Last month, during a high school career day, I said that although Eye On Illinois is an opinion column, the larger goal is providing analysis and information as opposed to just telling readers why they should agree with my personal positions.
That said, with about 200 submissions each year, every so often all 450 words are a straight-up endorsement of a specific idea. That brings us to House Bill 5833, an Election Code amendment. State Rep. Curtis Tarver, D-Chicago, filed the legislation Tuesday, and here’s hoping it gets a legitimate look during next week’s veto session.
To quote from the bill synopsis: “Provides that, if a political committee makes an expenditure for a person to post content on a website, web application or digital application that is directed at voters and mentions the name of a candidate in the next upcoming election, the person posting the content must concurrently include a statement disclosing that the person was paid by the political committee.
“Sets forth format and presentation requirements for disclosure statements across image, video, and audio formats. Provides that statements placed solely in captions, descriptions, bios, tags, or hyperlinks do not satisfy disclosure requirements.”
In other words: if campaign funds are spent getting people to push political messaging on Instagram, TikTok or other social media platforms, we’d get to know about it while engaging with the content and not have to chase it down through disclosure documents – taking nothing away from the value of scouring such information!
Whether or not this means hearing a Facebook Live stream end with something like “I’m Darren Bailey, and I approved this message” remains to be seen, but we’re long past due forcing sponsored content to be identified as such, especially in an era where we’re already questioning if information on everyone’s pocket computer is actual footage or some artificial intelligence fever dream.
This needn’t be controversial: paid content should always be marked. While drafting this Thursday, I scrolled through The Times, and it took just six pages to find a quarter-page ad from a local hospital that to the untrained eye might appear to be a news article about neck and back pain. But there’s a frame around the text (which is in a slightly different font from the usual body copy) and, more importantly, a big “sponsored by” under the headline.
If anything, Tarver’s bill falls a bit short by preserving a gray area for paid content that might not be “directed at voters” or doesn’t mention people by name. Especially in politics, we’d all be better off with more rules forcing people to admit “X paid me to say Y.”
Lawmakers may quibble on details, but none can logically oppose this reform.
• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.
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November 14, 2026 at 10:01AM
