A Media Gift To the President

In the last week, the mainstream media attempted to censor a political ad from President Trump.  The ad was a summary of the first 100 days and what the President had accomplished.  CNN refused to run the ad because it had an image of some TV news personalities with the words "Fake News" written across them.  This two second flash was just too much for CNN.  CBS, ABC and NBC then followed suit and refused to run the ad.  Sure, this was a violation of the federal licenses for the stations involved.  Censorship of political ads is not permitted; that is a requirement of each license.  But there's more.  Running the ad was going to cost over a million dollars.  It would have played in the background or while people were away from the TV in most houses.  Many people would have fast forwarded the video on shows they had taped.  You really have to wonder how many people would have not just seen the ad, but actually paid attention to it. 

By refusing to air the ad, these networks gave a major gift to President Trump.  As of this morning, there are way over a million people who have viewed the ad on youtube.  That's a million people who took the time to go to youtube and find the ad.  Then they watched it after looking specifically for it.  In other words, they paid attention to what the ad said rather than merely having it on in the background as would have been the case but for the attempt at censorship.

The best part of all this is that not only did the media networks drive careful viewers to the ad, but they also lost the enormous amount of money that they would have earned had the ad aired.  I call that a win-win situation.