Exploring "Dark Money" in FCC Public Inspection Files
Exploring "Dark Money" in FCC Public Inspection Files
How to find FCC records about "Protect Our Care" TV ads in 2022 related to the KS-03 congressional contest
TV stations in the Kansas City area broadcast dozens of “Protect Our Care” ads from April through June 2022 to bolster Sharice Davids for Congress in the third congressional district in Kansas.
The large number of TV ads before the August primary were curious since Congresswoman Sharice Davids was unopposed and won with 100% of the vote.
What can be found online in FCC Public Inspection Files about all these ads?
TV Stations
A list of all US television stations was created from Wikipedia lists of “K” and “W” TV stations — perhaps this is provided somewhere by the FCC?
Kansas stations and certain TV stations near the Kansas border in Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma were extracted from the national list.
This list of 48 stations includes 29 Kansas stations, 13 Missouri, 5 Nebraska, and one Oklahoma. This statewide list will be useful for any investigation of political TV ads in Kansas.
Coverage maps of stations in proximity to an area of interest can explored to determine if they might be relevant to a study.
FCC Public Inspection Files
The FCC provides details on their Frequently Asked Questions page.
Station Information
General information about TV and radio stations, as well as cable operators, can be found from the FCC’s “Search Stations and Systems.”
Follow this link to view the TV Station Information for KAKE in Wichita:
The “buttons” below the “Station Information” button highlighted in blue above can reveal additional details:
Applications and Related Materials
Ownership Reports
Equal Employment Opportunity Records
Contour Maps (see “Coverage Area” section below)
Political Files (see section below)
Children’s TV Programming Reports
More Public Inspection Files
Coverage Area
From The FCC About PIF page:
Contour Maps … are graphical representations or "maps" of the area in which a broadcast station provides a particular level of signal strength over-the-air. They are useful, but general, indications of where service might be expected to be received from the station. They do not account, however, for the availability of a station’s signal carried by cable or satellite service providers, nor do they suggest that every point inside the contour will receive over-the-air service.
The coverage area for Topeka’s WIBW-TV extends to much of the Kansas City area on the Kansas side. An investigation of ads in the third congressional district might want to explore such Topeka stations.
Political Files
FCC Political Files for TV stations have been online since 2014, but are only retained for two years. See FCC page for details.
Here’s the link to view the Political Files online from KMBC Channel 9 in Kansas City.
Note the starting page shows folders from 2015 through 2023, but only 2021 and 2022 have data at this time. [If only two years are retained, why are all the older folders shown?]
Selecting 2022 shows five folders: Federal, Local, Non-Candidate Issue Ads, State, and Terms and Disclosures.
Selecting Non-Candidate Issue Ads shows a few dozen selections, including Protect Our Care issue ads. The “Size” gives the number of files in the folder.
An organized list of the 21 Protect Our Care files is shown below:
These 21 files are grouped into six batches of ads, each with an agreement, a contact, and one or more invoices.
There does not appear to be standardization of names of folders and files across TV stations. Similar files may be present but with different name and folder conventions.
Of the Kansas City stations, KMBC appears to have the most organized filings. Not all of the following files are present with other Kansas City-area TV stations.
NAB Agreement
Some stations, such as KMBC, include the National Association of Broadcasters’ Form PB-19, “Political Broadcast Agreement Form for Non-Candidate/Issue Advertisements.”
Other stations usually provide much of the same information in a different format.
The PB-19 form shows the ad agency and information about the advertiser.
We’ll review the information about the advertiser in the next section.
Often, but not always, any political candidate mentioned in the ad will be listed here, along with contest and election dates.
Note this ad was requested in Dec. 2021 and accepted by the station nearly four months later in April 2022.
Contract
Contract information often provides Demographic information as the basis for the ad rate, as well as a list of “spot” times.
The demographic for the Protect Our Care ads run on KMBC was “Women 35+” in five of the six batches. One batch showed “Adults 25-54".
Some of the spots targeted “The View”:
Contracts always showed a summary of the number of spots and estimated cost:
Invoice
The contract was the plan and invoices were issued to show how the plan was executed.
…
Arabella Advisor Dark Money Funds
DC Corporation Records: Sixteen Thirty Fund
The contracts show the advertiser to be Protect Our Care in Washington, DC.
DC business records shows “Protect Our Care” is a trade name of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a 501(c)(4) organization managed by the Arabella Advisors.
“Protect Our Care” is one of the 60 trade names registered in DC for the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
Address and contact information from the FCC files do not match other information about the Sixteen Thirty Fund: The exact address was reported to be Suite 300A at 1828 L Street NW in DC. The phone number was reported to be 202-595-1061. The contact was reported to be a Katherine Miller.
The 2021 IRS 990 for Sixteen Thirty Fund does not confirm any of these three pieces of information.
Protect Our Care website
From the mission statement at Protect Our Care:
Protect Our Care operates as a 501(c)(4) social welfare nonprofit.
Our sister organization, the Protect Our Care Education Fund, operates as a 501 (c)(3) public charity that educates the public, the media and elected officials about health care issues.
IRS 990: New Venture Fund
One of the 501(c)(3) “sister” organizations to the 501(c)(4) Sixteen Thirty Fund is the New Venture Fund, also managed by the Arabella Advisors.
NVF IRS 990 information matches details given in the FCC records:
The NVF is at Suite 300-A, like in the FCC records. The NVF has phone number 202-595-1061, like in the FCC records. Katherine Miller is an officer of NVF, like in the FCC records.
The website for Protect Our Care Education Fund admits the relationship with the New Venture Fund:
The Protect Our Care Education Fund is fiscally sponsored by the New Venture Fund (NVF), a 501(c)(3) public charity.
Contributions to NVF in support of Protect Our Care are tax deductible.
The FCC Records and TV ads appear to identify “Protect Our Care” incorrectly as the source of the ads, when they should have said “Protect Our Care Education Fund.”
Related
GitHub Repository: FCC Public Inspection Files with all Protect Our Care files from Kansas City area TV stations in one place.
“We Broke New Ground on Arabella’s ‘Dark Money’ in 2022,” Capital Research Center, Hayden Ludwig, Dec. 22, 2022.
“Protect Our Care” has connections to the Congressional Integrity Project
Future
Using the Application Programming Interface (API) to automate searching and downloading files from the FCC Public Inspection Files.
Exploring dark money in cable TV ads