Antiabortion activist plans graphic ad for Super Bowl. Can station refuse?

Many Super Bowl viewers look forward to the over-the-top, made-for-the-day ads as a festive part of the annual football spectacular. But this year viewers in several media markets will also see some graphic political messages as well.

During pregame shows and the game itself, viewers in several states will see images of aborted fetuses in ads by Randall Terry, the longtime antiabortion activist who has declared himself a Democratic candidate for president.

TV stations are generally required to run any ad for which a candidate buys a time slot within 45 days of a primary or election, but NBC affiliate WMAQ in Chicago is refusing to run Mr. Terry’s ad on Super Bowl Sunday.

At the heart of the controversy is whether Mr. Terry really qualifies as a candidate for president. The case also raises questions about whether a political party can be the judge of who is a legitimate candidate, as well as how far free-speech rights extend when it comes to political advertising.

The FCC could rule as early as Friday afternoon on whether the station is required to run the ad.

“Mr. Terry does not meet the FCC requirements to become a ‘bona fide’ candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States,” says a written statement from WMAQ. Some of the reasons, the statement says: Mr. Terry doesn’t meet requirements for the Illinois ballot; Terry has stated publicly that he is hoping to exploit anti-censorship rules for candidates in order to get airtime for ads; and the Democratic National Committee has said Terry’s “claims to be a Democratic candidate for President are false.”

Terry disputes the station’s argument. He says that he’s filed paperwork to be a write-in candidate in about 75 of the 102 counties in Illinois, including those where the ad would air. He’s also been on the Democratic ballot in several other states, and in Illinois has conducted a number of campaign speeches and distributed literature, which he says has been considered evidence of candidacy in previous cases.

What’s at stake, Terry says in an interview with the Monitor, is “whether or not we have free elections.”

The most disturbing part, to Terry, is a recent letter from Democratic National Committee executive director Patrick Gaspard, challenging his status as a candidate (a letter which figured into WMAQ’s argument and has also caused some stations in Missouri and Oklahoma to await the FCC ruling).

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