Citizens for Sanity, a group that ran anti-immigration ads during MLB games this postseason in certain markets, will be airing ads during Game 1 of the World Series on Friday night, The Athletic has learned. The spots are expected to run nationally on Fox. When asked about the ad buy on Friday, a Fox Sports spokesperson declined to comment.
Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik described the earlier ads as “openly racist.” “The spots that ran in California during the NLDS finale between the Padres and Dodgers and in the Philadelphia market during the Phillies-Braves series referred to immigrants as “drug dealers, sex traffickers and violent predators,” prompting a strong reaction among some watching the game.
One television industry source who has seen the spot expected to air Friday night said the ad running in Game 1 is closer to a political ad that would run during a tense election season and not as extreme as the one that ran previously during baseball’s postseason. As a general rule, political ads that run within sporting events during election cycles have to be cleared by a standards and practices department either at the corporate level for national ads, or locally in-market. For instance, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Friday that a top Democratic political group will run an ad during Game 1 in the Philadelphia market on Philly’s Fox29, highlighting Mehmet Oz’s comments on abortion rights. Sports fans can expect to be inundated with political ads through Election Day.
“Networks make the decision on what political ads to run,” said an MLB spokesperson on Friday. “MLB does not believe it should be in the role of censoring political advertising.”
Citizens for Sanity says on its website that its mission is to “return common sense to America, to highlight the importance of logic and reason, and to defeat ‘wokeism’ and anti-critical thinking ideologies.” Per OpenSecrets and The Los Angeles Times, Citizens for Sanity is associated with the America First Legal Foundation, which is led by Stephen Miller, who served as a senior advisor for policy and White House director of speechwriting for former President Donald Trump.
(Top photo: Erik Williams / USA Today)
ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57knBraW9ibXxzfJFrZmpoX2eFcK3DrGSmpJJixLC%2By51krJ2inrK0ecCnq6JlmaK6qrPRmquip55k