NC TV stations pull ad attacking Senate candidate Beasley over its ‘false statements’
An attack ad against U.S. Senate candidate Cheri Beasley and her campaign no longer will be seen on some North Carolina TV stations after Cox Media Group determined it contained false statements.
Six other media outlets have pulled the ad, at least temporarily, while their legal teams review the statements made against Beasley.
The main point of contention: The ad incorrectly alleges that Beasley set a child pornography offender free.
That’s why Cox Media Group announced this week that it is taking the ad off of WSOC-TV in Charlotte and WAXN-TV in Kannapolis, CBS News first reported. Cox Media Group did not respond to McClatchy DC for comment but said in a letter obtained by CBS News that “CMG will not run the ad when it contains false statements on material issue.”
The media outlets reviewing the ad include Viamedia, Raleigh’s WRAL, WNCN and WRAZ, and Charlotte’s WJZY and WMYT, The N&O confirmed.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee created the 30-second ad titled “NC: Vulnerable.”
Dory MacMillan, Beasley’s campaign spokeswoman, said the “false attack was rightfully taken off television.”
“Washington Republicans have been caught lying about Cheri Beasley’s record,” MacMillan said. “Voters know Cheri worked with law enforcement to hold violent offenders accountable, and she will continue to keep our communities safe as North Carolina’s next U.S. Senator.”
The NRSC sent a comment on the case to the N&O on Saturday, a day after this story appeared online, saying it stood by the attack ad and threatening that Cox’s action “will be noted by our media buyers as they make future decisions about ad buys.”
U.S. Senate race
Beasley, 55, has been gearing up for a brutal race against her Republican opponent since December when her two closest opponents on the Democrat ticket dropped out of the race to allow her to focus on raising money and her name recognition instead of the ugly attacks within her own party that were seen in the Republican primary.
Beasley now will face U.S. Rep. Ted Budd, who won the Republican nomination in the primary election after defeating former N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory, former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker and other candidates.
Budd, who has received former President Donald Trump’s endorsement, is a three-term congressman representing Davie County and the surrounding area of the 13th Congressional District.
The race between Beasley and Budd is expected to be expensive and brutal as they head toward the Nov. 8 general election.
Beasley is a trailblazer in North Carolina’s judicial system who last served as North Carolina Supreme Court’s chief justice until losing her reelection by just 401 votes to Paul Newby in 2020. She was the first Black woman to serve in that role, and the first Black woman to be elected to a statewide office in North Carolina without first being appointed to the position by a governor. She has also served as a public defender, a District Court judge and a Superior Court judge.
The attack ad NRSC launched against her last week uses stock images of children’s faces flashing on the screen as a woman’s voice declares, “Our children, our society’s most vulnerable — and Chief Justice Cheri Beasley has failed them.”
The ad discusses three cases Beasley worked on in the Supreme and appellate courts.
Beasley has not been a judge since Dec. 31, 2020.
Attack ad
“A child porn offender, she voted to set him free,” the woman’s voice says, with a reference at the bottom of the screen to an article that addresses the case of James Howard Terrell.
Terrell was found guilty in Onslow County on multiple counts of sexual exploitation of a minor after an officer, without a warrant, found numerous photos of naked children on a thumb drive belonging to Terrell.
Terrell’s girlfriend had taken the thumb drive to the police station after searching for a picture of a housekeeper he kept referencing and instead found a photo of her own granddaughter naked from the waist up.
But before an officer applied for a search warrant, the officer looked through the thumb drive and found more photos of other girls.
The majority of Supreme Court judges, including Beasley, found that going through the thumb drive before getting a search warrant violated Terrell’s Fourth Amendment rights.
But Beasley did not set him free, as the ad states.
The case was remanded to the lower court to determine if there was probable cause to obtain a search warrant for the contents of the thumb drive without the evidence obtained through the unlawful search.
In 2016 Terrell had begun a sentence that could have kept him in prison for more than 20 years, according to the N.C. Department of Public Safety, but a court order vacated his sentence on Dec. 7, 2021, two years after the 2019 Supreme Court order, and he was released from prison on Dec. 23, 2021. He is currently in Delaware, NCDPS records state. Those records do not detail the reasoning for the sentence being vacated.
Sex with a minor
The ad also accuses Beasley of tossing the conviction of an online predator and throwing out the indictment of a sexual predator who assaulted a 7-year-old girl. Neither claim provided voters with enough information about the court case to understand its full context.
The first attack references the appellate case of David Keller who, according to court records, went to the higher court after a Superior Court judge refused to instruct the jury that they could find Keller not guilty because a police officer trapped him into committing a crime.
In this case, Keller found an ad on Craigslist from a boy looking to have sex with a man and responded unknowingly to an officer. When the officer told Keller that he was 15-year-old, Keller told him repeatedly that having sex with a minor was illegal and they would have to wait until the boy turned 18.
Keller had offered to let the boy stay with him when he learned he was being abused by a family member, but when the officer wrote back that he would find someone else if sex wasn’t part of the deal, Keller agreed to sex too.
Keller testified that he only said yes as a way to meet with him and make sure he didn’t seek out someone who would harm him, but he did not intend to have sex with the boy.
Beasley agreed that the jury should have been instructed about entrapment defenses and remanded the case to the trial court to give the jury full instructions.
The jury later found Keller guilty.
Child molestation
The ad then accuses Beasley of throwing out an indictment against a sexual predator who assaulted a 7-year-old.
In this case, Michael White was accused of molesting the child while living with her and her mother. White appealed his case because an indictment failed to include the victim’s name, which is required under state law.
Beasley wrote that while the child’s identity was clear from a previous indictment, White’s own confession and other records, her hands were tied because of statutory requirements. She reversed the conviction and remanded the case to the state court for further action.
White was released from his 30-year prison sentence a month later. His case is still pending in Graham County and his next court date is Aug. 3.
This story was originally published June 3, 2022 at 5:20 PM with the headline "NC TV stations pull ad attacking Senate candidate Beasley over its ‘false statements’."
CORRECTION: James Terrell served about five years of his prison sentence. A previous version of this article was unclear.
