McCain Backs Measure to Tighten Disclosure of Online Political Ads
October 18 2017 - 6:00PM
Dow Jones News
By Byron Tau
WASHINGTON -- A proposal to require social media companies to
disclose information about political advertising on their platforms
has drawn the support of a key Senate Republican.
Sen. John McCain (R, Ariz.), a longtime proponent of stricter
political advertising disclosure rules and spending restrictions,
has signed onto a bill being written by two Senate Democrats that
was prompted by concerns about Russian activity on social media
during the 2016 election, according to a statement from his
office.
The proposal -- which will be officially unveiled on Capitol
Hill Thursday -- will require social media companies such as
Facebook Inc. to keep a public repository of political advertising
that runs on their platforms, similar to the rules governing
broadcast television and radio advertising.
Democratic Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia and Amy Klobuchar of
Minnesota are the primary authors of the legislation. Mr. McCain is
a leading Republican senator on national security issues and has
successfully championed campaign-finance legislation in the past
despite skepticism among GOP lawmakers.
In an interview Wednesday, Mr. McCain acknowledged disagreement
within the Republican Party over greater regulation of money in
politics but said he was having conversations with others in his
caucus about the legislation.
A Facebook spokesman said: "We are open to working with
lawmakers and reviewing any reasonable legislative proposals."
The last major rewrite of campaign finance rules, the 2002
McCain-Feingold bill named for Mr. McCain and his partner on the
bill, former Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, was written when
social media was in its infancy and played almost no role in
political campaigns. Today, online political advertising is a
billion-dollar business, and much of it falls outside the
disclosure rules that govern other media.
Facebook announced in September that it had discovered about 500
"inauthentic" accounts responsible for $100,000 in advertising that
it believes is linked to Russia. Facebook has handed information
about those accounts over to the congressional committees
investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Most of those ads uncovered by Facebook don't refer to any
particular political candidate and wouldn't fall under the scope of
the legislation proposed by Mr. Warner, Mr. McCain and Ms.
Klobuchar -- something that they acknowledge is a challenge.
Mr. Warner said that his bill was a starting point designed to
garner as much congressional support as possible. "What we want to
try to do is start with a light touch," he told reporters this
week.
Foreign nationals and governments are broadly barred from
spending money to influence U.S. elections. U.S. law also tightly
restricts propaganda material produced by foreign governments for
domestic audiences. Paid online content that doesn't mention
political candidates falls into a gray area.
According to the January report from the U.S. intelligence
community, the highest levels of the Russian government were
involved in directing the electoral interference to boost President
Donald Trump at the expense of his Democratic rival Hillary
Clinton. Russia's tactics included efforts to hack state election
systems; infiltrating and leaking information from party committees
and political strategists; and disseminating through social media
and other outlets negative stories about Mrs. Clinton and positive
ones about the Mr. Trump, the report said.
In recent years, congressional Republicans have balked at
Democratic proposals to curb the flow of money in the political
process, with many arguing that such spending is protected by the
Constitution's guarantees of free speech.
In 1976, the Supreme Court upheld the general principle that
political spending is a form of speech but didn't preclude other
regulation such as disclosure rules. In 2010, two more Supreme
Court decisions allowed even more spending to flow into politics
through outside groups such as super PACs and nonprofits, leading
Democrats and independent government transparency advocates to call
for stricter rules.
In a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Attorney General Jeff
Sessions signaled that the Trump administration might be open to
new laws dealing with online political advertising.
"In this new fast-paced world with technology, perhaps there are
needs to update it, and I would be pleased to work with you," Mr.
Sessions told Ms. Klobuchar.
Deepa Seetharaman contributed to this article.
Write to Byron Tau at byron.tau@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 18, 2017 17:45 ET (21:45 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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