated,' adding, 'what influence a journalist is going to have on my boss’s legislative agenda, it’s a bit of a long bow to draw.'

Roll Call agrees by concluding that "We have a solution to offer: House and Senate amendments exempting accredited journalists from the ethics rule." 

So, essentially Roll Call argues that the media should be exempt from the ethics rules because the idea that a journalist might influence the legislative agenda is "a long bow to draw."

Needless to say, such reasoning merits further exploration.

News coverage of issues plays a prominent role in policy debates.  There is no way to credibly argue that the Washington Post's coverage of Walter Reed didn't help shape action on The Hill. Similarly the media played major roles in regards to the legislative reaction to the Iraq war, waterboarding and the attorney general confirmation process, the mortgage crisis, and on down the line.

The correct answer that Roll Call may have been trying to get across is that the actual act of a reporter buying lunch will not shape how a legislator votes. But if this is true for the powerful Fourth Estate, why would it also not be true for a lobbyist from the Human Rights Campaign?