More trouble for liberal ads and the public airwaves

January 11, 2006

Campaign for America’s Future sought to capitalize on Tom DeLay’s close connections to Jack Abramoff by running a damaging TV commercial highlighting the relationship and calling on DeLay to resign from Congress. In Houston, however, the ad has been pulled, thanks to threats from DeLay’s lawyers.

A day before a television ad linking Rep. Tom DeLay to disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff was set to hit the airwaves in the Houston area, lawyers for his campaign told local stations Tuesday that the ad contained falsehoods and hinted that it could lead to court action.

At least one station, KTRK (Channel 13), quickly decided against broadcasting the commercial, which was scheduled to start today.

“The ad is reckless, malicious, and false, casting Mr. DeLay in a false light by accusing him of unsubstantiated criminal conduct,” DeLay campaign lawyer Don McGahn wrote Tuesday. ” … We demand that you refuse or otherwise cease airing the advertisement, so as to avoid any liability.”

Take a look at the ad and see for yourself. It’s hard-hitting, to be sure, and I can understand why DeLay wouldn’t want it on the air, but I didn’t see anything that was obviously false. (Just as an aside, does anyone know if KTRK happened to run the Swiftboat ads? Those were “reckless, malicious, and false.”)

This seems to be part of a trend. In November, Fox News wouldn’t run anti-Alito ads. Also last year, MoveOn.org raised enough money to buy an ad during the Super Bowl, but CBS rejected it, noting its “long-term policy not to air issue ads anywhere on the network.” Just a few weeks prior, CBS and NBC refused advertising from the United Church of Christ because the church’s open, tolerant message of inclusion was labeled “too controversial.” More recently, a Utah television station (owned by Clear Channel) refused to air an anti-war ad featuring Cindy Sheehan.

I guess gaining access to the “public’s airwaves” can be challenging sometimes.

Just as an FYI, KTRK is an ABC affiliate owned by the Disney Corp.

  • DeLay got “$1,000,000 from Russian tycoons?” That sounds like an unsubstantiated accusation of criminal activity to me.

  • That sounds like an unsubstantiated accusation of criminal activity to me.

    Well, gosh, it would be unsubstantiated, if it weren’t you know, substantiated.

    If only reality were other than as it is, then reality would be different, and things which are true wouldn’t be true.

  • Yes. One of the writers over at huffingtonpost this week wrote an open letter to Soros asking him to buy a tv media outlet — not to play partisan hardball, but just to give us a news channel that could be counted on to do research and be objective.

    I think it was his post that also brought up something interesting — the tendency of the media to act as if all sides are equally valid. (Especially when this favors conservatives.) What’s interesting about this is that it reminds me of the intellectual ideas of the 70s and 80s coming from the left which was a kind of extreme multiculturalism, one might say. I’m not putting this right — here’s what ticked me off: In the 80s, it was popular to say that the American government shouldn’t interfere with the self-determination of other countries. Even when we could see the rulers of these countries were committing genocide or otherwise harming their people — even though these natives in charge of their countries hadn’t particularly gotten in charge through democratic means. The idea was that somehow by being natives of the region, they had some natural right to do whatever they wanted to the people there, while we were supposed to sit on the sidelines. Who were we to say what was right for them, coming as we did from a different culture? Now I realize that these ideas had their roots in a rejection of colonialism, but the whole “all cultures are morally equal and can’t be commented on” idea always seemed full of crap to me. The culture of the South in this country was to have little black lawn jockeys and to have dark black wiaters at the country clubs. Now I — a white woman — was once in a club in NYC where all of the menial staff were dark black and it FELT kind of cool, but it was also, of course, wrong.

    Now the news has gotten the idea that any time someone comes forth with an idea, they need to seek out someone holding the opposite idea and we can have them debate it as if both sides are equal. Thus, a scientist can be pro-evolution, and a crackpot can be anti-evolution. One person can tell us that Hitler was a bad guy, and I bet we can find someone out there who can tell us he was a good guy. One person can tell us that Social Security is good for us, and another can tell us it is bad for us. All ideas are equal….but, of course, they’re not.

  • Will news programs play the ad repeatedly while covering the controversy about it, as they did with the Swift boat ad? If so, then the free publicity will be worth it, but somehow I don’t think the “liberal” media will apply the same rules to liberal ads.

  • Maybe we ought to consider the upside of DeLay’s threat to sue to shut down the ad. If memory serves, the Swift Boat Liars got a hundred times the bang for their buck after the national media echoed their hit piece all over the place for weeks, “debating” its contents. Won’t DeLay and other GOP Congressmen be hurt a lot worse if this threat to sue causes a similar echo effect here? I know you’re thinking “not bloody likely” given the bent of the corporate media, but this was just going to be an ad run in the Houston market, and now it has a chance to get free air time nationwide.

    And does anyone find it a bit problematic for Tom that he seeks refuge from the very Texas court system he calls crooked in his criminal case? I know this “suit” he threatens would be in civil court, but given his “tort reform” mantra that’s no help to him is it? Hypocritical crybaby.

  • I’d like to second Catherine’s comment…all news is not equal! We don’t need both sides if one is demostratably wrong. Debating Social Security might be a good idea but instead of just repeating…people should be able to control their own money… it should be explained what the consequences would be if the payments were not guaranteed. Social Security was created to be …surprise!…SECURE! The stock market which is leaping into uncharted territory ( I haven’t seen what it did today) but tomorrow it might be tanking…that is not secure!

    News should present facts, not propaganda…but ads are propaganda and should be aired and discussed as what they are. So we had many discussions of the Swift Boats but the news medis still pretended the ideas presented were facts which they don’t want to do with the Move-On Delay ads.

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