Blatant lying.
Ted Budd likes to pose with big guns
TV stations in North Carolina pulled an ad by the campaign arm for Senate Republicans [NRSC] after they were informed it had a false statement and language about North Carolina Democratic candidate Cheri Beasley and her record as a former state Supreme Court chief justice.
The ad, titled "Failed Our Children," ties Beasley to three child predators who were released or had their indictments tossed. They say in one case, which involved a man convicted on 12 counts of child pornography, that Beasley had voted to set him free.
Beasley and the court heard a case on whether police could search a USB drive belonging to the man charged in the case, James Howard Terrell Jr., without a warrant. She and a majority of the court upheld a lower court's assessment that the search had not been permissible under the "private-search doctrine" and sent the matter back to the lower court, but did not directly vote to set Terrell Jr. free....
"The defendant was not set free by the ruling as the ad claims. CMG [Cox Media Group] will not run the ad when it contains a false statement on material issue. This ad has been removed from airing," wrote a representative for WSOC-TV and WAXN-TV in Charlotte, N.C., in a letter first obtained by CBS News....
Another ad by the NRSC attacks Beasley over other cases of violent crime and portrays her as failing to protect them. That ad has been fact checked by CBS17, which similarly found the ads lacked context — that the state Supreme Court had voted unanimously to vacate a death sentence. This ad remains on the air.
1 comment:
The stations probably removed the ad because of an FCC rule that prohibits broadcast of false information that can cause immediate harm.
The implication that Beasley supports or wants to "go easy" on pedophiles would create the possibility of putting her or her campaign workers in danger from a violent attack. There have been threats against public official labeled as "groomers", being pedophiles or supporting pedophiles by right-wing extremists.
Don't forget that when the right spread lies about a Clinton-connected pedophile ring operating out of a pizza place in DC, a man from North Carolina traveled all the way there with a rifle and started firing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory
Democrats could have complained to the FCC about the ad and the stations, if the FCC agreed that the information was false and posed a threat, could have fined the stations.
If Beasley or her campaign had been harmed, especially after the stations were informed about the ad, they would have faced possible legal liability.
The other ad, while a pack of lies, only represents a danger to democracy, rather than a possible violence.
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