This Sunday, following Meet the Press, a 30-minute "infomercial" attacking a public healthcare option is set to air on NBC. The ad is the work of disgraced former hospital CEO Rick Scott and his group "Conservatives for Patients' Rights."
Rick Scott has a track record of deceit.
Scott's previous ads contained blatantly false statements and misleading excerpts of interviews with healthcare professionals. If Scott's 30-minute "documentary" contains falsehoods, NBC could be liable for an FCC violation and serious fines. Furthermore, Meet the Press needs to know that their credibility is being used by Rick Scott, and will be tarnished by the association to these swiftboat style attacks.
Lawyers from the Service Employees International Union have sent a letter to NBC demanding they don't run the ad. It is up to us to back them up with the voices of thousands of viewers demanding action.
DEMAND NBC AND MEET THE PRESS STOP SWIFTBOATING OBAMA'S HEALTHCARE REFORM:
http://democracyforamerica.com/activities/155DFA and our partners are not the only organizations raising serious questions about Rick Scott and Conservatives for Patients Right's credibility. The highly-respected website Factcheck-org, run by the non-partisan Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, has labeled Scott's prior advertisement as "very misleading."
CPR's weak rebuttal to these criticisms should have given NBC pause before agreeing to air the latest iteration of these advertisements in the full "documentary". Essentially, CPR's rebuttal conceded that it is painting a scenario that has not been proposed by President Obama or Democratic Congressional leaders and, indeed, Factcheck-org labeled CPR's response as "nonsense."
Based on Rick Scott and Conservatives for Patient Rights records, this 30-minute fake "documentary" will be false, deceitful, and filled with distortions. It is up to us to stop NBC from running the ad.
PLEASE SEND YOUR MESSAGE TO NBC NOW:
http://democracyforamerica.com/activities/155As a back-up, if we don't succeed in stopping NBC from showing the fake "documentary," we've joined with other healthcare reform advocates and organizations to shoot a 1 minute rebuttal ad featuring Governor Howard Dean, M.D. to run immediately afterwards.
Time is not on our side right now, so we're working as fast as we can. We must send NBC a strong message.
Let's hope we don't need to show our rebuttal ad. Let's get NBC to do the right thing and stop the swiftboating of a public option and Obama's healthcare reform.
-Charles
Charles Chamberlain, Political Director
Democracy for America