I am usually very tactful and polite, but you don't know what you are talking about. The law is a very broadbased law. It is to protect consumers and promote fair competition. The other networks had customers stolen based on deception. Advertisers got more play based on deception. Consumers watched one station over another based on deception. Do you know of any successful suits where the unfair trade didn't involve the sale of goods or services? Television networks put fiction on the air to attract viewers, and fiction is the ultimate in "deception." When NBC did the "blow up the truck" stunt, the apology went to GM, not to rival networks.
The California Supreme Court reversed (4-3), characterizing Nikes messages as commercial speech, a designation that stripped Nikes statements of their full First Amendment protections
Here is a comment in the article you referenced. It sheds some light on the scope of the Commercial practices law. What is it about the CBS broadcast involving forgeries is "commercial?"
I'm not saying a suit can't be brought. It certainly can be. But I have yet to see a clear legal theory that prohibits CBS from openly embracing, and expressing ONLY the DNC point of view. Best I can figure, that is perfectly legal. See Air America.
Off the top of my head I don't know of any cases that didn't involve sales of good and services, but clearly the law is available, CBS is selling a service and bad goods, and subject to public policy in a Presidential Election. Certainly they have been unethical immoral, and unscrupulous.
...."For example, California courts have tried to define "unfair" through a process that resembles "rule of reason" analysis - examining reasons, justifications and motives of the alleged wrongdoer and weighing the utility of the defendant's conduct against the gravity of the harm to the alleged victim. This effort, however, has not resulted in a standard that clearly guides conduct....
.....In search of an actual standard, courts have turned to Federal cases interpreting Section 5 of the FTC Act, and have held that a business practice is unfair "when it offends an established public policy or when the practice is immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous or substantially injurious to consumers." (PEOPLE V. CASA BLANCA CONVALESCENT HOMES, INC. 159 CAL. APP. 3D 509, 530 [1984])....."
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