Won't do a bit of good, but I just contacted all four major tv stations in this area

[Bluzmann57]

I am sick of political ads in general, but with the election coming up, I deal with them What I cannot deal with are blatant lies; not "bending the truth" but flat out lies. In Illinois' 17th Congressional district, there is a particularly nasty ad campaign going on against Cheri Bustos, Democratic candidate for U.S. House of Representatives. She is a former councilwoman in East Moline, IL and has decided that the current rep. is not very good. She's correct.
Anyway, it's bad enough that her opponent is running a steady stream of attack ads against her, but the rncc has gotten involved by running an ad about a .6 mile road which connects a country club near her house to a major street in town. The ad states that she used her influence as a councilwoman to get the road built since she's a "millionaire" and "belongs to the country club." About the only true thing in the ad is the location of her house, a house which she and her husband worked like crazy to buy. This has been proven true many times over. So I contacted all four major tv stations in this area, the Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois, and asked that they either stop running the lies or at least run a disclaimer at the end of the ad declaring that "this station does not endorse any views expressed in the preceding ad" or something like that. Now I expect about zero action on my request, but it felt good to get it off my chest. Maybe if more and more people would start to complain to tv stations about these slanderous and untrue ads, they'd stop running them. But maybe not.

[RC]

1. The Republicans are outright lying all over the place.

Here in Missouri, Dave Spence is running against Govenor Jay Nixon. Dave's ads are pure lies. No truth to them at all.

http://jaynixon.com/2012/09/ad-check-dave-spence-sinks-to-new-lows-with-blatantly-false-claims

[Loudly]

2. Broadcasting outlets are completely powerless to censor political ads.

That's built right into the FCC rules.

[Samjm]

3. fact checker

At least one of our major networks (the ABC affiliate I think) does a "fact checker"segment on the news fairly frequently where the look at any political ads running on their channel.

[Lint Head]

4. Action! I love it. Just imagine if everyone did what you did as a rule. There is power in numbers.

Good job.

[SheilaT]

5. Unfortunately, it is not up to the individual

stations to fact-check political ads and then refuse to run those which contain falsehoods. If that were the case, many political ads wouldn't run. What you can do that might actually do some good is to write a letter to the editor of you local newspaper about this.

If I understand Rachel Maddow correctly, Romney has not taken down the ad falsely claiming Obama is changing the work requirement for welfare. I don't happen to see any political ads, since I don't own a TV, so I'm not sure what's out there and what isn't.