This is a pretty mild ad<\/a> that highlights the significance of the budget deficit. Why is it “clearly divisive”? As a practical matter, it’s effectively a public service announcement.
\n
\nIn response to the argument that the network will show some issue ads, such as a commercial from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, CBS said ONDCP has a better message than MoveOn.<\/p>\n“I’d like to know who’s for drug abuse?” the network spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
This, too, is nonsensical. Most people are opposed to drug use, but most people are also opposed to half-trillion dollar deficits. Should a corporation with control over the publicly-owned airwaves seriously be judging speech content by way of a popularity contest? Is this a reasonable standard by which voices will be heard?<\/p>\n
If CBS wanted to argue a blanket policy against issue-ads, I’d understand. I wouldn’t like it, but at least it would be coherent.<\/p>\n
But that, unfortunately, is not what’s happening here. Instead, CBS is creating a subjective criterion for speech content, deciding which issue-related messages are popular and which are “divisive.”<\/p>\n
The whole mess reeks of political bias. Indeed, as MoveOn noted, the ad isn’t even particularly controversial — it’s a “simple statement of fact, supported by the President’s own figures.”<\/p>\n
I don’t imagine CBS is going to give in on this. I’d call for a CBS boycott, but then again, I can’t think of a single program I watch on the network anyway, so in effect, I’ve been waging a de facto boycott against CBS for years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When we last heard about the fight between MoveOn.org and CBS, the network had decided not to broadcast the group’s commercial about the deficit during the Super Bowl. Last week, a CBS spokesman said the decision was based on the network’s “long-term policy not to air issue ads anywhere on the network.” This explanation didn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}