Lies, Damn Lies, and Political Ads
The claims in political ads are especially pernicious because the opposing side doesn't get to rebut the distortions in real time, and even when the other side rebuts, the response may be just as disingenuous as the original charge. The Bush supporters who have tried to discredit Kerry's Vietnam war record have been particularly vile and disrespectful of the democratic process--and Bush should be doing more to denounce them. Kerry has come out swinging on this own behalf, and he should be doing more of that. Journalists have a very important role to play here, too. They must do a better job of vetting political ads before the damage is done. Each fact in the candidates' ads should be put to the truth test. The good news is that reporting on the claims of ads has become a more common practice in newsroom, and the Spin Buster column reports that more journalists have been alert to misrepresentations of late.
The real spin buster award this week has to go to Chicago Tribune reporter William Rood, who doesn't have to rely on the he said-he said surrounding the Dong Cung River incident: He was there on Feb. 28, 1969. "This is what I saw that day," he writes in Sunday's Tribune, breaking a long silence. He lands a particularly compelling blow to critics when he writes:
But Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown. The critics have taken pains to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there.
BTW: You don't have to wait on your local newspaper to vet political ads. Factcheck.org, a nonpartisan project affiliated with the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, is vetting ads from the candidates and their supporters.
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