Ridiculous Congressional Proposal Would Fine Reps Who Live Stream From The Floor

from the congress-excels-at-petty-actions dept

It would be nice if we weren't remind daily just how petty politicians can be (on all sides of the aisle... so don't go making this about one party or the other). Over the summer, we wrote about a situations in which House Democrats tried to stage a protest on the House floor -- and House Republicans responded by gavelling the House out of session and turning off the live feed on C-SPAN so that the protest could not be easily seen (again, this isn't partisan: the House Dems did the same to House Repubs eight years ago). In response, some of those participating in the protest started using Periscope and Facebook Live to livestream online from the floor.

And, now, just to turn up the level of petty vindictiveness, some House Representatives have proposed fining Congressional Reps who live stream (or post photos) from the House floor.

... the new policy would fine representatives $500 for the first offense of broadcasting video, audio, or photos, and rise to $2,500 thereafter. In order to take effect, the proposal would need to be approved by the House when its next session starts in January.

And, of course, supporters of the proposal change are doing their best to give totally bullshit reasons for this petty action, claiming that it's about "ensuring" that "order and decorum are preserved in the House." That's a load of hogwash. This is just politicians acting like elementary school children yet again.

The push for this is being led by Speaker Paul Ryan, who apparently doesn't much care for the Constitution. You see, people who actually have read the Constitution are noting that this proposal is likely unconstitutional:

But experts say Ryan’s proposal may run afoul of Article 1 of the Constitution, which says “each House may … punish its Members for disorderly behavior.” For more than 200 years that has been interpreted to mean any contested sanctions against lawmakers must be approved by the full House with a floor vote, attorneys steeped in congressional legal matters say.

“The Constitution gives the House the authority to discipline members; I have never heard of anything where an officer of the House was given that authority,” said Mike Stern, a former lawyer for the nonpartisan House counsel’s office and the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s GOP staff.

Meanwhile, one of the members who took part in the streaming, Rep. Eric Swawell, is coming out fighting against this proposal: Back in June, Swalwell responded to the shutdown of the C-SPAN cameras by pushing a proposal that would have given control of C-SPAN's camera stream to C-SPAN, rather than petty politicians in the House who can shut down the stream whenever they want to.

And, honestly, as I'm writing this entire post, I'm sitting here wondering why the hell this is an issue. Of all the things that Congress should be doing right now, is this really a major priority? To try to punish Congressional representatives for actually wanting to provide a more transparent look into what happens on the floor?

Filed Under: congress, eric swalwell, live streaming, paul ryan, politics, streaming
Companies: c-span

As Republicans Turn Off House Live Feed, Reps & C-SPAN Turn To Periscope And Facebook Live Video To Cover Sit In

from the we-all-are-the-media dept

So something fascinating happened in Congress today. No matter what your opinion is on gun control or the various legislative proposals around it that have been up for debate in the past week or so, it's hard to fathom what Congressional Republicans thought they were doing today in shutting off the live video feed from the House floor. A bunch of Democrats decided to hold a sit in on the House floor to push for a vote on some gun legislation. That's a bit of a stunt no matter how you look at it, but the Republicans shot back by helping that stunt get much more attention by not just gavelling the House out of session, but also turning off the live feed of the House floor that flows to C-SPAN and out to the rest of us. C-SPAN doesn't control the cameras and is at the whim of Congress to access that feed, so when the GOP shut off the feed, C-SPAN was left without. This isn't a stupid move that's limited to the Republican side of Congress, apparently. Eight years ago the Democrats did the same thing when they controlled the House and were upset about Republicans trying to focus on a particular issue.

Of course, we now live in a modern technological age, where everyone has the power to broadcast live video in the devices we all carry in our pockets. Thus, despite House rules that forbid any sort of broadcasting from the floor, Rep. Scott Peters started broadcasting from the floor. And even as the Sergeant at Arms tried to stop the broadcasting, more people on the floor started using Periscope, Snapchat and Facebook Live, leading to C-SPAN rebroadcasting those feeds.

C-SPAN claims it's the first time it's done this (and let's not even bother with the copyright questions related to all of this...). But it seems like yet another example of a form of the Streisand Effect. The sit in was designed to get attention, and it certainly would have no matter what. But shutting off the cameras and trying to shut down the entire process only seemed to drive that much more attention to what was going on, and modern technology helped let the story still come out, no matter what the "House rules" happened to say.

Filed Under: cameras, congress, democrats, facebook live, gun control, periscope, republicans, streaming, video
Companies: c-span, facebook, snapchat, twitter