Stations Should Yank Worst of Political Ads

[Commentary] As part of its campaign to persuade broadcast television stations not to run third-party political attacks ads filled with distortion and flat-out falsehoods, the Annenberg Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania hosted a conference in Washington that thoroughly covered the trouble many political advertisers have with telling the truth and what obligations TV stations have to keep things honest.

Annenberg is targeting stations because they run most of TV's political ads and because they do have ample discretion to reject third-party ads from interest groups, super PACs and the like. (Federal law requires stations to run ads from candidates just as they receive them.) To "help" stations, Annenberg is alerting them to ads that it has found to be far more fiction than fact. It is also trying to enlist viewers to pressure stations to bounce the ads. When I first wrote about the effort in March, I cautioned stations against relying on the work of Annenberg or any of the news organizations that have gotten into the political fact-checking business — Tampa Bay Times (PolitiFact), The Washington Post and the Associated Press. But I also said that stations do have the responsibility to make sure that third-party ads have some relation to reality. Using the other fact checkers as tip sheets, TV reporters ought to analyze ads themselves and air the results, and general managers ought to toss the worst of them. That's asking a lot, I know. No station wants to turn down business, and no station wants to become enmeshed in partisan politics around election time. Rejected advertisers are apt to charge that stations are favoring the opposition. But having attended the Annenberg conference and moderated one of the panels, I feel more strongly about my advice.