FrankRep
02-10-2010, 09:14 AM
Football star Tim Tebow was spared an abortion when his mother Pam Tebow refused an abortion recommended by her doctor and hung on to her pro-life and her pro-choice to keep her baby despite the odds. by Jack Kenny
Controversy Over Issue Ads Likely to Continue (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5953-controversy-over-issue-ads-likely-to-continue)
Jack Kenny | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
09 February 2010
This year’s Super Bowl is over and the controversy over the ads featuring the mother of college football star Tim Tebow and his “miracle” birth will soon be largely forgotten. But issue advocacy ads on television — and the controversies associated with them — are likely to increase for both financial and free speech reasons.
Two 30-second spots, one running just before and the other during the prime time broadcast of TV’s highest-rates sports event, featured Pam Tebow talking about her “miracle baby” who “almost didn’t make it into this world.” The ads invited viewers to visit the website of its sponsor, the conservative Christian organization Focus of the Family (http://www.focusonthefamily.com/), to learn the rest of the story. There Pam and her husband Bob are seen speaking about the troubled pregnancy in 1987 that resulted in Tim Tebow’s birth. Pam Tebow recalled that her doctor had advised her to have the infant aborted.
“She said he wasn’t a baby at all, it’s just fetal tissue,” Mrs. Tebow told the interviewer, recalling the counseling she received from her doctor.
“She said it was a tumor,” added Bob Tebow, a minister and head of the Bob Tebow Evangelistic Association.
The Tebows were in the Philippines on a missionary journey when the pregnancy, her fifth, came to term. Though she had been advised that the child might be deformed and that her own life was in danger, Pam Tebow gave birth to a healthy baby.
YouTube - Focus on the Family's Super Bowl commercial with Pam and Tim Tebow (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BIOTItUwvk)
“He was somewhat malnourished, but he’s made up for it,” Mrs. Tebow said of her famous son. The 22-year-old star is a 6’3” 245 pound quarterback who won the Heisman Trophy for being the top player in college football in 2007, his sophomore year with the University of Florida. Now a senior, he is expected to be among the first players taken in this year’s National Football League draft.
Thirty-second commercials during the Super Bowl are selling for $2.5 million to $2.8 million. Gary Schneeberger, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, said funds for the Tebow ad were donated by a few "very generous friends" and did not come from the group's general fund.
While the TV ads never mentioned the word “abortion” or even “pro-life,” the obvious point of the message on the TV screen and the website was to celebrate the choice for life and the decision not to abort. News that CBS had accepted the ads and would run them as part of their Super Bowl telecast had prompted protests during the two weeks preceding the game from a number of “pro-choice” women’s organizations, calling on the network to cancel the ad.
“This campaign is about holding CBS and the NFL and the other Super Bowl advertisers accountable for inserting an exceedingly controversial issue into a place where we all hope Americans will be united, not divided in terms of watching America’s most watched sporting event,” said Jehmu Greene, president of Women’s Media Center. Critics pointed out that CBS and the other major networks had in years past refused ads from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the liberal political action website MoveOn.org. In 2004, CBS turned down an ad by the United Church of Christ welcoming “gays” and lesbians who felt less than welcome in more conservative religious circles. CBS said it had reconsidered its ban on ads about controversial issues and in recent years has run ads about issues like health care.
But on “hot button” issues like abortion, CBS and other networks are likely to proceed cautiously. A CBS spokesman acknowledged the network previewed the script for the Tebow ad to be sure it was “air appropriate.” A statement issued by the network said it would adhere to a “practices process” that “ensures all ads — on all sides of an issue — are appropriate for air.” But while some media critics fear the policy will open a virtual Pandora’s box, with viewers inundated with ads on issues like abortion and “gay rights” while viewing sitcoms and ballgames, Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein School of Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University sees the cash box as the key motivating factor for the network.
“CBS is doing this for the money,” Jones told ABC News. Given the faltering economy traditional advertisers might be spending less on TV commercials. Big companies like General Motors, now government owned, Pepsico and Fedex stayed away from Super Bowl commercials this year and Jones sees the networks seeking to expand their base of advertisers by altering their policy on issues advocacy. “There is no way to be putting in an anti-abortion ad without prompting the pro-abortion side of the debate to get their message across,” he said. “This may be a new profit center.”
And with congressional elections coming up this year, the networks might also profit from the recent controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. In 5-4 decision, the court ruled unconstitutional the provision of the McCain-Feingold campaign spending law that prohibited the airing of independent expenditure ads that mentioned a candidate or candidates by name within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. That, combined with a less restrictive TV policy on issue ads, could result in any number of advocacy groups championing their candidates and causes on the airwaves this summer and fall.
But as the protest over the Tebow ad demonstrated, some are not pleased at the prospect of increased participation in debates on the airwaves over controversial political and social issues — especially when the participating organizations are groups they disdain. In a commentary appearing on The Huffington Post, Marcia G. Yerman, a New York-based writer focusing on women’s issues and the arts, wondered: “Why would CBS choose to feature a message by a group (Focus on the Family) with a definitive religious agenda, in a country predicated on the separation of church and state?” But the “separation of church and state” — a phrase found nowhere in the Constitution — is not a barrier preventing an organization, religious or otherwise, from exercising its First Amendment right of free speech on a network willing to take its money and air its message,
Jim Daly, president and CEO of Focus on the Family, sees no problem in using the mass media to celebrate a woman’s choice to give life when faced with the option of abortion.
“If pro-choice people are pro-choice, why not celebrate that part of the choice,” he said in an interview. “We think life is a great choice and the better choice.” He also noted that President Obama, though a champion of “abortion rights,” has called for constructive discussion and debate on the issue.
“When can we start the debate and discussion?” Daly asked.
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5953-controversy-over-issue-ads-likely-to-continue
Controversy Over Issue Ads Likely to Continue (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5953-controversy-over-issue-ads-likely-to-continue)
Jack Kenny | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
09 February 2010
This year’s Super Bowl is over and the controversy over the ads featuring the mother of college football star Tim Tebow and his “miracle” birth will soon be largely forgotten. But issue advocacy ads on television — and the controversies associated with them — are likely to increase for both financial and free speech reasons.
Two 30-second spots, one running just before and the other during the prime time broadcast of TV’s highest-rates sports event, featured Pam Tebow talking about her “miracle baby” who “almost didn’t make it into this world.” The ads invited viewers to visit the website of its sponsor, the conservative Christian organization Focus of the Family (http://www.focusonthefamily.com/), to learn the rest of the story. There Pam and her husband Bob are seen speaking about the troubled pregnancy in 1987 that resulted in Tim Tebow’s birth. Pam Tebow recalled that her doctor had advised her to have the infant aborted.
“She said he wasn’t a baby at all, it’s just fetal tissue,” Mrs. Tebow told the interviewer, recalling the counseling she received from her doctor.
“She said it was a tumor,” added Bob Tebow, a minister and head of the Bob Tebow Evangelistic Association.
The Tebows were in the Philippines on a missionary journey when the pregnancy, her fifth, came to term. Though she had been advised that the child might be deformed and that her own life was in danger, Pam Tebow gave birth to a healthy baby.
YouTube - Focus on the Family's Super Bowl commercial with Pam and Tim Tebow (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BIOTItUwvk)
“He was somewhat malnourished, but he’s made up for it,” Mrs. Tebow said of her famous son. The 22-year-old star is a 6’3” 245 pound quarterback who won the Heisman Trophy for being the top player in college football in 2007, his sophomore year with the University of Florida. Now a senior, he is expected to be among the first players taken in this year’s National Football League draft.
Thirty-second commercials during the Super Bowl are selling for $2.5 million to $2.8 million. Gary Schneeberger, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, said funds for the Tebow ad were donated by a few "very generous friends" and did not come from the group's general fund.
While the TV ads never mentioned the word “abortion” or even “pro-life,” the obvious point of the message on the TV screen and the website was to celebrate the choice for life and the decision not to abort. News that CBS had accepted the ads and would run them as part of their Super Bowl telecast had prompted protests during the two weeks preceding the game from a number of “pro-choice” women’s organizations, calling on the network to cancel the ad.
“This campaign is about holding CBS and the NFL and the other Super Bowl advertisers accountable for inserting an exceedingly controversial issue into a place where we all hope Americans will be united, not divided in terms of watching America’s most watched sporting event,” said Jehmu Greene, president of Women’s Media Center. Critics pointed out that CBS and the other major networks had in years past refused ads from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the liberal political action website MoveOn.org. In 2004, CBS turned down an ad by the United Church of Christ welcoming “gays” and lesbians who felt less than welcome in more conservative religious circles. CBS said it had reconsidered its ban on ads about controversial issues and in recent years has run ads about issues like health care.
But on “hot button” issues like abortion, CBS and other networks are likely to proceed cautiously. A CBS spokesman acknowledged the network previewed the script for the Tebow ad to be sure it was “air appropriate.” A statement issued by the network said it would adhere to a “practices process” that “ensures all ads — on all sides of an issue — are appropriate for air.” But while some media critics fear the policy will open a virtual Pandora’s box, with viewers inundated with ads on issues like abortion and “gay rights” while viewing sitcoms and ballgames, Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein School of Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University sees the cash box as the key motivating factor for the network.
“CBS is doing this for the money,” Jones told ABC News. Given the faltering economy traditional advertisers might be spending less on TV commercials. Big companies like General Motors, now government owned, Pepsico and Fedex stayed away from Super Bowl commercials this year and Jones sees the networks seeking to expand their base of advertisers by altering their policy on issues advocacy. “There is no way to be putting in an anti-abortion ad without prompting the pro-abortion side of the debate to get their message across,” he said. “This may be a new profit center.”
And with congressional elections coming up this year, the networks might also profit from the recent controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. In 5-4 decision, the court ruled unconstitutional the provision of the McCain-Feingold campaign spending law that prohibited the airing of independent expenditure ads that mentioned a candidate or candidates by name within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. That, combined with a less restrictive TV policy on issue ads, could result in any number of advocacy groups championing their candidates and causes on the airwaves this summer and fall.
But as the protest over the Tebow ad demonstrated, some are not pleased at the prospect of increased participation in debates on the airwaves over controversial political and social issues — especially when the participating organizations are groups they disdain. In a commentary appearing on The Huffington Post, Marcia G. Yerman, a New York-based writer focusing on women’s issues and the arts, wondered: “Why would CBS choose to feature a message by a group (Focus on the Family) with a definitive religious agenda, in a country predicated on the separation of church and state?” But the “separation of church and state” — a phrase found nowhere in the Constitution — is not a barrier preventing an organization, religious or otherwise, from exercising its First Amendment right of free speech on a network willing to take its money and air its message,
Jim Daly, president and CEO of Focus on the Family, sees no problem in using the mass media to celebrate a woman’s choice to give life when faced with the option of abortion.
“If pro-choice people are pro-choice, why not celebrate that part of the choice,” he said in an interview. “We think life is a great choice and the better choice.” He also noted that President Obama, though a champion of “abortion rights,” has called for constructive discussion and debate on the issue.
“When can we start the debate and discussion?” Daly asked.
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5953-controversy-over-issue-ads-likely-to-continue