Cancer on the body politic; can negative attack ads be eliminated or at least curtailed?

Civil Discourse Now ^ | April 30, 2012 | Mark Small

[faucetman]

“The truth is free speech, whether it offends you or not. “

Exactly correct! To the rest of you.... FREE SPEECH..... you might have heard of it.

TRUTH is what we need.

Negative is just another persons freedom fighter.

[discostu]

But they’ll never do that. And we really don’t want the media, an inherently biased group, deciding which ads are negative or aren’t. It’s a job they won’t be good at.

[rmlew]

Without negative political ads, teh only way people would learn about records would be from the leftist media.

[teflon9]

But it wouldn't be a law. I'm talking about a private agreement among all broadcast media to boycott these ads. If the boycott were upheld properly, Zero (or the guy running for county dogcatcher) could send negative attack ads to the broadcasters until they were blue in the face--they just wouldn't be aired!

[repentant_pundit]

But it wouldn't be a law. I'm talking about a private agreement among all broadcast media to boycott these ads.

OK, fair enough. I'm all for private agreements.

But if I had a media company, a website perhaps, I'd not join the coalition of "all" broadcast media.

This is a large nation; many others would refuse to join such a coalition to boycott "negative" ads.

I, and many others, would gladly accept ads that tell the truth about someone like 0bamao.

And the truth might just be percieved as negative toward him !

[teflon9]

If such a boycott movement ever gained traction, public support for it would be so overwhelming that only the smallest and most obscure outlets would ignore it.