Information You Need to Make Up Your Own Mind

[Commentary] Want to know who is attempting to influence your vote? As things stand now, the burden is on you to figure out who is funding the ads inundating your television and attempting to influence your vote, despite long-standing laws and regulations that clearly state that broadcasters have an obligation to ascertain the "true sponsor" of the ads they run on those airwaves.

Just recently the Media Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission gave them a pass. They ruled that the burden of accurately determining who is sponsoring a political advertisement rests on the viewing public, not the broadcasters, and that viewers must present "credible, unrefuted evidence" to the broadcasters that the entity identified on air as responsible for an ad is not in fact the "true sponsor." That is why the Campaign Legal Center joined with the Sunlight Foundation and Common Cause to urge the FCC Commissioners to overrule their own bureau and instead to pursue our complaints against two broadcast stations.

[McGehee is the Policy Director at the Campaign Legal Center]