ProPublica: I Approved This Facebook Message — But You Don’t Know That

An FEC opinion in December clarified that the requirement for political ads to say who paid for and approved them, which has long applied to print and broadcast outlets, extends to ads on Facebook. So we checked more than 300 ads that had run on the world’s largest social network since the opinion, and that election-law experts told us met the criteria for a disclaimer. Fewer than 40 had disclosures that appeared to satisfy FEC rules. “I’m totally shocked,” said David Keating, president of the nonprofit Institute for Free Speech in Alexandria, Virginia, which usually opposes restrictions on political advertising. “There’s no excuse,” he said, looking through our database of ads.

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“It’s entirely possible that because disclaimers haven’t been included for years now, candidates and committees just aren’t used to putting them on there,” said Brendan Fischer, director of the Federal and FEC Reform Program at the Campaign Legal Center, the group that provided legal services to Take Back Action Fund. “But they should be on notice,” he added.

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