AT&T gave cash to merger backers

[classicman]

AT&T is lining up support for its acquisition of T-Mobile from a slew of liberal groups with no obvious interest in telecom deals — except that they’ve received big piles of AT&T’s cash.

In recent weeks, the NAACP, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the National Education Association have each issued public statements in support of the deal.

The groups all say their public positions have nothing to do with the money they received from AT&T. And AT&T says it supports nonprofit groups because it’s the right thing to do — and not because of any quid pro quo.

“For decades, AT&T has proudly supported numerous diverse groups and organizations,” a company spokesperson told POLITICO.

But not everyone’s buying it.

“The money that nonprofits receive from their corporate sponsors sticks not only in their bank accounts but in their minds,” Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to government transparency, told POLITICO. “This is what I think of as deep lobbying — there is an expectation that when push comes to shove, these groups will come out in favor of their benefactors.”

The NAACP was one of the first groups to announce public support of the T-Mobile acquisition. It received a $1 million contribution from AT&T in 2009 and has received funding in the six figures dating to 2006, according to the group’s annual reports.

William Barber, head of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, told POLITICO that AT&T’s financial support did not influence his group’s decision to write to the FCC in support of the merger.

“One of the unique things about the NAACP is that financial support does not determine our civil rights positions,” he said.

Barber also said AT&T consistently ranks near the top of the organization’s annual report card on the telecommunications industry.

GLAAD — which has received $50,000 from AT&T — recently backed the deal as well, saying it had “the understanding that the merger will increase functionality and speed, thus growing engagement and improving the effectiveness of the online advocacy work that is advancing equality for all,” a GLAAD spokesman said.

“We do not make policy decisions based on what’s best for our corporate sponsors,” Rich Ferraro, a GLAAD spokesman, told POLITICO. GLAAD publicly criticized Comcast’s merger with NBC, a corporate sponsor of the nonprofit, because of the company’s low grade on GLAAD’s Network Responsibility Index, Ferraro noted.

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Seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same.