Issues Left Untackled
By Eli Pariser, LA Times
January 30, 2004
When the Super Bowl is beamed into living rooms around the world
Sunday, you can expect to see TV spots hyping cars, beer, razor
blades, three different erectile dysfunction cures, toilet paper and snack
foods.
The ads will be slick and clever, lavishly produced, brilliant in their
marketing. Some, no doubt, will be sexually suggestive or violent. Most
will cost $2 million to $3 million to produce and broadcast.
But here's what you won't see: a single ad about the big issues that face
our country today.
Outrageous as it may sound, CBS has decided that ads selling erectile
dysfunction medicines and toilet paper are appropriate for Americans,
but serious discussion should be banned. An ad about our country, our
war, our president, the state of our schools or the size of our budget
deficit? That, in the eyes of CBS officialdom, would be too
controversial.
We know, because we tried. We thought that the Super Bowl, with 130
million viewers, would be a great place to get our message out. So we
held a contest on the Internet to select the best ad we could possibly
run. The ad we selected – from 1,500 submissions – shows children
cleaning offices, washing dishes and hauling trash. It ends with the
question: "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1-trillion
deficit?" (It's viewable at MoveOn.org).
But even though we were willing to pony up the $1.6 million to pay for
it, CBS refused to sell us the time, citing what it says is a 50-year-old
policy prohibiting ads that take stands on controversial public policy
issues.
CBS claims its policy is designed to keep the Citibanks and Microsofts
of the world from buying time to tell Americans how to think. "It is
designed to prevent those with means to produce and purchase network
advertising from having undue influence on 'controversial issues of public
importance,' " the network said this week.
Sounds fair, doesn't it? But what it really means is that if McDonald's
buys an ad promoting its tasty Big Mac, no one can run an ad that says
Big Macs are full of fat and unhealthful. Pfizer can run a spot saying it's
"helping people in need" get medicine, but we can't air an ad saying that
Pfizer lobbied to weaken the new Medicare bill to prop up drug prices.
Halliburton has slick ads that stress its role supporting the troops in Iraq.
But CBS would reject an ad that pointed to Halliburton's profiteering.
The fewer issue ads run, the more time there is for ads with
mud-wrestling women selling beer and leggy models peddling fast cars.
CBS execs think Americans love mindless consumerism more than
anything else and that it's their duty to pander to this.
But with "fairness" doctrines no longer governing the airwaves and the
media more concentrated each day, it's getting harder and harder to
engage regular people in political discourse. Even the town square has
been replaced, in most communities, by private malls, where politics is
not encouraged.
Instead of taking every opportunity to promote civic discussion,
commercial broadcasters like CBS shrink away. The airwaves are,
more than ever, private enterprises. And for that we pay a price: As
public political speech becomes more difficult and infrequent, the public
becomes less engaged in the policies, processes and laws that govern
us. "Controversy" isn't the real problem. Network front offices love it
when one group or another protests sexy babes in bikinis peddling beer
brands, or violent video games in which the highest body count wins.
That builds buzz.
The CBS policy represents the triumph of corporate self-interest over
the public interest. This is the same CBS, after all, that yanked the
Ronald Reagan miniseries recently when Republican bigwigs
complained. As Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) noted this week, "These
are the same executives at CBS who successfully lobbied this Congress
to change the FCC rules on TV station ownership to their corporate
advantage." CBS simply would rather not risk offending powerful
people in Washington who decide such critical regulatory matters.
But try getting that issue into a 30-second spot for Super Bowl
audiences.
Eli Pariser is Campaigns Director for the MoveOn.org Voter Fund.
CC |
