BTL:CBS Censorship of Political Ad During Super Bowl Sparks Debate on...

... Media Access Interview with Zack Exley, organizing director of MoveOn.org's Voter Fund conducted by Between the Lines' Scott Harris

CBS Censorship of Political Ad During Super Bowl Sparks Debate on Media Access

Interview with Zack Exley, organizing director of MoveOn.org's Voter Fund conducted by Scott Harris

When millions of viewers around the world tuned into this year's Super Bowl, they saw an exciting football game, a little more than expected of Janet Jackson during the halftime show, and a flurry of costly advertisements for beer, razor blades and junk food. But what millions of Super Bowl viewers did not see was a 30-second political ad titled "Child's Pay" that calls attention to the Bush administration's $1 trillion dollar deficit.

The ad, which depicts young children working in adult jobs, beat out 1,600 other entries in a contest titled, "Bush in 30 Seconds," run by MoveOn.org, an Internet-based progressive activist group. Although MoveOn raised $1.6 million dollars to pay for the ad during the Super Bowl, CBS refused to sell them air time, claiming that the "Child's Pay" spot violated the network's policy prohibiting the broadcast of advocacy advertisements.

Although the ad wasn't seen during the Super Bowl, the ensuing controversy has given MoveOn a blizzard of free publicity focusing on issues of censorship and the responsibility of broadcasters to allow all sides to have their say on important issues affecting our society. Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Zack Exley, organizing director with the MoveOn.org Voter Fund, who discusses the ad controversy and the goals of Moveon's 1.7 million-member organization in this year's presidential election campaign.

View the winners of MoveOn's "Bush in 30 Seconds" ad contest by visiting the group's web site at www.moveon.org(
Moveon.org's winning Super Bowl ads Needs Quicktime).

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