Iowa television station KWWL-Waterloo rejected a liberal ad that showed dead and bloody Ebola bodies to illustrate its accusation that Republican-supported budget cuts contributed to the Ebola outbreak.
The Agenda Project Action Fund commercial, entitled “Republican Cuts Kill Part II: Joni Ernst Wants to Cut,” targeted Iowa Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst and depicted “exposed dead (and sometimes bleeding) bodies,” according to KWWL. The station rejected the ad Thursday after it aired twice on other Iowa stations.
The Agenda Project Action Fund, the political arm of activist Erica Payne’s New York-based Agenda Project, played on the Democratic narrative that Republicans tried to make some cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute for the Humanities. After the group’s ad was rejected, it sent out an email to supporters Thursday urging them to call the Waterloo television station to pressure administrators to air the commercial.
The ad did not mention that President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2012 budget proposal cut the CDC’s public health emergency preparedness program by $72 million. The CDC’s budget gained $567 million when congressional Republicans passed the most recent federal budget in January 2014. (RELATED: Obama Planned To Cut CDC Budget For Public Health Preparedness And Response)
KWWL-Waterloo recently refused to air an aid from a conservative super PAC targeting Democratic Senate candidate Bruce Braley, saying that the conservative ad did not meet its criteria to air. (RELATED: Conservative Super PAC: Iowa TV Station Won’t Run Our Ads Against Democrat)
A KWWL newsroom representative said that he was not aware of the situation, declined to comment, and declined to put TheDC in touch with station management.
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