NRB Pushes Back Against FEC Vice Chair's Intent to Reassess Political Web Ads

National Religious Broadcasters cautioned against increased government control over speech on the Internet. The U.S. “rightly has made Internet freedom a foreign policy anchor,” NRB President Jerry Johnson said Tuesday in a news release. This follows a statement by Ann Ravel, Federal Election Commission vice chair, who announced last week her intent to re-evaluate FEC policies on political Web ads. The commission specifically exempted certain types of Internet communications from campaign finance regulations, Ravel said in a written statement. In doing so, the FEC “turned a blind eye to the Internet’s growing force in the political arena,” she said. The effort to protect individual bloggers and online commentators “has been stretched to cover slickly-produced ads aired solely on the Internet but paid for by the same organizations and the same large contributors as the actual ads aired on TV,” she said. The Obama administration must be careful “to avoid any action that could, purposefully or not, undermine free speech online,” NRB said.