UPDATE: We won. After hours of pressure and calls from reporters, cable giant Insight Communications agreed to air the television ad.
Cable giant Insight Communications refused to air our hard-hitting, Daily Kos-featured new ad on Mitch McConnell last night, pulling it from their rotation without so much as courtesy notification. Insight’s executives have donated $17,000 to McConnell. Now they are helping him even more by engaging in political censorship to keep this ad, which criticizes McConnell for his special interest politics, off the air.
Help Public Campaign Action Fund take the first step in building pressure by signing this petition and telling Insight Communications that you won’t stand for political censorship.
All the other broadcast networks, including NBC, ABC, and CBS and another cable system are running the ad after reviewing its content for accuracy. Why won’t Insight air it?
And what role did Insight lobbyist Keith Hall or Insight CEO Mike Willmer, both McConnell donors and allies and big players in the national cable industry, play in making this decision to censor the ad?
We need answers to these questions and we need your help to hold cable giant Insight accountable for political censorship, which is a blatant move to help out their favorite big money politician, Mitch McConnell. Their decision to pull the ad at the last minute, and give us no notice or opportunity to respond to their concerns, is highly irregular and reeks of a potent witch’s brew of big money donors, lobbyists with connections, unaccountable big media, and a powerful Senator.
Insight Communications is censoring political speech – sign this petition and tell them to take their big money muzzles off our airwaves.
High-powered lobbyists and moneyed special interests already dominate campaigns and political debate in this country – when they try and censor ads that draw attention to this disparity they must be held to account.
If big money politicians and big media win, we all lose. Only in the narrowest sense is this is a fight about whether our ad runs. At its core, it’s a fight about freedom of speech.
Like I said above -- this is the first step, and we know lots of us have been through fights with telecommunication giants, not the least of which was the Sinclair fight. Please offer advice in the comments.
