AUSTIN, Texas — Election season means countless political ads on your TV and online. And a common tactic of those ads is to take short clips from newscasts, with headlines or statements that campaigns then use to support their messages.
But are news stations granting permission for candidates to pair their stories with campaign platforms? Let's VERIFY.
Our sources are U.S. copyright law, the Federal Communications Commission and Winthrop University professor Scott Huffmon.
Based on the Fair Use Doctrine, candidates can pull public videos for political ads. The law outlines the circumstances when copyright-protected works, like newscasts, can be used without a license, and those circumstances include criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research.
But there are multiple factors that play into whether clipping a newscast counts as fair use.
"One rule is they have to increase its value, or make something added to it, or give commentary to it. Which, of course, a political ad is. Which is why political ads can freely use newscasts," Huffmon said.
So we can VERIFY that political campaigns can use newscast clips without permission from the news stations.
