Good Question

(WCCO) You can't turn on the television without seeing a campaign commercial for one candidate or another. While each ad is serving up one version of truth, to be generous, some include falsehoods that seem hard to defend. So what are they doing on television?

"When political ads are patently false," wondered Marguerite Cavett of St. Peter. "Why do television stations continue to show the ads?"

"I have to change the channel a lot," said Daniel Randolph, a Richfield resident. "If we know them to be false, they should either disclaim them as false, or not air them in the first place."

However, according to WCCO-TV General Manager Susan Adams Loyd, TV stations don't have much choice in the matter when it comes to campaign ads from candidates and campaigns.

"Federal law prevents broadcast stations from refusing to air them because of their content," said Loyd.

According to the Federal Communications Act, TV stations have "no power of censorship" over political ads from individual candidates. There are certain cases in which television stations can reject ads. For example, a station could reject an ad if it were too short or too long, if it were deemed "obscene" or if it came from a political group.

"On very rare occasions, WCCO-TV may decline to air one of these commercials if we conclude that it's patently and unquestionably false on its face," explained Loyd. "That's intentionally a tough standard, because we don't want to set ourselves up as the judge of the truth or falsity of statements made in the give-and-take of political debate."

"Quite often the objectivity is in the eye of the beholder," explained John Rash, Senior Vice President at Campbell Mithun, a Minneapolis-based advertising agency. "The fed government does not want to have the television industry or government itself get involved in what can and can't be said in a campaign."

For consumer products, there are truth-in-advertising laws, with a long process, to make sure no one's lying. That's overseen by the Federal Trade Commission.

For example, Campbell Mithun client General Mills has an internal process making sure its ads are accurate, then there's an ad agency review, and then staff people at the television networks start their review.

"The have to go through a rigorous process to get spots cleared," said Rash.

A 1971 Supreme Court libel case ruling laid out the special protection that political speech has under the First Amendment to the Constitution.

"It can hardly be doubted that the constitutional guarantee [of free speech] has its fullest and most urgent application precisely to the conduct of campaigns for political office," ruled the court unanimously.

A handful of states have attempted to legislate truth in campaign ads, including Minnesota. The Minnesota Fair Campaign Practices Act makes it a gross misdemeanor to lie in an ad. Any political ad that "is false, and the person knows [it] is false" is in violation of the law.

The initial version of that law was put to the test in 1994 when U.S. House candidate Tad Jude was taken to court over a Senate ad that was proven to be completely false.

Jude claimed that a rapist "may never have been released" and committed another crime, if Bill Luther, a state senator, didn't block a bill sponsored by Jude, who was also a state senator.

In fact, Jude's bill would not have kept the rapist in jail, and the ad was proven false. He was charged, but found not guilty, because there was no way to prove that Jude knew the ad was false.

"Both candidates and both parties have been much more careful about outright falsehoods," said Rash, pointing out that it would be extremely difficult to prove ads to be false.

"In our marketplace of ideas it's 'let a thousand flowers bloom' and the electorate will make their decision," he said.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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