Les Moonves’ Hole Keeps Getting Deeper and Deeper

His CBS refused to run the MoveOn.org Voter Fund's ad criticizing the Bush administration's soaring budget deficit, but his network has now agreed to air a partisan Medicare ad promoted by the White House and paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

Also, the first lawsuit has been filed against CBS because of Nipplegate.

Also in this issue: Deadline Hollywood: Les Should Be No More by Nikki Finke MoveOn.org said today that the commercial promoting the Bush administration's Medicare prescription-drug law is "part of a $12.6 million, tax-financed TV campaign to take the heat off the White House for a plan that benefits drug and insurance companies as much or more than Medicare enrollees" and pledged a new effort to obtain CBS approval for a MoveOn.org ad on the same subject with the opposite view. Eli Pariser, national campaigns director for the MoveOn.org Voter Fund, said his organization's ad charges that the Bush Medicare law subsidizes drug and insurance companies and deliberately keeps drug prices high. The ad has appeared on CNN and other outlets in recent weeks.

CBS declined to run MoveOn.org's "Child's Pay" deficit ad during the Super Bowl, citing a policy that prohibits "advocacy" ads. But, Pariser points out, "the Medicare ad that CBS is airing is blatant issue advocacy — in this instance, paid for by taxpayers. It is, in fact, misleading — a gross distortion of the truth." He says MoveOn.org Voter Fund supporters are to contact CBS and urge it to refuse to air the administration's issue ad unless their ad disputing it can also be run.

Meanwhile, the Smoking Gun Web site reports today that the first lawsuit has been filed in connection with Janet Jackson's breast. A Tennessee woman yesterday filed a proposed class-action lawsuit "on behalf of all Americans" who watched the Super Bowl halftime show and as a result were made to "suffer outrage, anger, embarrassment and serious injury." Named as defendants along with CBS are sister company MTV, parent company Viacom, as well as Jackson and Justin Timberlake.

E-mail at nikkifinke@deadlinehollywood.com.