A media outlet is a business. It exists to make money. Anything that exists that may affect the ability of a media business to make money is a risk. Risk has to be analysed and then managed. A potential law suit for defamation could mean a lot of money paid out by the business as damages to the plaintiff. This would affect the bottom line of the media business. It doesn't matter in which financial year it occurs in, if the risk is that it will occur then it should be managed. The best way to manage this particular risk is to avoid it. To avoid it then it's necessary to not publish defamatory articles.
Obama knows the meaning of strategy. This is strategy. It's actuallly a very clever strategy.
I think that tort law is in the hands of the states in the US. If so then the tactics that support this strategy will vary from state to state I would think. But this is a great start.
Oh I completely agree it's a strategy and as I said in the shotgun approach if he gets any of the stations to pull the add thats money well spent on his part. The two things that you look at in this though as far as litigation go is the cost and thats on both sides of the issue. On the Obama side, you have to finanace a campaign and to get involved in costly litigation with perhaps dozens of media outlets over this issue would draw funds from a campaign that need to get his message out in other ways. The second thing is, that when you start talking about "Freedom of the Press issues" media outlets tend to dig in their collective heels . So its my opinion this is just a tactic, to call attention to the matter and if enough attention is brought upon the outlet then perhaps they reduce the ad exposure. Cheap way to take someones ad off the air and get free press.