In the News
MediaPost: Tightening Political Ad Disclosure Rules May Not Curb ‘Fake News,’ IAB Says
By Wendy Davis
“Enhancing the existing framework by clarifying the responsibility of publishers, platforms, and advertisers in making available these disclosures to the public would create greater legal certainty across the industry and provide valuable information,” IAB CEO and President Randall Rothenberg plans to tell Congress in a prepared statement. “But the ‘fake news’ and ‘fake ads’ at the center of the current storm did not engage in such overt candidate support. So they were not, and based on current Supreme Court jurisprudence will not, be regulated under the Federal Election Campaign Act.”
Rothenberg will testify Tuesday before the House Oversight subcommittee on information technology, which is slated to hold a hearing about online political ads. David Chavern, CEO of News Media Alliance, will also testify Tuesday, as well as representatives from the Center for Competitive Politics, and the Brennan Center for Justice, among others…
He also plans to say that free speech principles may limit the government’s attempt to regulate that type of material. “Robust political speech — no matter who is paying for it, no matter how controversial it is, no matter who may be offering it — is the essence of American democracy, and must not be stifled,” his testimony states.
Bloomberg View: Russian Trolls Would Love the ‘Honest Ads Act’
By Leonid Bershidsky
The Honest Ads Act, introduced on Thursday by Senators Mark Warner, Amy Klobuchar and John McCain to regulate political advertising on social networks and on the internet in general, would increase the regulatory burden on companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google. But it wouldn’t stop Russian troll farms or any other foreign actors from continuing to use them to push politicized messages to U.S. audiences. Totally different measures would be necessary if that were indeed the goal.
Broadly, what the act does is expand the definition of “electioneering communications” to cover not just traditional media like print publications, television, radio and direct mail, but also all public forms of digital communication. The idea is to make online platforms store all the political ads — both those that support specific candidates and those dealing with issues of national importance…
As some critics immediately noted, keeping an archive of every promoted tweet or Facebook post so that the public could peruse them would be a mammoth task. Communication researchers, of course, would be grateful to legislators for such a generous gift, but the companies would face lots of extra work without really advancing the legislation’s primary goal — to make political advertising on digital platforms more transparent.
CCP
Lee Goodman Offers Spirited Defense of First Amendment in Campaign Finance Law
By Joe Albanese
How big a problem is “dark money”? What about corporation spending in politics? Why doesn’t the FEC take a stronger stand against political activities by private groups? These are some of the questions tackled by Federal Election Commissioner Lee Goodman.
On Wednesday, Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy hosted an event with Goodman, entitled “The Conservative Position on Election Laws.” The event was moderated by Mark Rom, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs…
Goodman cautioned that, when trying to protect from foreign influence of elections in the past, the government has sometimes intruded too far on the rights of Americans. Besides “red baiting” in the 1950s, the Alien and Sedition Acts of the 1790s also infringed on free political debate. Goodman voiced his preference for addressing foreign campaign activity by altering the Foreign Agents Registration Act rather than trying to get internet companies to censor foreign speech online (“it’s called the world wide web for a reason,” he said).
Internet Speech Regulation
BuzzFeed News: How People Inside Facebook Are Reacting To The Company’s Election Crisis
By Charlie Warzel
“Before the election the digital community was complaining that Facebook was this monopolistic power that was overly censorious and buttoned-up. And now the same group is saying, ‘how’d you let Breitbart and fake news get out there?'” …
Sources familiar with recent discussions inside Facebook told BuzzFeed News there’s some concern that the strong reaction to 2016 election meddling and the desire for fast reform could push the company to assume a greater role in determining what is or isn’t legitimate news. “That Facebook played a significant part as perhaps the most important online venue in this election is not up for debate,” one of these people said. “But what we need to be debating is: What is Facebook’s role in controlling the outcomes of elections? I’m not sure anyone outside Facebook has a good proposal for that.” …
Antonio Garcia Martinez, a former Facebook employee who helped lead the company’s early ad platform, worries that the momentum to correct for what happened during the 2016 election will push Facebook a step too far. “Everyone fears Facebook’s power, and as a result, they’re asking them to assume more power in form of human curation and editorial decision-making,” he said. “I worry that two or three years from now we’re all going to deeply regret we asked for this.”
CBS News: New rules on political ads won’t solve social media’s “biggest problem”
A new bipartisan bill called the Honest Ads Act would make online advertisers disclose who paid for ads, just as TV and radio advertisers do.
CBS News contributor and editor-in-chief of Wired magazine Nicholas Thompson joined “CBS This Morning” to discuss the proposed legislation and what he sees as a bigger problem facing social media platforms…
According to Thompson, the number of people “reached” by Russian political ads online is not only small, but potentially less significant than the word implies.
“To ‘reach’ someone just means you scroll through, it doesn’t mean you really reach them in any substantial way,” he said.
“What’s really problematic are the fake accounts that the Russian operatives set up. Those were massively more influential and they’re harder to find and harder to define, but that’s the biggest problem. That’s the thing that had more influence.”
Thompson also said that Silicon Valley’s recent negative publicity could get worse if they come out against the Honest Ads Act.
“Silicon Valley has a massive PR problem, a growing PR problem and one that they’re really struggling with right now. How they respond to this bill will play into that. If they come out hard against it, you can imagine people getting even angrier,” he said.
Reason: The ‘Politics of Division’ Is ‘Who We Are as a Country’
By Ed Krayewski
Former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush gave a pair of unrelated but thematically linked speeches yesterday that were widely understood to be rebukes of Trumpism. Unfortunately, the speeches also trotted out some tired clichés about division in American politics, with Bush calling out Russia for taking advantage of those divisions…
Let’s be clear: Americans are already and always turned against each other. In a democratic society we can be divided because we have agency. (There’s a lot of political unity in places like Russia.) Free speech is messy by design, and what keeps our divisive politics from being destructive is the limits we’ve placed on government. The more powerful the government, the more dangerous those divisions actually become…
The obsession with Russia’s influence on American politics and the divisions in it could be a lot more damaging to our democratic norms than any Facebook ads some Russians might purchase.
Political Parties
Houston Chronicle: Democrats to ban money from donors that ‘conflict’ with policy
By Bloomberg News
The Democratic National Committee voted Saturday to ban donations from certain corporate political action committees – including those tied to tobacco companies, gun makers and payday lenders – that “conflict” with the party’s platform.
Committee members approved the measure at a meeting in Las Vegas. The committee’s leadership “will implement it going forward,” committee spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa said. It’s not legally binding, though, giving the DNC leeway on how to put it in place.
The move is an effort to bridge the gap between committee members who want to ban all corporate and lobbyist contributions to the committee, and those who believe the party can’t unilaterally disarm its fundraising efforts as Republicans collect millions of dollars from corporations and lobbyists.
“The American people are looking to Democrats to promote people-powered politics in this era of resistance, revival, and reform,” reads the measure by California committee member Christine Pelosi, daughter of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and a longtime advocate for reducing corporate and lobbyist influence on the party. The DNC, she said, should “walk our talk.”
The States
Washington Post: A regional divide is growing about big money in politics
By Phil Andrews
In 2013, the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation enabling counties to establish public-financing systems for county elections. Virginia’s state lawmakers need to do likewise.
Montgomery County and Howard County approved public financing for county council and executive candidates…
In the District, council member David Grosso (I-At Large) introduced a public-financing bill in March, the Fair Elections Act of 2017. It’s co-sponsored by a supermajority of council members, which is crucial because Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) hasn’t committed to it. Enactment would improve public confidence that procurement decisions and other official actions aren’t influenced by big donations…
Public-financing advances the public interest by countering fat-cat financing, increasing political competition and voter choice, and empowering the people. Maryland and the District are moving forward. Will Virginia?
