Are Campaign Ads Coming to PBS?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Last Thursday, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down a seven-decade-old ban on political ads on noncommercial TV and radio stations. Not surprisingly, the prospect that Elmo and the Dowager Countess now might have to share the airwaves with attack ads prompted a mild freakout.  

Former PBS board member and American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Norman Ornstein told Reuters that the decision might “fundamentally change the character of public television and radio.” The court’s one dissenting judge similarly warned that the ruling could “jeopardize the future of public broadcasting.” Craig Aaron, president and chief executive of Free Press, told the Los Angeles Times, “Viewers don’t want to see Sesame Street being brought to them by shadowy Super PACs.” But such concerns may be premature.

The court’s decision (PDF) was in response to a $10,000 Federal Communications Commission fine levied on the Minority Television Project, a San Francisco public TV operator that had aired nonpolitical ads from Chevrolet and State Farm. That move violated an advertising ban dating back to the beginnings of noncommercial broadcasting in the 1940s. While the court upheld the ban on ads for “goods and services by for-profit entities,” its two-judge majority found that banning ads that are political or “regarding issues of public importance or interest” violated the First Amendment. (The fine against Minority Television Project still stands.)

The decision, which only affects the 9th Circuit’s nine-state jurisdiction, prevents the government from prohibiting PBS or other noncommercial stations from broadcasting political ads, but it does not force the stations to do it. Noncommercial stations remain exempt from the “reasonable access” rules spelled out by the Communications Act of 1934, which threaten to revoke commercial stations’ licenses if they reject ads from candidates for federal office. (Antiaborton foe and presidential candidate Randall Terry has been testing these access rules with his gory campaign ads.) Yet in the case of public TV stations, the decision whether to air a candidate’s ad appears to be up to them. Any PBS station that did air a campaign ad could be opening up the floodgates for more ads, since competing candidates could then request equal ad time at the same price as their opponent. 

What about the specter of third-party attack ads running during Sesame Street? According to an FCC spokeswoman, the court’s ruling does not open the door for ads from super-PACs, which the commission views as commercial advertisers. That interpretation, however, appears to run counter to Judge Carlos Bea’s majority opinion, which did not distinguish between ads from candidates or advocacy groups. So that may remain a matter for the courts.

If an appeal is rejected, the FCC could turn to the Supreme Court. If it doesn’t, or if no appeal is filed, the 9th Circuit will soon issue a mandate enforcing the decision—at which point public TV stations in Western states and Alaska could begin airing dueling campaign ads—assuming there are candidates who think that spots during Antiques Roadshow are the best bang for their advertising bucks. Asked if his station would consider running political ads, a spokesman for KQED, a major northern California NPR and PBS affiliate, said he couldn’t comment on the ruling “because we’re expecting that to go through the legal process.”

Either way, PBS viewers are already used to seeing ads on their ostensibly commercial-free stations. As Judge John Noonan noted in his concurring opinion, “As a viewer of Jim Lehrer NewsHour and its successor, I have seen announcements that to my mind are ads. For example, I have viewed Charles Schwab’s message, ‘Talk to Chuck’—it is not about Chuck’s golf game.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate