Directv Newsmax Petition

By Rick Baxley

On December 31st, one group of people set to break the new campaign finance rules and crush the competition is running ads in major television stations across the US.

Advertising agencies representing these TV networks are known as “Super PACs”. The groups are funded by corporations and wealthy individuals, with the money coming from the fees they can earn on deals they do with the broadcasters.

The TV networks themselves don't limit themselves to airing these ads only on national or syndicated shows. Their attorneys will say this wasn't allowed in the 2012 campaign. But so far they have been just as open to advertising their own shows. This won't stop the PAC from running the campaign against the broadcast companies. What's interesting is that the broadcast companies' legal department went along with the DNC's attempt to dictate the terms of this campaign.

This is because the broadcast companies did exactly what it had been doing for the past ten years and tried to create chaos at the ballot box.

The media companies saw a huge amount of money coming in during the election season. This money was a big addition to their budgets, and all of it stayed in the media world. Rather than spend their money on getting journalists to write stories and make sound bites, broadcasting companies ran ads saying who made the most money. I mean, we all know the average amount that you could make per hour right? But the corporate media is willing to spend millions hiring actors and actresses to advertise on TV. They'll spend a few hundredK to advertise something like, say, your mattress salesman. But they were willing to spend millions of dollars to advertise your campaign manager.

The media companies took these ad dollars and spent them on helping their sponsors get a piece of the ad revenue. It was a combination of a pro-corporate, Republican message machine and a pro-conservative message medium. Just look at the pro-GOP ad paid for by an independent expenditure group called Americans for aBetter Economy. And it shows how crazy the Republican message got before the 2012 election.

So...

Progressive groups are now trying to tell the public that they want the "free spending" ban lifted. And to win the consent of government into ending this law, they are pushing for everything to be open. In reality, though, they want to keep it as it is.