Many of you know that Building a Better Ohio, a group that supports John Kasich's union-busting bill, just put out an ad that splices together material from an ad opposing the bill. In the process, they manipulated the video and audio so that Marlene Quinn, the Cincinnati great-grandmother featured in the ad from anti-bill group We Are Ohio, actually supports the union-busting bill. This is misleading, outrageous and despicable. And it may also be illegal. I wrote about it this morning, but now that this story seems to be getting legs, it's worth another mention.
If you'll remember, back in 2008 the McCain campaign spliced footage from the CBS Evening News as part of an attack ad. CBS used a DMCA takedown notice to force YouTube to remove the ad from McCain's YouTube channel. This sounds like a very similar circumstance. I've already alerted We Are Ohio to this--hopefully they can get YouTube to remove it from Building a Better Ohio's channel. I so wish there was a way to report it ourselves and get it off the Web.
This ad could be illegal on another count. I could be wrong here, but by passing Marlene off as a supporter of the bill, Building a Better Ohio might be perpetuating fraud on all of the TV stations to which it sold this ad. At last count, 29 stations have yanked the ad. Hopefully more will come.
If basic decency isn't enough of a reason to take this ad off the air, legal ramifications might very well be.