Accountable Political Ads Now

[Commentary] Yesterday Common Cause, the Sunlight Foundation, and the Campaign Legal Center, represented by the Institute for Public Representation at the Georgetown University Law Center, filed formal complaints against 18 television stations in four states, asking the Federal Communications Commission to order these broadcasters to make on-air disclosures of the true identity of the sponsors of political ads appearing on their stations. The three organizations also sent letters informing more than 100 other stations of the true sponsor of certain Independence USA PAC ads they had run. It should have been easy for the stations to do this because the founder and sole funder of this organization is Michael Bloomberg. Why are these complaints directed to the FCC? Because the agency has legal authority, right now, to require full sponsor disclosure. The law has been on the books since the 1930s. The Commission applies the requirement to commercial sponsors but not to political sponsors, in spite of the fact that the rule clearly encompasses both. As far as the Commission ever got was to state formally, years ago, that citizens have a right to know by whom they are being persuaded. Unfortunately the FCC never got around to making sure this right was implemented. It has been petitioned more than once and asked in sundry ways to enforce accountable ads. I pushed for this as hard as I could when I served on the FCC, and I have joined hands with many citizen groups since then to make it happen.