House slates hearing on social media political ad disclosures

The House will host the first hearing specifically on the need to disclose the sources of political ads online.

Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), chairman of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Information Technology, scheduled the hearing for Tuesday of next week. 

The announcement comes one day after Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) released the Honest Ads Act, which would require online political ads to disclose their funding sources.

{mosads}The bill seeks to reign in the anonymity in online ads that served Russia in what U.S. intelligence agencies believe was a campaign to undermine the 2016 presidential election.

The hearing will feature David Chavern, president and chief executive of the newspaper trade association the News Media Alliance; Allen Dickerson, legal director of the campaign free speech rights group Center for Competitive Politics; communications attorney Jack Goodman; Randall Rothenberg, president and chief executive of the advertising trade group the Interactive Advertising Bureau; and Ian Vandewalker, senior counsel of the Brennen Center for Justice.

Facebook, Google, Twitter and Instagram have all acknowledged running political ads placed by a Kremlin-linked “troll farm,” the Internet Research Agency, during the 2016 campaign.

Facebook, Google and Twitter are all slated to testify on the matter at a Nov. 1 hearing on Capitol Hill.