WELCOME home, CBS, to the vast right-wing conspiracy. When liberal activist group MoveOn.org sought to air an anti-Bush advertisement during last Sunday's Super Bowl, the Conservative Bias Syndicate wouldn't stand for it. Like the members of a tribe who lost that week's immunity challenge, the Survivor network voted out the politically charged commercial in order to suit its own selfish ends. Or so the story goes among the Bush-bashing crowd. In reality, CBS refused to run the ad for legitimate, not sinister, reasons.
For months, MoveOn sought to pay for the Super Bowl airing of a contest-winning commercial opposing President George W. Bush's bid for reelection. When CBS nixed the ad, citing a policy against so-called "issue advocacy," MoveOn quickly claimed that it had been victimized as a result of hidden political motivations. Other controversial groups, it said, received a warmer welcome. The presumption was that CBS was exacting its revenge on MoveOn for its opposition last year of new FCC rules that allowed Viacom (CBS' parent company) to expand its operations into new markets ("CBS Defends Its Super Bowl Turf on Anti-Bush Ad," washingtonpost.com, Jan. 29).
It doesn't take a Crime Scene Investigator to see that CBS could have been influenced in this case by non-political factors. As a profit-driven enterprise, CBS is predisposed toward financial motives before any other, and all its decisions stem in some way from wanting to make a buck.
CBS' chief concern in denying MoveOn Super Bowl access was a desire to avoid controversy that could jeopardize its favorable standing among a portion of its viewers. Granted, it's unlikely that the ad would have caused anyone to preemptively boycott the popular Super Bowl broadcast itself, but it could have been taxing on the network's resources to deal with a subsequent outcry from offended conservative groups.
One need look no further than the negative backlash over Sunday's made-for-Internet-download halftime show to understand why major television networks have an interest in not rocking the boat. It is also important to remember that controversy last November caused CBS to cancel its plans to show a miniseries that questioned the personal character of former president Ronald Reagan. One can assume that the memory of this unpleasant event still echoed in the minds of CBS executives when they received MoveOn's request.
However irrational it may seem, CBS would have agitated the same conservative contingent if they had aired MoveOn's spot. This would not necessarily have come from the content of the ad itself, which actually employs a traditional conservative argument by suggesting that the Bush administration has approved too much federal spending. Instead, the name of MoveOn itself would have been the source of controversy. The public already strongly associates MoveOn with another ad that once appeared on its Web site comparing President Bush to Hitler. It is understandable that CBS would hesitate to potentially attach itself to such a message, no matter how loose the association might be.
Conversely, other semi-political ads CBS approved for the big game are not as controversial to the typical American as MoveOn would have you believe. The National Office of Drug Control Policy, whose ads once suggested a linkage between drug money and terrorism, ran an ad this year that encouraged parents to intervene if their children were smoking pot. Only an extreme social libertarian could label this message as remotely "controversial." Similarly, another commercial pointed out the obvious hypocrisy in tobacco companies' smoking-prevention ads. Today, the detriments of smoking are no longer a topic of serious debate.
MoveOn has not been subjected to an inconsistent standard or singled out for a type of persecution unique to itself. CBS also declined to air an ad produced by the animal rights activist group PETA according to the same standard ("CBS limply rejects PETA Superbowl ad," www.peta.org). PETA certainly qualifies as a controversial organization, as it condemns the eating practices of the omnivorous majority. The treatment of the PETA ad, along with that of MoveOn, demonstrates a pattern of ad censorship that, while possibly cruel, is at least fair.
Claims of conservative bias and a CBS scheme to punish its political enemies make for exciting press releases and editorials, but they are at their roots farfetched. The most likely and reasonable explanation for CBS' refusal of MoveOn's anti-Bush commercial lies in the fact that it fears becoming embroiled in a controversy that could upset its viewers. In the end, the network only wants to ensure that everybody still loves CBS.
(Chris Kiser's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ckiser@cavalierdaily.com.)
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