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Fallon for Congress: What is the Media Doing?
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Apr 12, 2008 Posted by Stacy Brenton
EENR Progresssive Blog
by: heartland dem, Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 10:20:12 AM EDTIn progressive Democrat Ed Fallon's race to unseat Bush Dog incumbent Congressman Leonard Boswell, the mainstream media seem to be asleep at the wheel. Thus far, reporters seem content to file stories without doing any real research. A case in point is how the media has reported on the sources of Rep. Boswell's contributions. Apart from an article by Jane Norman, the Washington bureau writer for The Des Moines Register, the coverage by the mainstream media -- newspaper and television -- has been disappointing. When Rep. Boswell appeared on Iowa Press on February 29, 2008, he was asked about PAC contributions to his campaign (74% of the money he raised last year), he deflected the questions saying that his donations came from teachers, nurses, and farmers. No more follow-up.
In an article published March 14, 2008 in The Knoxville Journal-Express, Boswell campaign manager Scott Ourth claimed not to know the percentage of Boswell's funding that comes from PACs. But he went on to make an incredible claim:
"Ourth said he does not know this percentage, but most of Boswell's funding comes from small donations from everyday Iowans. He added that if groups of teachers, nurses, etc., want to pool their money to make donations, it is their right." No more follow-up.
But I saw one sign of hope for the future. The March 7th issue of Grinnell College's newspaper, Scarlet & Black, reported on recent comments by Rep. Boswell's field director, Grant Woodard: "Woodard said that the 'vast majority' of Boswell's fundraising from PACs comes from labor unions." But his time there was follow-up. The reported actually checked on the veracity of the claim about PAC money.
"Opensecrets.org reports that in 2007, 48.8 percent of Boswell's PAC money came from business groups and 27.4 percent from unions. In 2005-6, he raised 38.5 percent from business PACs, and 24.2 percent from unions."
Finally. A college newspaper reporter, David Montgomery, managed to do what most full-time journalists covering the campaign did not -- he did a little investigating.
Ed Fallon was the first candidate for Congress to sign all four pledge's of Larry Lessig's Change Congress movement -- to not accept contributions from registered lobbyists or PACs, to support the abolition of "earmarks," to support reform to increase transparency in Congress, and to support public financing of public elections. Whichever Democrat is elected president this year, he or she will need a more progressive Democratic majority than we have now. We need people like Ed Fallon in Congress.