Saturday, September 25, 2010

Slate article notes the dangers of Fox News lawsuit against Carnahan campaign

An article at Slate.com points out the dangers of the unprecedented lawsuit filed by Fox News against the Carnahan for Senate campaign, including an overreaching use of copyright law as a means of political censorship:

Other news outlets have in the past asked political candidates to take down videos that included short news clips. But this is the first time, to our knowledge, that a news organization has actually filed a lawsuit against a political candidate for showing a clip in the midst of a campaign. Fox says that the use of the clip in the ad misleadingly suggests that Wallace or the network has endorsed Carnahan and that this suggestion undermines the network's "objectivity." But the lawsuit undermines Fox's objectivity far more than the ad itself. According to the Carnahan campaign, Blunt has used Fox footage in his own ads with no objection from the network. And in the Carnahan ad, the clip is clearly identified as Fox News footage from January 2006. Since the campaign for Missouri's Senate seat had not even begun at that time, the ad can't possibly represent an endorsement of Carnahan.

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