With less than a week until the Wisconsin primary election, campaign ads are running in full force on TV stations. Some of those include attack ads include TMJ4 anchors, however, the clips are edited in a way that does not provide the full context of the story that aired on TMJ4 News.
The hotly contested Wisconsin Supreme Court race includes an attack ad against Judge Jennifer Dorow. The ad includes TMJ4 anchors Andrea Albers and Steve Chamraz edited with an unknown voice talking between them.
“An Oak Creek man who pleaded guilty to domestic violence is now accused of stabbing his in-laws in Illinois during a two-day release from court,” said Andrea Albers.
"The judge who gave him those two days of freedom was Jennifer Dorow,” said Steve Chamraz.
An unknown voice continues: “All of this on the same day Dorow announced her run for Supreme Court.” Then it goes back to the clip with Chamraz saying, “that raises a question now about her judgement.” The clip was cut off before he finished the sentence.
Those edited clips omit portions of the story that aired. The ad was from the group A Better Wisconsin Together, which says it is affiliated with Progress Now, a progressive 501 advocacy organization.
"Candidates are allowed to misrepresent things, they are allowed to lie as long as they don't defame anyone, so there are certain situations where they could be sued, but otherwise they have a lot of opportunity to embellish the truth or take things out of context,” said Erik Ugland, who teaches media law and policy at Marquette University.
This all comes from the Federal Communications Act of 1934. It says TV stations or radio stations cannot censor political ads purchased by candidates. They also have to accept ads from all political candidates and let them pay the lowest rate for the advertising time.
However, the FCC political programming and campaign advertising rules say, "Broadcast stations are prohibited from censoring or rejecting political ads that are paid for and sponsored by legally qualified candidates. This no-censorship provision does not apply to political ads that are sponsored by non-candidate third parties."
Since these ads ran, we have had several viewers email TMJ4 saying things like: "I cannot believe that two of your anchors are featured in an anti-Dorow ad. Talk about media bias."
"Questionable use of channel 4 news broadcast on a negative political commercial about Jennifer Dorow. I thought it was odd, that an excerpt from a news broadcast from a station that would normally be non-biased would be used on a political commercial. It gives the impression that the station is supporting a candidate. I was curious why this would be allowed by channel 4."
"Did TMJ give permission for their newscasters to be used in the anti-Judge Durow campaign??"
But as Ugland explains, politicians can just take clips from TV newscasts without permission.
“They can use those clips if it's within the boundaries of fair use, which is an exception to the copyright law that allows some uses of other people's copyrighted work,” said Ugland.
Ugland says where products have to have "truth in advertising," politicians do not. He suggests the public either tune out the ads as much as possible or do your own research because anything goes when it comes to political ads. The rules for political ads only apply to TV and radio, not to cable stations or social media, because those mediums did not exist when the law was written. The Wisconsin primary election is Tuesday, Feb. 21.
Editor’s Note: This story was updated with the FCC political programming and campaign advertising rules. We previously misreported our obligation to run political ads that are sponsored by non-candidate third parties.