This Activist Uses the FCC To Shoehorn Gruesome Anti-Abortion Ads Onto the Air
Many commentators, especially progressives, feel that it’s simply too easy for people to say offensive or untrue things on TV or the internet and go uncorrected. Some feel that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should step in and do something about it. In this campaign cycle, we have a real-world example of what that would look like.
In a conversation with Semafor‘s David Weigel, the Constitution Party’s presidential candidate—Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry—detailed his plan to air graphic anti-abortion campaign ads in swing states. Terry already caused what he calls “an epic shitstorm” when one of his ads aired during a broadcast of ABC’s morning chat show The View: Over images of aborted fetuses, Terry’s voice-over decries “stupid celebrities and lying journalists,” pictures of whom he also displays, including all six hosts of The View. For their alleged support of abortion rights, Terry compares them to Nazi propagandists Joseph Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl. Another ad uses imagery of racist lynchings from the 1920s along with images of aborted African American fetuses and says Democrats are “lynching black babies by abortion.”
Weigel notes that Terry’s plan involves “taking advantage of FCC rules that allow candidates to air messages that networks might otherwise refuse to take.”
Federal law imposes an “equal opportunities requirement”—commonly called the equal time rule—on television broadcast licensees, a rule the FCC enforces. “If any licensee shall permit any person who is a legally qualified candidate for any public office to use a broadcasting station,” the law stipulates, “he shall afford equal opportunities to all other such candidates for that office in the use of such broadcasting station.” The station is not required to provide candidates free air time unless it has already done so for one of their direct competitors; if one candidate purchases air time, the station must offer to sell an equal amount of time to the other candidates at the same rate. (The law makes exceptions for “bona fide” news broadcasts, documentaries, and interviews, as well as “on-the-spot coverage” of news events.)
Importantly for Terry, “broadcast stations are prohibited from censoring or rejecting political ads that are paid for and sponsored by legally qualified candidates,” per the FCC. This allows Terry to run his gruesome anti-abortion ads under the theory that he is a candidate for office and that they are part of his pitch to voters. As long as he pays the same rate as other candidates, the networks are not allowed to refuse.
Chicago’s ABC affiliate, WLS, even aired a segment during its news broadcast earlier this month, explaining that “by law, WLS-TV must air
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