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h1.OVERVIEW
h2.Fighting Petty Mudslinging in North Carolina
The North Carolina Republican Party has stooped to new lows in a recent ad highlighting old speeches of Obama’s former minister Reverend Wright and alleging that Obama is too “extreme” for North Carolina.
National leaders from both parties, including Senators Clinton and McCain, have called on the North Carolina Republican Party to stop airing the ad, but the party has not responded.
As citizens who wish to improve the future of public debate and political dialogue in America, we have an obligation to voice our discontent about this kind of degrading mudslinging, which violates the integrity of our political system and pollutes the debate moving forward in an election that will be critical to our country’s future.
We need Americans to be making educated decisions about issues, and should create a standard for public dialogue which respects voters’ ability to rationally choose between platforms on issues they care about, not one which attempts to misleadingly manipulate voters’ emotions with unsound and petty character assassinations.
h2.Our Action: Boycotting news & election coverage of news networks that fail to meet a decent standard of public debate with integrity
If any local North Carolina affiliates of the major national news networks (Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS) choose to run the ad, we will boycott their entire national network’s news & general election coverage for the remainder of the 2008 election.
Thus far, only 2 stations have publically announced they’ve actively decided not to run the ad: WRAL-TV in Raleigh (CBS) and WSOC-TV in Charlotte (ABC). We commend these local affiliates for their stance, but to truly maintain the integrity of the public debate in this election we will need a broader consensus amongst North Carolina media networks, and call on all other affiliated of national news networks to follow WRAL and WSOC’s lead in this matter.
h2.Read more about the issue:
blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/04/rnc-and-john-mc.html
Also, although we’ve decided not to embed the video of the ad in question, if you feel you must view it in order to decide to join this campaign, then you can see it at YouTube here: Video
