Listening to the radio is just as bad as walking to your mailbox this time of the year. Politics has become nothing more than a race to see who can tear their opponent down the most. The attack ads are everywhere — on your radio stations and arriving daily in stacks of direct mail pieces to mailboxes across the country.
What if a candidate calls your radio station and says you are airing blatant lies about him or her? What is your responsibility? Broadcast attorney David Oxenford tackles that topic in his latest blog.
Oxenford says in some cases there’s nothing a station can do “if the attack is contained in an ad by a candidate or the candidate’s authorized campaign committee. If a candidate in his or her own ads attacks another candidate, the station cannot pull the ad based on its content. Ads by candidates and their authorized campaign committees are covered by the Communication Act’s “no censorship” provision, meaning that the station cannot (except in very limited circumstances) pull the ad based on its content.
Oxenford says that because the station cannot pull the ad based on its content, the station has no liability if the candidate’s attack ad defames their opponent. “In fact, we have heard of cases where a non-candidate group runs an attack ad containing claims that the target of the ad claims are untrue, where stations pull the ad, and where the claims soon reappear in the ads of the candidate who the third-party supported. When they objectionable claims are in a candidate’s own ads, the only remedy of the candidate that is being attacked is to sue the candidate who ran the ad.
What about allegedly false claims made in ads by third parties like PACs, unions, political parties, or other non-candidate groups?
Oxenford says The Communications Act’s “no censorship rule” does not apply to third-party ads, only to candidate ads. “Thus, stations can pull a third-party ad because of its content. While stations need not fact-check every ad they receive, if an ad is defamatory – spreading falsehoods about a recognizable individual – it could result in civil liability to the station. Under Supreme Court precedent, statements made about public figures (such as political candidates) can be found defamatory only if the person or entity that is distributing them either knew that they were false or distributes them with “negligence,” e.g., where they had notice that the ads were false, yet they continued to distribute the false material anyway. Thus, if a station does not know that a claim in a third-party ad is false, but it is put on notice about the falsity (e.g., by a letter from an attorney representing the party being attacked), the station needs to take steps to investigate the truth of the ad.”
Still confused?
Check out Oxenford’s entire blog on the subject HERE.
If the choice is pulling an ad or getting sued for defamation, you pull the ad. Or you contact the advertiser and get them to change it. No one wants to get sued. A bigger problem is when radio hosts perpetuate false statements in their talk shows. Or when the president makes false statements about the opposing party. That happens all the time. No corrections are ever made. And the radio station isn’t getting paid.
A station might pull an ad if the incumbent candidate threatened to kick the opposition’s dog. But, not likely. I mean, we’re talkin’ twenty dollars-a-holler here. Maybe more.
And maybe the dog has it coming.
Besides the opposing candidate is a cat-lover.
But, there is also no point in letting the facts get in the way of commerce.
Further, how often does free money wander in?
Pull an ad?
LOL.
Nnever gonna happens,.