Stephens Media political columnist John Brummett tackles an issue that was certainly the subject of debate during our recent political primaries.
Brummett dissects aspects of a Supreme Court ruling and Congressional inaction to disclose donors to those mysterious organizations that sponsor attack advertising like we saw in the Lincoln-Halter race.
Writes Brummett:
Instead this defined the race: We saw saturating misleading attack ads on television against the incumbent by labor unions that identified themselves in their ads, and we saw saturating and misleading attack ads against the challenger by business groups that did not identify themselves in their ads.
The pervasive deceit in the rhetoric was indeed a problem. But that cut both ways.
What cut only one way, and posed the greater injustice, was in knowing, or not knowing, who was doing the deceiving.
It is time that someone come up with a reasonable solution that allows the public a better understanding of who is funding a lot of these mysteriously named groups, like Americans for Job Security or Arkansans for Change.
We’ve made the candidates take responsibility for the ads they directly fund; their supporters can do the same.
You can read Brummett’s full take at this link.
