From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. In a five to four decision, the Supreme Court ruled this week to raise the limit for individual campaign contributions from $123,000 to $3.6 million.

It's not that the old limit was too low. Only a few hundred donors

met it during the last election, but imposing limits was based on the idea that they're needed

to prevent deep-pocketed donors from corrupting or further corrupting the democratic process. The ruling in this case, McCutcheon

versus the Federal Election Commission, much like the decision in Citizens United before it,

rejects that argument in favor of one based on the idea that money is speech and speech

should be free, or at least unfettered.

Michael J. Cops, a former commissioner of the FCC, disagrees.

But right now he's not arguing that point.

He's stuck on a different one.

Specifically, the FCC's old dictum that we are entitled to know by whom we are being persuaded.

All of America, I think, is exhausted from these endless, mindless, anonymous political advertisements,

and most of them are really anonymous.

A front group, perhaps masquerading as citizens for Purple Mountain Majesties and Amber Ways of Grain,

might really be a chemical company dumping sludge into the East River.

But you wouldn't know that because they're not required to tell you who is really sponsoring these ads.

A solution is at hand if we can get the FCC to do something about it.

It's tucked inside the Communications Act, where it has slumbered, unenforced for decades.

In the law, and it's been there for almost 80 years now, is Section 317, which has to do with sponsorship identification,

which means that people who sponsor ads, either commercial or political, on

radio and now television and cable two, have a duty to inform people on who is really paying

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