The Green Party won a public-relations battle with Google on Tuesday, forcing the company's television advertising division to book time for a commercial in which its presidential candidate uses a (partly bleeped) obscenity to describe the policies of the major-party candidates.
Google TV Ads, which fills advertising slots for television stations, initially rejected the commercial in an e-mail to the party's ad agency on Monday, citing the use of “inappropriate language†by Jill Stein, the Green nominee. No doubt try ing to avoid violating the Federal Communications Commission's vague standards for what constitutes indecency on television, Google TV Ads instructs clients to “avoid bleeped-out expletives where curse words are still identifiable from the audio.â€
In response to that initial rejection, the Green Party called on its supporters to “Tell Google TV Ads Not to Censor Our Ads!†The party argued, “Never mind that these ads already comply with F.C.C. regulations regarding appropriate content, what Google does not seem to understand is that federal law prohibits broadcasters from censoring ads submitted by candidates for public office.â€
On Tuesday afternoon, Google TV Ads relented and agreed to pass the ad on to broadcasters in the 11 media markets where the Green Party hopes its message will have the most impact. In an e-mail shared with The Lede by Ben Manski, Ms. Stein's campaign manager, a Google TV Ads employee also asked th at the party “make immediate arrangements to remedy/retract the message†posted on its Web site.
As my colleague Adam Liptak reported in June, when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of two broadcasters who had faced potential fines for programs featuring cursing and nudity, the justices “left open the question of whether changes in the media landscape have undermined the rationales for limiting their free-speech rights in ways the First Amendment would not tolerate in other settings.â€
According to Mr. Manski, the Green Party ad was primarily intended to be shown on cable and satellite channels, like MSNBC and Comedy Central, which, like the Internet, are not subject to government regulation of objectionable language in the way that words and images broadcast over the airwaves still are.
