TIPA - Truth In Political Advertising

NEW YORK, March 17, 2004 -- The political mud season is upon us but many of those in the news industry that we have entrusted to sort out the mess are still leaning on their mops.

An early volley was launched last week when President Bush's reelection campaign released an ad accusing John F. Kerry of plans to raise taxes by $900 billion. Kerry's camp shot back with an ad that faults the Republican spot for "misleading America," and rebuts the president's tax claim against Kerry without going into specifics.

Both ads will run in at least 16 swing-voter states -- from Pennsylvania to Florida to New Mexico -- with the cash-rich Bush campaign buying three times as many slots as Kerry.

So, which ad is telling viewers the truth? That answer is difficult to find if one relies upon broadcast and cable news organizations to sort out the facts.

Many in television news haven't the resources to do the sort of investigative analysis of political attacks ads that most voters need to make sense of the media melee. For one, the Bush ad claimed that Kerry, within his first 100 days, will "raise taxes by at least $900 billion" to "pay for new government spending." In a subsequent conference call with campaign press, Bush officials couldn't identify any Kerry statement regarding the $900-billion increase.

A more thorough analysis by healthcare analyst Ken Thorpe of Emory University revealed a complex calculus through which Kerry's plans for expanded health insurance coverage could result in federal costs of about $895 billion over ten years. Was the Republican accusation referring to this?

Most of the press stood mute; only a handful of print reporters, most notably Ronald Brownstein of The Los Angeles Times, put the numbers to the test. His analysis: "The Bush campaign's justification for the
charge was specious. The Kerry campaign's response was misleading. And the vast press corps covering the campaign almost entirely failed to illuminate the holes in each side's arguments."

Commentators Tom Oliphant and David Brooks took swipes at the Bush and Kerry spots during Jim Lehrer's News Hour on PBS. Their analysis, according to Brooks: "[The ads] wouldn't pass the standards Tom and I impose on ourselves."

Granted, voters can't always rely upon combative political campaigns to tell them the truth. But mainstream news reporters should step into the breach to decipher claims and separate truth from fiction. Unfortunately, the most politically influential of all news media, television, has not taken well to the role of fact-checker.

No News Hole for the 'Truth Squad'

"The major newspapers including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and The Washington Post, in general, do a good job of 'truth-squadding' political attack ads," said media commentator Bob Garfield, who is an ad critic for AdAge.com and the co-host of NPR's On the Media. "But most of the smaller newspapers don't have the news hole or the resources for vetting these ads."

The problem according to Garfield is not with the printed press, but with television news, and in particular 24-hour cable news, that does not devote enough time to analysis of political attack ads.

"Cable news has been such a destructive force to reasoned analysis in an election year," said Garfield. "Its news appetite is voracious like a shark that only swims and eats. Cable news titillates voters but does very little to educate them."

What worries Garfield most is the political fallout from the medium's spread of negative candidate images. "People who vote are more heavily influenced by the allegations made in attack ads and not by any follow-up media reports that reveal the ads to be untrue," he said.

In their 1996 book, "Going Negative: How Political Advertisements Shrink and Polarize the Electorate," Stephen Ansolabehere and Shanto Iyengar found that "[m]ost aspects of political campaigns are time-consuming to cover and don't make for good TV. In contrast to the standard campaign fare, 30-second spot ads contain great sound bites, arresting visuals, and sensational attacks, all in a package that fits easily into the
two-minute format of television news."

Garfield sees an additional problem here. Wall-to-wall television news recycles image bites that often support thin characterizations of the candidates. We've seen it thus far this season in network news' portrayal of the Democratic primaries as a horse race pitting archetypal personalities against one another. Dean was the mercurial candidate; John Kerry the aloof plutocrat, while John Edwards was the simple populist. This drama may have played well on the small screen, but it accomplished little towards educating voters about the candidates' political views.

This was also the case in 2000 when, according to many political analysts, a well-funded Bush campaign successfully manipulated the media to cast Democratic nominee Al Gore as fundamentally dishonest and indecisive while tarring Republican opponent and decorated Vietnam veteran John McCain as unpatriotic.

"Based on coverage of Howard Dean, pre- and post-Iowa, I see no evidence that television news has been chastened by the experience of 2000, Garfield said.

"TV is too compressed a medium to lay out the facts and reveal what is right and wrong," said Brooks Jackson the founder of FactCheck.org a non-partisan website that debunks misleading political statements. Jackson pioneered the "adwatch" and "factcheck" form of stories while a reporter at CNN. When CNN lost interest in slotting time for hisreports, Jackson set up shop at the Annenberg Public Policy Center and launched his own political truth squad.

Since its launch in December 2003, many journalists have turned to FactCheck.org to vet political rhetoric when their own news organizations lacked the resources.

Jackson agrees with Garfield's assertion that untrue messages will resonate with voters despite the occasional media debunking of misleading political ads. "Because these campaigns are buying so much time, viewers will see their ads a hell of a lot more than they will seea news story about the ad. So it stands to reason that the ad makes a more lasting impression."

Tuning In and Turning Off Voters

For many TV journalists, it is a win-win situation when candidates attack one another. Broadcast news feeds on the images of conflict. In response campaign media strategists manufacture more negative portrayals of their rival, knowing well that broadcasters will be drawn to the flame. These negative "image-bites" can resonate even further with viewers, especially after the repeated viewings 24-hour news programming can provide.

"The electorate has been so turned off by attack ads that they might decide not to vote at all," warned Garfield.

Fewer voters are not always bad for campaigns, he added. "There is a silent conspiracy by both parties to make the political environment so distasteful that it creates a smaller electorate. It's easier to manage and manipulate a smaller constituency than it is to run a campaign that appeals to a larger population of voters."

The GOP strategy during the "Republican Revolution" of 1994, when Newt Gingrich allegedly fired up a voting block of "angry white men" to capture the House from the Democrats, featured one of the ugliest episode of attack advertising in American history. The ads alienated large parts of the American electorate while, at the same time, energizing a core of white, male, Republican voters who turned out en masse for their candidates.

According to Garfield, the Democrats are attempting to tap this same anger in 2004; in this case, to energize a core and unseat incumbent Bush. If this is true, voters shouldn't be shocked to see more negative campaign ads as the political mud season unwinds.

Jackson at FactCheck.org sees things differently. "I don't buy the idea that a low turnout is proof that campaigns were too divisive. Some of the most divisive campaigns sometimes attract the most voters." Research by the American Political Science Review suggests that campaigns characterized by lots of spending, uncertain outcomes, and active efforts by party and campaign organizations stimulate citizens to go to the polls.

When campaigns go negative, however, voters tend to peel away from the democratic process. And this is where the news media can step in, by motivating public participation in political issues and seeing that the campaigns address relevant topics accurately.

Whether they will in 2004, is a debate worth continuing. But it will require a lot more precision and care than the campaigns and newscasters displayed last week.