TV political ads now easier to track
http://wisconsinwatch.org/2014/08/tv-political-ads-now-easier-to-track/
A Federal Communications Commission rule that took effect July 1 requires U.S. broadcast television stations to “immediately” post political ad buy data online. It expands an earlier pilot program, launched in 2012, for just the nation’s top 50 television markets. (Cable and radio stations are still exempt.) “We love it,” says Mike Buelow, a former AP reporter who now serves as research director for the Democracy Campaign. “We won’t have to go begging for volunteers to go to TV stations in northern Wisconsin.”
In the past, given the amount of work involved, Buelow’s group waited until after the election to generate spending totals that included these buys. “It was just too labor-intensive to do it weekly or even monthly,” he says. But now it’s possible to compile comprehensive, up-to-date information. The
Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C., is collecting the ad buy filings and posting them online, in a tool it calls
Political Ad Sleuth.
...
Anyone can
register online to do data entry, logging the cost, run dates and total number of ads for each filing, and such optional information as the media buyer. Explains Kiely, “I want to know if some of these (outside) groups are using the same media buyer as the candidates they’re not supposed to be coordinating with.”
Kiely urges people to pick a given station, to get good at reading its forms, which differ widely. They may also want to focus first on third-party buys which are not otherwise reported. The group has a
" target="_blank">YouTube tutorial to help people get started.