Billboards in Cleveland, Milwaukee and Columbus proclaimed earlier this month, “Voter Fraud Is A Felony! Punishable by up to three-and-a-half years in prison and a $10,000 fine." The Billboards are owned by Clear Channel. Clear Channel is owned by Bain Capital. Bain was run for years by Mitt Romney. Romney still owns a tons of stock in Bain. These dots seem easily connected. It is unclear who bought the messages.
Clear Channel also owns over 800 radio stations.
Clear Channel refuses to disclose who paid for the message but, they have agreed to take them down after protests about voter intimidation. Clear Channel says it has a policy against anonymous political ads which they remembered after the protests grew.
A Federal Court in California ruled that it would be OK for public broadcasting to run political ads to raise revenue. Given the lack of control over the content by the commercial media, the idea seems misguided. (I'm being nice.)
Most of the political ads in my neighborhood range from misleading to out and out lies. Watching the local news on TV makes it clear the TV stations know the ads are deliberately false but, the stations won't do anything about it. There's a lot of money being spent and, the way Citizen's United is being used, most of the money is untraceable. It will not be so easy to connect the dots and, the way it works in politics is you tell a lie over and over until it becomes the truth.
Did you know that Radio and TV stations are responsible for all of the content which they broadcast? This includes advertisements. Prior to 1982, if a radio or TV station aired a misleading or false advertisement, the station could suffer the consequences. The strength behind these rules were seriously diluted during deregulation in 1982.
What's left? Journalists have a role. So do the rest of us. Speak up.
http://lacrossetribune.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/company-taking-down-anti-voter-fraud-billboards/article_102e7dfe-1cd1-11e2-b364-0019bb2963f4.html
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