Policy promotes public information

Steve Lake, KCRG-TV9's national and regional sales manager, recently received an email complaint about a Joni Ernst political ad perceived as threatening to the president.

In a recent letter to the editor, Terry Wehrman of Cedar Rapids asked if 'advertising departments of television outlets just take the money and run and never view or check the political ads for accuracy? I challenge outlets to make sure you are airing political ads that contain only truthful information.”

The short answer is that broadcast outlets can take some money for airing ads but they do not run. Broadcast stations cannot control the content of the ads because the airing of political ads is highly regulated.

Lake explained that federal statutes and regulations, 47 United States Code Section 315, and FCC regulations, 47 Code of Federal Regulations Sections 1940-1944, control how broadcast stations handle political ads for federal, state and local candidates. 'KCRG-TV9 must provide access to federal candidates any time there is an active campaign. There is a no-censorship rule,” he said.

'[However] The station can reject advertising from some, or all, state and local political races. If stations accept advertising from state and local races, then the same no-censorship rule applies.”

The regulations protect stations from liability for airing the ads because of the no censorship restriction.

Stations must also offer to sell airtime to political candidates at the lowest rate for the time slot that they offer to non-political advertisers. Stations must also provide a Political File within their Public Inspection File that shows the political ad purchases. The KCRG-TV9 website has a link at the bottom to its Public Inspection File. Within it is their political file that shows political advertising purchases by candidates and third-party issue groups.

David Oxenford's Political Broadcasting Blog and the linked Political Broadcasting guidelines contain helpful questions and answers about the FCC regulations.

How does KCRG-TV9 handle a candidate ad that contains potentially offensive material? If the content is legally obscene, the ad is not required to run. Otherwise, if the ad's content is inappropriate for children, Lake said that 'the station can air a warning separate from and before the ad. The warning cannot be run at the beginning of the ad. KCRG-TV9 ran a warning about the graphic nature of Randall Terry's presidential campaign pro-life ad during the last campaign.”

When the station receives a legitimate complaint of ad inaccuracy or false information, Lake said that 'our usual procedure is to ask the ad agency that purchased the time to provide substantiation of the ad claims.”

What can the station do about those issue ads that tell us to contact Senator X and say that we are opposed to certain legislation? The regulations for third-party political advertising such as issue ads from political action committees are different. The no-censorship rule does not apply. That also means that the station has some potential liability. The station also has some discretion to air an ad and is not limited in its advertising rates.

Lake stated that 'legitimate complaints of inaccuracy in third party ads are forwarded to the ad agency for substantiation. KCRG-TV9 has taken down ads in the past but most of the time the claims are substantiated. This usually happens once or twice in a normal political cycle.” They do not reject airing ads just 'because there is a possibility of falsehood since that would be prior restraint on speech.”

These same FCC regulations also apply to cable and direct or satellite broadcasting. The FCC regulations do not control online ads.

Overall, the law's policy promotes public information about candidates and their positions, protects stations from liability when they cannot censor the ad content, prohibits stations from gaining excessive profits from political candidates, provides a formal mechanism for complaining about ad inaccuracies to the FCC, and gives the stations more discretion in dealing with third-party issue groups.

' If you have an unresolved concern or question about Gazette or KCRG-TV9 news, opinion or online content, contact Judi Whetstine, community advocate for The Gazette Company, at gaz.communityadvocate@gmail.com, or by mail to Community Advocate, The Gazette, 500 Third Ave. SE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52401. Whetstine, not a Source Media Group employee, is a former assistant U.S. attorney in Cedar Rapids.