Attack Ads Serve Voters, Frame
Debate
By Joanne Ostrow
Denver Post Media Critic
Monday, August 23, 2004
Finally, after a polite opening round that didn't come close to a knockout punch, the gloves are coming off.
The presidential candidates are moving to attack mode.
For voters keenly aware of the importance of this election and for viewers simply looking for a good fight, this is not necessarily bad news. As long as quick responses - from journalists, watchdogs and the campaigns themselves - keep the truth from being trampled, attack ads may help clarify the candidates' characters.
As John Kerry has said about the Bush challenges to his war record: "Bring it on."
The television attack ad funded by some of Kerry's former Vietnam colleagues, the group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, began airing last week. Apparently these guys hold a grudge against Kerry's anti-war pronouncements after his return home from Vietnam. Or maybe they are just helping the Republican Party the only way they can. In any case, the spot charges that "Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam."
Swifter than you could say "misinformation," The New York Times traced the anti-Kerry ad funding to a group of Texas Republicans and documented connections to the Bush family and to Bush political mastermind Karl Rove.
Equally swiftly, the Kerry camp knocked down the claims intended to discredit the candidate's war record. And Kerry called the group behind the attack ad "a front for the Bush campaign," saying the president was using them to "do his dirty work."
This all underscores a fact of political life that bears repeating: Studies continue to show that campaign commercials remain the No.1 source for voters in making up their minds about Bush versus Kerry.
Ads also tend to influence how the media frame the coverage going forward.
Newspapers churn out reams of analysis, TV's talking heads provide hours of commentary and haranguing, late-night comedians contribute pithy angles on the race and "character" issues - yet it's the ads that most shape the discussion, point the direction for debate and sway opinion.
A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Pew Research Center in July found that the public's idea of the major character themes of each candidate were established not by journalists but by the campaigns, as articulated in the ads.
The handful of major themes - elitist, liberal, dim, credible, flip-flopping - are part of a narrative created by campaign managers. Only secondarily was journalism cited as a source for these themes.
TV advertising is becoming more important than TV news in shaping views of the candidates, the research found.
This may be partly because TV news is so stubbornly focused on the horse-race aspect of the election. But it's also attributable to viewers' short attention spans, the conditioned ease with which people take in a 30-second message, and the well-designed and slickly produced video spots the campaigns put forward. The ads are simply more persuasive than the rest of the campaign news coverage, the candidates' speeches, photo ops, position papers, news releases and roundtable chat shows.
Before we lament the nastiness quotient, consider. Maybe this is not a bad way to go.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a TV interview: "A lot of attack is ... legitimate and important discourse. ... Pundits and the press and academics say, 'Oh they're going negative,' when in fact what individuals are doing is making legitimate, fair attacks that are accurate and relevant to governance.
"If you don't have attack in politics, you're not likely to find out about the weaknesses of the opponent."
In many ways, Jamieson said, advertising is more helpful than TV news for the average voter. At least it's about something more than the game plan, the strategy and the polls.
"If I had a choice between watching what you typically see in news about campaigns and typical ads," Jamieson said, "I would watch the typical ad. And I'd watch it back-to-back, so I'd watch both candidates advertising because, in the give and take of advertising, you're likely to get more policy content than you are in the typical newscast."
There you have it. We've arrived at the point where we get more information from TV commercials than TV news. Naturally the candidates are spending more ad dollars in battleground states like Colorado, so we'll have no lack of political advertising in the run up to November.
Attack ads? Bring 'em on.
