Is there a need for a watchdog for content of election advertising?
Posted October 14, 2015 12:42 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – What are the rules when it comes to those ads you’ve been seeing and hearing during this election campaign?
We’re looking at what is and isn’t allowed after we told you yesterday about a controversial Conservative ad.
There are rules in place to monitor spending and parties must explicitly have authorization statements for their ads on air or in print.
But content or accuracy is not policed. UBC political scientist Max Cameron says it would be complex to bring in a watchdog.
“How would you enforce any kind of regulation? Would there be fines? Would there be fact checking? Certainly, some of that already exists in the sense… to the degree that you have a vigilant public.”
Cameron says ideally, the media fills that void.
“Most of what we see around the world is efforts at self-regulation. You can have pacts among the major political parties where they commit themselves in advance to following a certain kind of code of conduct,” he adds.
This follows a story we brought you yesterday about a Conservative ad which claims the Liberals want to legalize brothels, despite no proof that’s the case.
