Campaign Audio from PRX

The WSJ has it that John McCain is getting around campaign finance limits by creating state victory funds in key states this election year: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico, California, Ohio and Florida. This means contributors can effectively increase their contribution to McCain from $4,600 to $70,00.

Hope stations in the key states run something on it. To help out here’s some FREE resources on money in politics:

• A collection of sound bites from each of the candidates
• An extended interview with Jules Whitcover
  • (Whitcover wrote the book No Way to Pick A President: How Money and Hired Have Debased American Elections).
• Here’s a super fast way to get local data on money in politics
• A feature (4:45) on the history of money in politics
• Everything we have so far

The candidates have so far spent most of their time on the coasts and barely addressing issues central to the heartland. So I wanted to spotlight an excellent interview from Montana Public Radio’s Sally Mauk. She grabbed Clinton after a rally and in 8 minutes asked three key questions for Western states: coal, forest management, and tribal issues.

Coal is her most salient position–trying to blend energy independence, economic concerns, with the environmental core of the Democratic party. In the interview Clinton says, yes, she supports a moratorium on new coal plants. In another interview with West Virgina Public Radio, Clinton ducks and dodges questions of mountaintop removal.

Don’t know for sure, but I wonder how friendly Clinton is to coal staters. But I bet newsrooms out there can find the answer. Go to coal mines, steel plants, environmentalists, and everyday energy users and ask them the questions Clinton wouldn’t answer.

And if you do a story, post it to PRX! Here’s some other resources to help out:

• Here’s a uber-quick gloss of coal in the US
• Here’s an interview Clinton did with (liberal-leaning) Salon.com about the environmental impact of coal
• Here’s Clinton delivering her energy policy
• And here’s McCain’s energy policy
• (sorry, no Obama. But if you have it, post it!)

For our brethren in states still covering the Democratic primary, here’s 3 (FREE) sound bite collections to help make the elections local and tailored to your listeners.

• Health Care (Obama & Clinton)
• Foreign Policy
• Economy (Obama & Clinton)
• Or all of our speeches tagged and ready to go

So how do you use these? Give them to someone in your newsroom to take a closer look at the issues your listeners care about. It can be as easy as bringing a local university professor into the studio. Or it can be ambitious like what Wisconsin Public Radio did, a 4-parter that reached deep into the community.

Other ways :

• Use them as conversation-starters for local talk/call-in shows.
• Add balance for when only one candidate comes to town.
• Generate more web traffic by posting them online and encouraging listeners to post their responses.

There’s lots of things you can do. If you think of other ways, tell me about it!

We have audio from Clinton and McCain speaking in Memphis about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King. It’s doubtful we can have it posted by East Coast drivetime, but it will be available for airing tonight and over the weekend. Here is the transcript to Clinton’s speech and here is McCain’s. Here is Obama’s recent speech on race. Here are a collection of recordings on AfricanAmericanIssues (some good stuff in there).

Also, here’s a good example of how newsrooms can use PRX to produce good radio quickly. It’s from Susan Phillips at WHYY; she used raw audio from Obama’s race speech and went to a black church to feel her city’s pulse on race issues in the election.

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News is coming over the wires that Obama is closing the delegate gap in Texas thanks to the confusing post-primary caucus. While Clinton still won the popular vote in Texas she is dangerously close to loosing the delegate count. CQ has a good wrap of this and above we have some choice audio on how this happened and the problems that came with it.

Want more?

Here is a previous post on possible legal action to come. You can license both of these pieces here and here

WNYC posted audio from Obama’s economic speech today. It’s here. I’ll be working to cut it up and find other relevant material soon. Refresh this page in a hour say.

Update: Here’s part of Clinton’s housing speech on Monday

Update#2: Here is an excellent commentary on repairing the housing crisis, here’s a long piece about what having a home means, here’s a 30 minute doc on the subprime loans, and here’s an uber-short heart breaker about loosing a home.

Update #3: Here you can find housing statistics for your state/region

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Remember when your mom use to say “yes, even you can be president one day.” Well, she forgot to add “if you got half a billion dollars.”

Above is a radio piece produced by the Center for Public Integrity about money in politics. They are predicting the 2008 presidential election to cost a billion dollars. The story overviews the progression of money in politics from Nixon all the way to President G. W. Bush.

I recently lent a hand to West Virgina Public Radio searching campaign finance records for the state’s top donors. We saw evidence of wealthy citizens trying to buy their way into Congress, children “writing” checks to their parents favored political candidates, and business owners using their employees to further their personal political prerogatives.

For sure political contributions are a form of free speech. But only a fool would think all donors are merely expressing their right to petition the government. This year newsrooms should spend some days looking at campaign finance in their local areas. PRX is busy coming up with ways to help so stay tuned!

In the meantime: license this piece and air it, find out what kind of campaign disclosure records your state keeps, and get in touch to let us know what you’re working on and how we can help.

We have audio from KOPB of Bill Richardson endorsing Barack Obama. A very moving speech. Here’s the endorsement and also what Clinton’s camp had to say about it. Here are some other Richardson speeches. And here’s a wacky piece putting New Mexico and its politics on the map.

Update: found some Latino stuff and Immigration. Have at it.

Barack Obama’s speech today on race and politics tried to do a couple things, not the least of which was to halt the tide of bad press flowing out over Pastor Wright’s controversial sermons.

Going over the soundbites from the speech you can see a logical progression:

1. Obama condems Wright
2. Obama places Wright in the context of the “black church”
3. Anger in African-American communities creates resentment in white communities
4. and, finally, Obama is the candidate who can heal both black anger and white resentment.

A very nuanced argument to thread with such a blunt instrument as mass media. Hopefully news programmers are up for the challenge. If you are such a producer here is Obama’s speech in the raw along with some choice cuts that I’ve annotated for your ease.

Good luck!

After thought: it’s interesting to listen to Clinton’s (very brief) speech at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.

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Josh Marshall gone main stream?

The well-read blogger from Talking Points Memo blurred the lines between independent and main stream media evermore when he won the Polk Award for toppling Atorney General Alberto Gonzales. Now is has come to pubradio. Here is the third weekly commentary he’s posted to PRX about last week’s hiccup that was Geraldine Ferraro.

Look here for more TPM commentaries ready to air.