LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – It’s election season and that means you can’t hide from all of the TV, radio and social media advertising coming from the campaigns of your local and state politicians and political action committees.
Even your mailbox has become a target of their promotions, proclamations and political speak.
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Some of the ads being seen, heard and read can make people pull their hair out because they seem, at the very least, a little dishonest. Some contain outright lies.
But is it legal?
Yes, it’s perfectly legal.
Some irate politicians who have been lied about have taken the step to send TV stations cease and desist letters to stop broadcasting ads that are false and defamatory, but unfortunately, candidates are permitted to lie unlike the companies that sell us soft drinks, automobiles, cold medicine, and potato chips.
Consumers are protected by truth in advertising laws from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) when it comes to things like toilet bowl cleaner or beer, but when we’re talking about political ads, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) only requires the TV and radio folks to provide information about who produced them. The FEC is concerned with donations, not content. What is actually said in the ads is protected speech, even if those ads contain outright lies.
We cannot be deceived when it comes to commercial advertising but political ads can say anything because the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects non-commercial speech.
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To combat the lies, there are “fact checkers” all over the internet and social media but often they can’t be believed either because most of them have their own bias and reasons for dissuading people from one side to another. Over the course of the last few years, fact checking has even turned into censorship in some social media companies like Facebook.
Being an arbiter of truth is a coveted spot to have and it appears that some companies have self-appointed themselves into that position at the detriment to those who don’t want to take the time to investigate issues for themselves.
Anita Varma, assistant director of Journalism and Media Ethics, wrote an article called, “Why Are Politicians Lying and What is Advertising Doing in Politics.” In it, she says, “Debates over whether tech companies should fact-check political ads or prohibit them altogether have continued with a rising pitch…”
Varma continues, “Politicians lying is far from a novel practice and certainly a pre-digital one, yet longstanding unethical practices are still unethical.”
For their part, Facebook and Meta’s other platforms have decided to cease allowing new ads about social issues, elections or politics from November 1st through November 8th in order to prevent the spread of “misinformation.”
They will do so at their own financial loss. According to KRLD Radio in Dallas, in Texas alone, Beto O’Rourke has spent almost $500,000 on ads with Meta in the past week with Governor Abbott’s campaign spending about $230,000.
On Facebook’s website about how they are preparing for the 2022 restriction period for ads in the week leading up to General Election Day, they are “putting these restriction period in place again because we found that the restriction period achieves the right balance of giving campaigns a voice while providing additional time for scrutiny of political ads in the Ad Library.”
All is not lost, however.
They continue, “As long as an ad serves an impression before the restriction period goes into effect,
candidates running for office and other organizations can continue running these ads through the
restriction period to share their closing arguments and mobilize voters with ads.
