Every election cycle, American voters see plenty of attack ads. And every election cycle, the candidates targeted by attack ads complain that the commercials are unfair, unsubstantiated, and designed to deceive the public.
What’s far less common, however, is for television stations to pull those ads from the air.
It can be frustrating, but the vast majority of the time, stations don’t want to be in the business of deciding which commercials are so brazenly dishonest that they’re ultimately unsupportable. Stations much prefer to let campaigns and parties deliver their messages, while fact-checkers and voters draw their own conclusions.
There are, however, occasional exceptions.
Three weeks ago, for example, a National Republican Senatorial Committee was pulled from New Hampshire airwaves after it claimed Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, during her tenure as governor, increased gas prices 23 percent. For support, Republicans referenced a report from New Hampshire Public Radio.
The problem, of course, was the attack ad wasn’t true: Gas prices in New Hampshire actually fell during Hassan’s time as governor and the New Hampshire Public Radio report cited by the NRSC didn’t say what Republicans claim it said. The commercial was taken down on May 19.
Last week, as The New York Times reported, the National Republican Senatorial Committee ran into a little more trouble. This time, it was an attack ad targeting North Carolina’s Cheri Beasley, falsely accusing her of freeing “a child porn offender” during her tenure as chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. On Friday, five TV stations in Raleigh and Charlotte said they would pull the ad or that they had “paused” it pending an examination of its claims, according to emails from the stations to Courtney Weisman, a lawyer working for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which were reviewed by The New York Times. On Thursday, two Charlotte stations took the ad off the air. A representative for the stations, WXAN and WSCO, explained in an email to Ms. Weisman that the ad’s claim about Ms. Beasley “is in error, as it appears the defendant was not set free” by the State Supreme Court decision.
As is often the case with criminal proceedings, the details of the case are a little complicated, and involve an appeals court ruling that there was an illegal search of a man convicted of possessing lewd images of minors on a computer thumb drive. The state Supreme Court, with Beasley in the majority, agreed in 2019 to send the case back to the trial court for reconsideration. The convict, however, remained in prison at the time. With this in mind, no matter how one tries to slice the truth, it’s difficult to defend the NRSC’s claims that Beasley “set [the convict] free.” (The ad shows jail bars sliding open.) For those keeping score, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has now had two television ads pulled over the course of three weeks. Election Day 2022 is still 22 weeks away, and I don’t imagine anyone would be too surprised if that total grows.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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