Campaign Ads: Checking the Facts

Brooks Jackson , director of the Annenberg Political Fact Check , was online Tuesday, Oct. 31, at noon ET to examine campaign ads and and candidate statements for misleading information and political manipulation. Want to know if the claims on pre-election television commercials are true? Here's your chance to sort fact from fiction.

The Annenberg Political Fact Check, part of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, is funded mostly by the Annenberg Foundation and does not accept contributions from political, lobbying or business organizations.

The transcript follows.

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New York: In the wake of a NRCC ad so offensive and so false that local TV stations refused to air it, many local papers suggested that the intent of the ad was not to sway votes but suppress the vote. Is there any empirical evidence to support the intuitive conclusion that attack ads and negative campaigns lead to low voter turnout?

Brooks Jackson: I'm not an expert on the effects of ads, whether they are positive or negative. The paid professionals must think they work because they spend hundreds of millions of dollars running them.

We focus on whether claims made in ads (and elsewhere) are true or not.

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Ashland, Mo.: Who fact checks the fact checker? Two examples:(1) in the last election, Democrats asserted that President Bush was the first president since President Hoover to have a net decrease in jobs created. This was a prediction by Democrats (which proved to be false) that The Washington Post printed as fact until it was pointed out it was a prediction. (2) Sen. Talent alleges that no senator from the Midwest opposed an energy bill, but his opponent did. The fact checker claims this is "wrong" because Sen. Feingold, from Wisconsin, opposed the bill. Perhaps technically incorrect, but many if not most Missourians would not consider a state that is east of the Mississippi and borders Canada and the Great Lakes to be a Midwestern state.

Brooks Jackson: In fact, FactCheck.org pointed out during 2004 that the Hoover comparison might turn out to be wrong, which it did, barely. We didn't weigh in on that particular Talent claim, but see our article on his campaign's use of quotes that his ads falsely attributed to the Kansas City Star. The quotes actually came from critics and politician opponents of his challenger.

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New York: Any comment on the RNCC ad using a 1 minute wrong number to accuse Mike Arcuri (D) of calling a sex hotline on the taxpayer's dime? The ad is so slimy that Republican Ray Meier says he wishes the RNCC would "get the he-- out of" the campaign. Local TV stations refused to air the ad. Wouldn't the next logical ad for the Dems point out that if GOP bosses won't listen to Meier now, what makes us think they would pay any attention to him if he got elected? The point must be to suppress the vote--let disgusted voters stay home on election day.

Brooks Jackson: That National Republican Congressional Committee ad is the lead example in an article we posted Friday on the extraordinary number of attacks on personal character that the NRCC is running this year.

The ad actually was aired, though I'm not sure how often or on how many stations.

The evidence shows the call was a mis-dial. One minute later a second call was placed to a number identical except for the prefix, and it was to a New York state agency. The cost of the "adult" call was $1.25, which I am guessing is what the hotel charged for dialing a wrong number.

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Hunt Valley, Md.: Is is true that Baltimore's murder rate is 6 times that of NYC? Thanks.

Brooks Jackson: That's one we haven't checked out. So many attack ads, so little time . . .

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North Carolina: It seems that pundit conventional wisdom is that as long as dishonest negative ads work, candidates will continue to use them. The latest nasty ad in the Tennessee Senate race comes to mind. Do you think these ads work now, and, what do you see for their future?

Brooks Jackson: Again, I'm no expert on whether they work. As a journalist covering campaigns for a very long time, I certainly have observed instances where they did work. Also instances where the attack was so over the top that it backfired.

My own personal opinion is that as long as 30-second TV ads are the dominant form of political communication, candidates and their paid media consultants will continue to push the envelope of what is factual. The temptation to tweak or distort the facts in order to make a big impact is too great for many of them.

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Dallas, Tex.: As in any subject, most political facts have to be put in context to really make sense. Whenever I see a political ad from a party or political organization talking about their opponent, the contextual information is always missing, making the ad misleading.

Wouldn't it be better for the political process if a candidate or political organization to be allowed to talk about their own facts?

Brooks Jackson: Much of what we do at FactCheck.org is to supply the missing context.

Possibly the worst example this year of something taken out of context was an RNC Internet ad that showed a clip of Rep. John Murtha saying that the US is a bigger danger to world peace than Iran or North Korea. When you see what he ACTUALLY said in full context you see that he was saying public opinion polls by the Pew folks show that our allies THINK we are a bigger threat. The RNC editing changed Murtha's meaning 180 degrees.

But, there's no way to force candidates (or anybody else) to confine themselves to self-praise.

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Dallas, Tex.: Isn't the problem with misleading ads the fact that many Americans do not read enough to get information they need to make a good decision? If people would take the time to check the claims instead of taken them at face value, the ad situation would get better, imho.

Isn't the political process broken when the voters don't take the time to get informed?

Brooks Jackson: That's one way of looking at it. I certainly can't make the case that all voters are as well informed as they should be to make a good choice.

But I also have felt for a long time that much of what candidates and parties put on the air is really an insult to the intelligence and good sense of ordinary voters. Just speaking for myself here.

It is also my strong opinion that the news media have a big responsibility here that by and large they are failing to meet. It shouldn't be so hard for voters to find this information.

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Harrisburg, Pa.: What about distortions of the truth? Just because a legislator or representative votes against a spending item doesn't mean he or she is totally opposed or supportive of the measure, and often it is a matter of degree of funding. How about the attack on a member of Congress for voting against the Toomey Amendment to cut research funding who is getting hit with the ad about how he supports funding for sex research? Isn't that one of the greatest stretches of this campaign season?

Brooks Jackson: I agree that votes are often misrepresented in 30-second TV spots. I can't speak to the specific attack you mention, but you'll find many other examples dissected in some detail on our site.

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Harrisburg, Pa.: What do you think of Santorum's nuclear explosion ad? Am I to be scared into believing that opponents of Santorum support nuclear destruction? Is this ad over the top?

Brooks Jackson: The RNC ran an ad, mostly on the Internet but also on cable TV, that brought to mind the old LBJ "Daisy" ad showing a real nuclear explosion. The LBJ ad suggested, without making the point explicitly, that Barry Goldwater would incinerate the world. It ran one time and we've been talking about it ever since.

The RNC ad didn't show a real nuclear blast - just a graphic device that looked like a stylized nuclear fireball. Like the LBJ ad it referred to "the stakes" of the upcoming election, implying that voting Democratic carries a risk of being nuked by al Qaeda. We pointed out that there is little to no evidence that a workable suitcase nuclear weapon still exists, let alone that al Qaeda has one. But it's a possibility, and the RNC ad didn't make any factually incorrect statements in the ad.

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West Jefferson, N.C.: You guys are strictly Internet based now -- are there any plans to expand your work to other more traditional media like newspapers, or might you get a permanent television slot somewhere?

Brooks Jackson: No, we are Internet only now and in the future. We do plan to expand by setting up a companion site designed for high-school teachers and their students, with the goal of providing lesson material to help students detect deception on their own and do their own fact-checking. Or should I say, "FactChecking?"

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Westport, Mass.: Do you think that if the amounts available for campaigns could somehow be severely limited (and that's a big if), the negative ads would go away?

Do you agree that the strategy behind negative ads by parties (as opposed to candidates) is at least partly to disgust people so much that they do not engage with the political process?

Brooks Jackson: We're nonpartisan and take no position on campaign finance legislation. It is certainly true that if candidates had less money they would run fewer ads, and possibly fewer deceptive ads.

On strategy, I can't read the minds of the practitioners. My own guess is that they don't much care. It would be better from their standpoint if the voter went to the polls and voted - so long as the vote was for their candidate and against the targeted candidate. But the next best thing would be for the voter to just stay home and not vote. Logically speaking.

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Kansas City, Mo.: The KC Star ran an article last week on how they were asking the Talent campaign to stop running the add with the misleading references to the Star attacking his opponent. The article referenced your investigation into the ad.

Did you alert the Star or was the Star aware of the distortions? Also do newspapers follow how candidates are using them, especially in major races like this? That ad had been running for a while before the Star got involved, and its still running as the Talent people say they have no control over it.

Brooks Jackson: We attempted to contact the Star for comment before we posted our article pointing out that the quotes were being falsely attributed to them. After the article ran I got a call from a Star reporter who said he had pointed this out in an earlier Star story on the ads. I'm not sure whether that registered on his own editors, however. That's a long way of saying that I don't know what the Star editors knew or when they knew it.

I will say this: the ads are an attempt to misappropriate a newspaper's credibility. If I were the editor I would find that unacceptable, whatever candidate or party is responsible.

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A correction of Ashland, Mo is in order : The poster from Ashland, Missouri implies that in 2004 the Kerry campaign, assisted by The Washington Post, knowingly and falsely asserted that employment growth under Bush was weaker than any president since Hoover. Wasn't this statement true until the final month or two before the 2004 election when job growth in what was indisputably a very slow economic recovery finally caught up? To not acknowledge this basic and verifiable fact is to suggest that The Post simply made up this assertion from whole cloth. Also, I grew up in Iowa and Illinois, and Wisconsin is definitely a Midwestern state.

Brooks Jackson: As one who grew up in Indiana, I always thought of Wisconsin as Midwestern, too.

I didn't mean to endorse the questioner's criticism of the Post. I don't recall what the Post said or didn't say about the Hoover comparison. The fact is that by the time Bush began his second term there was a small net job gain for his first term.

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Boston, Mass.: If next week the purveyors of negative ads win, what do it bode for 2008?

Brooks Jackson: Win or lose, we haven't seen the end of negative ads.

Let me add here, however, that for us the important thing is not whether an ad is negative or positive, but whether it is factually accurate or not.

Accusing a candidate of having a criminal record is a dirty campaign tactic only if the accusation is false. If the candidate really DOES have a criminal record, I think most voters would find that useful information. We get into a grey area with convictions for petty offenses from long ago, but I think you see my point.

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Re: Dallas: To follow up on Dallas' point, the reason these ads work, I think, is because most people can't be bothered to actually follow their elections or the issues within them. Discussing policy would work with people who actually cared about democracy; but since most are happy with Doritos and video games, the only way to get their attention is to point and scream at something.

Brooks Jackson: Well, that does seem to be the attitude of the candidates and their media folks.

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Blountville, Tenn.: Would it help matters somewhat to require that negative political ads offer the specific bill or specific reference to allow voters quick reference to fact check the information themselves? It seems to me that so many of the critical ads would be reduced if references to the other candidate required attribution.

Brooks Jackson: No, I don't think that would help. Generally that information is already there anyway. They put it on screen (that fine print you have to squint and pause your Tivo to read) because it makes it seem to the viewer that they really know what they're talking about.

But - as we've found time and again - those video footnotes often fail to back up what the ad is saying. What we do routinely is to look up those votes, or newspaper articles, or whatever is being cited. You can't expect the average viewer to go thought all that. That's our job, and the job of the news media.

As an aside, look at how well the "stand by your ad" provision of the McCain-Feingold law has worked. That's the requirement that candidates appear in their ads and say "I approve this message" or words to that effect. It was supposed to deter false and negative ads. You tell me: How's THAT working out?

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Washington, D.C.: Many negative ads provide one-word "quotations" from reputable newspapers purportedly criticizing the opposing candidate. For example, a commercial for Candidate A says, "The Washington Post found Candidate B's ethical violations 'disturbing.'" My question to you is, by only actually quoting one word or a short phrase (as opposed to the entire sentence), how can viewers know whether the context of the word used is represented correctly by the ad? Technically speaking, the word "disturbing" could've been preceded by "not" or "according to candidate A..." Do you ever check these instances to see whether the newspapers' words are being misused?

Brooks Jackson: That's a good observation.

These quotes are like movie blurbs. The movie ad says the reviewer called the movie "terrific," but then you find that the reviewer called it "a terrific waste of time."

Beware of blurbs.

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Alpharetta, Ga.: I first and foremost want to applaud what you do. It's so confusing, frequently. Are media outlets getting better about this. Some people say that since the age of the Internet and particularly YouTube, these ads get more play across the political spectrum, and consequently scrutiny.

Brooks Jackson: Thank you for the compliment.

I still hope that newspapers and broadcast news organizations will be more aggressive at fact-checking these political claims.

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Rochester, N.Y.: Have you fact-checked the ads that incumbent Randy Kuhl and the RNC are running in NY-29? One of them features elderly people in the crosshairs of a sniper -- it's do distracting and disturbing, it's hard for me to even listen to what they're saying. Is that part of the plan with some scare tactic ads -- make the ad so disturbing the audience won't be alert enough to notice that they're filled with lies?

Brooks Jackson: Appeals to fear are often meant that way. We have a rule of thumb: "If it's scary, be wary."

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Sterling, Va.: I subscribe to your email distribution but don't seem to see your analyses picked up by the media - at least not very often. Any thoughts as to why?

A little more sunshine might help make the slime go away.

Brooks Jackson: Thanks for subscribing.

We do have a large number of reporters and editors (and talk-show hosts) as subscribers, and we hear from them fairly often.

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Forth Worth, Tex.: Wouldn't it be useful to have an ad-meter to display how truthful an ad is?

Brooks Jackson: Useful, but how practical?

Who would do the metering? And how could they do it instantly?

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Brooks Jackson: Thank you all for great questions. I wish I could answer them all. But - some more ads just came in and I'd better get busy.

--Brooks Jackson

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