The FCC late last Friday admonished 10 TV stations for failure to comply fully with the sponsorship disclosure requirements of its political advertising rules.
Receiving what amounts to a regulatory slap on the wrist: Scripps' WCPO Cincinnati and KNXV Phoenix; Fox's KMSP Minneapolis and WTVT Tampa; Media General's WFLA Tampa; NBC's WTVJ Miami; ABC's WTVD Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; CBS's WWJ Detroit; Hearst's WMUR Manchester, N.H.; and Graham Media's WDIV Detroit.
The stations were cited for such violations as not identifying the officials of the sponsoring organizations; not noting the issue that non-candidate spots addressed; and, as in the case of WCPO, identifying a sponsor by an acronym rather than full name ("DSCC-IE" rather than the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee).
The rules require that stations include the disclosures for each request for political time in their online public file.
At the same time, the FCC clarified some of disclosure requirements, recognizing that "parties have varying interpretations about the nature and extent of the obligations."
Going forward, the FCC said, the parties would be held to the newly clarified rules.
The actions were promoted by complaints filed last year by the Campaign Legal Center and Sunlight Foundation.
The FCC rejected Fox's assertion that the complainants lacked standing because they are not within the service area of the stations they complained about.
"[N]othing in the ... [law], the commission’s public file rules or commission precedent requires a complainant to demonstrate that he or she resides within a station’s viewing area to file a complaint for violation of the political file rule," the FCC said.
