With the Florida broadcast airwaves overrun with political ads in the last few days - the great majority of them attack ads - many ask why do broadcasters keep running those ads?  Of course, there are revenue considerations.  But as the attacks get nastier, and perhaps even go against the interest of the station owners themselves, why do broadcasters keep running these ads?  Often, it's because broadcasters have to - under the applicable laws.  We've seen two stories this week that illustrate that point - one where Gloria Allred, the well-known attorney, has written to a number of television stations asking them to refuse graphic anti-abortion ads to be run during the Super Bowl sponsored by purported Democratic presidential candidate Randall Terry, and a second about an NBC-owned station in Florida apparently continued to run a Mitt Romney ad attacking Newt Gingrich, featuring NBC News footage of an old Tom Brokaw Nightly News report, even after NBC News asked the Romney campaign to stop using the clip.  The NBC station apparently recognized its obligations, while Ms. Allred ignored the station's obligations under Section 315 of the Communications Act and the FCC's political broadcasting rules. 

Broadcasters are sometimes in a sticky position with nasty political ads, as by law (Section 315 of the Communications Act) they are not allowed to censor a candidate ad.  What this means is that they cannot reject a candidate ad based on its content, with the possible limited exception of where the ad violates a Federal felony statute like the obscenity laws (though not the indecency rules, which are not felony statutes).  If the ads just violate someone's property interests, or could give rise to some sort of civil liability (e.g. defamation), as we've written before, the broadcaster is immune from liability for running the ad by a candidate or his authorized campaign committee. The broadcaster is also immune from liability from a perceived copyright action like that alleged by NBC.  But that immunity arises only because the station cannot, under law, reject the ad.  So the only remedy for someone objecting to the content of a candidate's ad is to seek a remedy against the campaign itself, not against any station that runs the campaign's ad.  (See examples of suits against the candidates, but not the stations, in cases we wrote about here and here)  So, even if the copyright owner who objects to the use of its copyrighted content in an ad owns the TV station, it is still stuck running the ad if the candidate insists.

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