At last year's Netroots Nation I remember Russ Feingold talking about the risks of having too many special groups vying for TV time to spread their message to the people. The risk, among many things, inherent in that is that we would have Democrat and Republican products based on which companies contributed to which candidates. However, outside of Fox News & MSNBC (not making false equivalency), we do not see that among television stations themselves. However, with Karl Roves new ridiculous and blistering ads, whose claims have been called false by fact checkers in the past, that may need to be the next step.
Being from Massachusetts, I am not particularly worried about Rove's tactics in against Elizabeth Warren. A carefully coordinated effort to draw a line between those ads and Karl Roves, whose name is dirt in Massachusetts, can dispel the worst of it here.
However, we may not be so lucky elsewhere. As Greg Sargent notes today, Rove is going after Tim Kaine in Virginia this time with even more blatant lies. Because this Virginia piece was more libelous than the Elizabeth Warren ad (which was just stupid), it got me thinking, "what are the TV station's thinking?" Coupled with the Virginia Democratic Party's own problems, this could be a recipe for disaster for one Senate seat that we can retain if we do it right.
Allegedly, TV stations do actually vet the ads that show up on their airtime. However, as anybody paying attention to any ad during the post-Citizens United world can tell, that effort is not very, um, comprehensive. To their credit Ohio broadcasters ultimately did pull Building a Better Ohio's disgusting misrepresentation of a Grandmother's plea to repeal Issue 2. However, there was incontrovertible evidence of fraud on the part BABO. It probably did not take much for Ohio station's ad directors to realize BABO's ad was incredibly familiar.
Most of the time, however, the fail miserably, probably on the premise that this is all opinion and New York Times v. Sullivan will guard them against anything else beyond that.
So what is the solution? I think it may be a boycott. Most of these ads are on local television stations in local buys on national cable networks. Sometimes they appear on networks nationwide, but for the most part they do not and will probably only do so in broader national ad buys whose effectiveness and target are less clear.
However, the local guys have a much more direct role in the election and their refusal to make good calls are where to draw the line must be addressed. The answer may be a boycott. However, a boycott has to be smart in order to have any impact.
No matter how anybody feels about negative campaigning, it is a fact of political life and purging it entirely is not only naive, but foolish. Elections are won by saying why you're better than the other guy. However, that does not mean that dirty tricks and blatant misrepresentations need to be tolerated. Consequently, we should put public pressure on the television stations that aid and abet this ridiculousness.
Again I'm talking local ad buys because the risk is in Congressional and Senate races. Take this segment from Sargent:
For instance, the ad suggests that the stimulus Kaine supported spent $39 million on “office upgrades for politicians.” That sounds terribly wasteful! But this claim has already been thoroughly debunked — the last time Crossroads made it, in an ad in 2010. PolitiFact looked at the assertion and noted it was based on a project to renovate the Kansas State Capital, but concluded the money is not direct funding; instead it comes from a stimulus bond program to help local governments save money on capital projects. Politifact pronounced the claim “mostly false” — nearly a year ago. Crossroads is now airing it again anyway.
The new ad also claims that under Governor Kaine, Virginia ran “a big deficit.” But the Associated Press politely pointed out that the ad made this assertion “erroniously,” noting that the state constitution forbids finishing a “fiscal year with insufficient funds.”
What we see is local stations or local buys on cable perpetuating lies. We can hold these guys to a higher standard than merely the risk of a defamation lawsuit. That means boycotting the station or the network if they perpetuate this nonsense. That means using media reports and fact checkers to back up the effort and demands that the ads be pulled or rejected.
Now there is some risk in this strategy. First of all, it will cause the same reaction against Democrats. So what. We should not be supporting false or patently misleading ads either. The worst that could happen is it might make environmental groups sharpen their attacks on congressmen and senators for gutting the Clean Air Act. Easy. Or maybe women's groups will have to be clearer in their defense of Planned Parenthood. Done.
The other risk is that as viewership goes down the cost to put an ad up goes down with it (this process may be sluggish as it may take time for ad buyers to get new rating numbers, etc and I am unfamiliar with the ad business in this way). However over time, the lower ratings will mean less money overall for the station. Potentially, this could move the boycott onto other advertisers on networks that take false ads, and draw more money away from the stations.
The point of this boycott would not be to end televised political advertising and I would draw the line on boycotting a station over ad ad that comes from the candidate themselves in most cases (we can trace that money easily enough). However, it could prove an effective way of filtering out the Citizens United lies until we can overturn that horrible decision. It could force the discourse to be raised above the putrid level upon which it currently sits. And it could clear the air of some of the worst lies, above all else.
It would require organization. It would require a close eye on fact checkers, who have to independent of us to maintain the credibility of any boycott. It would require a commitment on our part and our candidates' part and other political allies' part to keep ads truthful and not just "truthy." However, I think it can be done. Financial and economic pressure is just about the only thing we've got left that cannot be legislated away or struck down by the courts. What do you think?