Political Quotes

“It would certainly increase the price of television stations and television networks. It would be a bonanza to those corporate owners, as any other corporation that had a political agenda would find the only way it could effectively communicate its ideas would be through the ownership of a television network or a major metropolitan newspaper and the like. But the point made by the Senator from Kentucky is a most interesting one. Westinghouse and Disney and GE don't need to give soft money to parties, do they? They don't need to come up with their political ideas indirectly. They have the ability to communicate them directly, without control, without limitation as to amount, to the people of the United States. So the Senator from Kentucky has made my own point better than I did myself. If you are going to limit political speech effectively, you are going to have to limit everyone's political speech. And the fewer the exemptions from those limitations, the more valuable those unlimited mouthpieces are because they cannot effectively be countered, except by someone else with the exemption. I want to repeat one more time that I believe the constitutional amendment that was seriously debated, but defeated, on the floor of this Senate in March would have permitted limitations on what those television networks could have done, what the New York Times and every newspaper in the United States could have done.”