FEC vs. Digest

Regulating the news?

Incensed by a Reader's Digest article suggesting that Senator Edward Kennedy had lied about Chappaquiddick, a volunteer worker in his presidential campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission. Identifying herself as "a concerned citizen," Larryann C. Willis of Vale, Ore., accused the magazine of making corporate campaign contributions in violation of federal election laws.

She alleged three separate infractions:

commissioning a computer study on how fast Kennedy was driving when his car went off the bridge, drowning Mary Jo Kopechne; buying a study of the tides off Chappaquiddick that night in July 1969; and distributing videotapes of the computer re-enactment of the fatal accident to major news organizations.

A hearing on the case is set for this week. The FEC has already ruled that paying for the two studies was not illegal.

But the commission found "reason to believe" that the Digest had violated election law by sending out videotapes to promote its February 1980 story. Many journalists and First Amendment scholars were alarmed by the FEC move, seeing it as an ominous Government encroachment on press freedom.

Reader's Digest refused to answer 15 questions from the FEC, claiming protection under the First Amendment and pointing out that news stories were exempted from campaign contribution restrictions. The magazine asked a New York federal district court for a preliminary injunction against the FEC investigation. Argued the Digest: "The fact of being investigated by the United States Government for alleged violation of a statute carrying criminal penalties has a chilling effect all by itself." Such investigations, it added, "can be a very effective form of censorship."

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