The strongest of the arguments is that to allow this would give the political parties with the most financial backing (i.e Labour and the Right Party) an unfair advantage in reaching more people with their message. The smaller parties like the Coastal Party (Kystpartiet) and even the Socialist Left Part (SV) would not be able to fund as much political advertising on TV. To lift the ban on televised political ads would be to subject the politics to the mechanisms of the capitalist market.To a certain extent I do agree with this argument. Televised advertising is expensive, and only the largest and wealthiest parties would be able to afford to advertise enough for it to be effective. If it were to be allowed, it could be that this would lead to political parties being more driven to seek funding from private business. I do not believe that anyone gives away money for free. Funding comes with a price. So, if we could avoid that, it would be good.
All good arguments for upholding the ban aside, I still think it is a real democratic problem that the political parties are not allowed to present their political agendas and programmes in any unfiltered way on TV. Sure, we do have a good coverage of politics in the news, and politicians do partake on political TV-debates and other TV programs. But these are all filtered by journalists or debate-show hosts, often seeking to make their shows more interesting by focusing on the more sensational aspects and on conflict than necessarily on the parties' political programmes. And it is the journalists and show-hosts that decide exactly what is discussed.
It could be argued that the parties are allowed to present their message elsewhere, like e.g on their websites and in other media where they are allowed to advertise. But TV is still most people's main channel of information about politics, and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future.
Maybe in this matter we could get some ideas from the UK. Political advertising is not allowed in any laissez-faire fashion there either, but the parties are allowed a certain amount of free political TV advertising. This could be a way of solving this that we could contemplate as well. Each political party could be allotted a certain time for presenting their policies and their programmes on the state owned NRK (the same amount for each party or based on their number of seats in the Parliament). There could even be a minimum timeframe to avoid the parties presenting their policies in a too simplified way. Even "negative ads" could be allowed, by which I mean ads that point out weaknesses in the opposing parties' policies - this is a very effective way of unveiling inaccuracies etc. in such information.
Even if we take into account all the arguments for keeping a ban on political ads in TV, it is in my opinion very peculiar that we want to prevent our political parties and politicians from presenting their own policies. Instead of doing everything we can to educate the voters on the policies they are voting for or against, we are de facto limiting the range of information that voters are allowed. And in my mind, we are banning one of the most important sources of information.
3 comments:
Hi,
This is so much different from where I am. Political ads are all over the TV. The parties and candidates with the money do as much as they can to fill up the airwaves. There are no limitations on these ads except for how much money you have to spend.
The amount of money you have as a candidate, of course, has very little to do with how good a political program you are offering. The relationship might be as simple as this: If your program appeals to big corporations,, then they will give you a lot of cash as a way to support a program that they like.
President elect Obama was said to have recieved a lot of cash from small donors. He is said to now be beholden to no one. However, he still managed to accept a lot of cash from some corporations. The Democrats won big because the corporations wanted to get their support, and so for them, success bred more success.
I am thinking it odd that politics is banned in some major way in Norway. I believe you are correct that people will get most of their information from television. It does not require much effort. You just turn on the set and in the information flows into your living room.
I guess I'm a little envious. The ban on political ads there for the reasons you gave suggests that the people still retain some control over the television as a public resource. That aspect of the airwaves has long since been trampled to death here.
It seems to me that television could serve the public better if it had more political discussion, rather than have discussion limited so that money could not overwhelm the discourse.
I'm an American Norwegian that returns to visit Andalsnes every year. I remember the days when no commercials at all were allowed in the Norwegian media. I miss that actually. Commercialism is a sign of the capitalistic ideal. Norway is richer now, but does not need to move to a broader free market mentality. Halvor Opsal. www.northernvox.com
Steven and Halvor, thank you very much for your comments.
Norway and the US is worlds apart in this respect, no doubt about it. I have seen some of the US political ads, and they are not always very sympathetic. And the fact that politicians and political parties have to seek their funding from private companies will in my mind inevitably lead to some kind of indebtedness-relationship. Something is expected in return for the funding. That is not good at all, and one very good reason for keeping a ban on political ads like you have in the US.
What I am proposing is not so much traditional ads like in the US, but more like allotted time so that the parties have an opportunity to present their message to the general public in a way that is not filtered by journalists or any other third party. To me, this seems like an essential part of a democracy. And if we could figure out some way to achieve this that would be fair to all the different parties, that would be fantastic.
As you point out, Steven, the TV-market is a lot more regulated in Norway than in the USA in many ways. For one thing there are quite a few channels compared to the US, and there are quite strict rules for commercials. In many ways, that is good also. Actually, I remember the times when commercials were not allowed on TV at all, which basically was the time when the state-owned channel NRK had a monopoly if I'm not mistaken.
When it comes to televised political discussions and debates, there is of course no lack of that. Especially around election time, there are loads of TV programs where politicians debate this and that. But as I point out, these are very much directed by the program hosts. Personally, I think that the political parties should be entitled to present their solutions to the public in a forum that is not a debate with other politicians, where they get time to say what they want, how they want to say it, etc. That could be a very valuable addition to the way we are currently informed about the political programmes of the different parties.
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