Many commentators, especially progressives, feel that it's simply too easy for people to say offensive or untrue things on TV or the internet and go uncorrected. Some feel that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should step in and do something about it. In this campaign cycle, we have a real-world example of what that would look like.
In a conversation with Semafor's David Weigel, the Constitution Party's presidential candidate—Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry—detailed his plan to air graphic anti-abortion campaign ads in swing states. Terry already caused what he calls "an epic shitstorm" when one of his ads aired during a broadcast of ABC's morning chat show The View: Over images of aborted fetuses, Terry's voice-over decries "stupid celebrities and lying journalists," pictures of whom he also displays, including all six hosts of The View. For their alleged support of abortion rights, Terry compares them to Nazi propagandists Joseph Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl. Another ad uses imagery of racist lynchings from the 1920s along with images of aborted African American fetuses and says Democrats are "lynching black babies by abortion."
