Media Action Center is a group of of concerned residents throughout the U.S. led by former Emmy-winning broadcaster turned media reformer Sue Wilson. We have successfully influenced policy at the Federal Communications Commission and at local TV and Radio stations throughout the country for more than a decade to ensure We the People are truly served by the publicly owned airwaves. (See the archive of our work under "older posts.") We successfully forced Entercom to give up its $13.5 million license to KDND for killing a woman in a radio water drinking stunt. We have a long-running action to label Alex Jones' radio show as the fiction it is, which has taken Jones' program off dozens of radio stations nationwide. We educated the Supreme Court in FCC v Prometheus Radio on critical information to #SaveLocalNews.

Please see MAC's 2018 Comment to the FCC (below) to learn why these actions are crucial to Democracy. Find full journalistic coverage of the Supreme Court case and our Amicus brief, Sinclair Broadcasting's shell game, Alex Jones, the Strange v Entercom trial and other public interest media issues at SueWilsonReports.com. For background on how we arrived in this era of disinformation and what to do about it, see Wilson's 2009 documentary Broadcast Blues.

Tell Candidates: Threaten to Sue TV Stations Over Lying Political Ads

March 1, 2016

For years, I've been working on the "Public Interest Obligations" of broadcasters. What exactly does it mean that TV and Radio stations are required to "serve the public interest" as a requirement of their licensing? 

One issue I have written about over the years are political ads that blatantly lie to We the People over the very airwaves that are sworn to serve us. I've suggested that We the People start a class action suit against the stations, but have been told by attorneys that we have no standing to file such a case. 

But candidates themselves do have such standing, and I've just written an article about Ted Cruz threatening to sue TV stations over third party ads he says lie about him. Now that he has complained to the station, that media outlet will have to fact check the ad to make certain it is true, something they should be doing in the first case, given that TV stations stand to make $4.4 Billion in this 2016 election cycle alone.

So here's our action: write to candidates of your choice and ask them to threaten to sue the TV Stations over lying political ads. 

It's a simple and effective way to clean up our elections and take the bite out of the Citizens United teeth.