Negative political advertising

[madbaker]

"The difference between a positive ad and a negative ad is that the negative ad has a fact in it."

Historically I have basically bought into the conventional wisdom: that attack ads or negative ads are bad. A fact of life - and effective, which is why they are used - but bad.

John Geer, a poli-sci prof at Vanderbilt, did a survey in a book published earlier this year ("In Defense of Negativity") where he looked at nearly every presidential campaign TV ad since 1964. He rated them; "better" ads discussed relevant political issues of the day, had specific substance, and (perhaps most importantly) had documentation.

Negative ads scored better on all those.
Geer's comment: "[With attack ads] the threshold is higher. You need documentation and support. If a candidate just attacks, without documentation to back it up, it rebounds against the attacker and he looks like a fool."

It doesn't mean I want to watch them, of course. (Or the positive, content-free ones either.)

What I'm reading: Jack Campbell, Dauntless

Comments

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

"... negative ad has a fact in it."

What this statement doesn't mention is whether the "fact" is real or made up. At this point, most of them are not real, at least not that I've seen. I am apalled by these things. I don't care for the ads anyway, like you, but the negative ones just turn my stomach and tell me that I don't like the candidate ...

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

The quote is half-joking. But less than half, as I was surprised to find out. Hence the post.

As I mentioned, the negative ads tended to be much better grounded in documented facts. What the author found is that negative ads tend to be "truer" because most candidates won't call their opponent a wife-beater, or whatever, without a basis in reality. I didn't bother to post the article in full, but it was fairly persuasive.

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

Well, perhaps in the past the facts were documented, but these days there are more half-lies and innuendos than real facts in the negative ads.

One that Bill Mahar talked about Friday night on HBO deals with someone running for office on the east coast. He was accused in an ad of having called an escort service or something of that nature (phone sex, whatever) in a hotel that was paid for by his consituents. What *wasn't* mentioned is that:
a) he didn't make the call, one of his staff did;
b) the call was a wrong number, and the staff member immediately hung up and dialed the number he was TRYING to reach, which was another government agency, and the phone numbers were one digit off.

So while there is a "fact" in there, it's a half-lie as well, because they didn't tell the whole story, took something completely out of context and ran with it, and made a big stink of it.

This is just one example. Oh, and this ad was sponsored by the Republican Party. Bill Mahar showed the whole thing. It was cheesy and left a bad taste in the mouth, but more about the Republican Party than the candidate.

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

Oh, and the phone records from the hotel were able to prove exactly what I mention in b), in the previous post.

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

And let's not even talk about the Gunboat ads trying to destroy John Kerry ... the people that they talked to in those ads never served with Kerry, among other things.

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

This is the example that is widely cited. However, the ad was run once by one station. All the other stations didn't run it, and the candidate in question (who didn't run it - as you say, the party did) had it pulled immediately.

Sounds like the correction aspect of the system works!

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

Only to an extent. The ad should never have been created, or endorsed, by the Republican Party in the first place.

That doesn't excuse the others. Kerry and the Gunboat stuff during the last Presidential campaign; the senator (or representative, don't know which, don't care) in Tenessee who's getting slammed by another Republican ad because gasp, he went to a Playboy Mansion party, and apparently they're lying about what went on, and so on. They make shit up. These are NOT facts. Yes, this guy went to the party, so what? What they claim happened at the party didn't ...

This may be asking a lot

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

But sit down for a moment and cool off.
Better? Okay. Now re-read the original post. Note that no mention is made of political party. (Both parties do negative ads, after all.)

The article I cited surprised me because it flew in the face of common wisdom (and my own general feeling) that negative ads have no redeeming value.

One of the points he was making is that they do. Which of these statements has more useful content (and is more likely to be backed up by documentable evidence):

"I like puppies and Jesus."
"My opponent was arrested for tax evasion."

[aimeric.livejournal.com]

Interesting point, but I think this is too cursory an analysis. I'd agree that negative ads generally focus on issues ("candidate X voted against Y!" vs "candidate X cares for your community"), but I'd argue that what they usually do is distort them. Even having a true fact will lead someone to a wrong conclusion if other, more relevant facts are omitted or taken out of context. Or, one can use documented facts in combinations with incorrect logic to produce an erroneous conclusion. (After all, you can have true premises and still have a non-valid argument, e.g. "All A are B; All C are B" could be true but "All A are C" is not).

Moreoever, I'd argue that self-correction by the system does not solve the problem. a) people might not see the correction (e.g. front page news correction buried on pg 20), b) a pulled ad isn't equal to a countered ad (wasn't the Daisy ad aired only once?), c) a good portion of the population doesn't research whether what they've been presented is actually true - especially if this line is parroted by an authority figure they agree with - and d) the initial accusation will be believed by a portion of the population regardless of what facts are presented later to the contrary.

More precisely, the prof's statement: "[With attack ads] the threshold is higher. You need documentation and support. If a candidate just attacks, without documentation to back it up, it rebounds against the attacker and he looks like a fool" doesn't hold water to me:

- Does he show that the rebound effect happens with significant frequency?
- If not, because the threshold is so high that no one wants to risk the rebound effect, then how can he prove his statement?
- What constitutes a fact? If candidate A says X and B disputes it, and A *repeats* X, and B refines Not X, etc, etc, etc, then at what point do we determine that sufficient documentation has been provided?
- Re: "Looking like a fool". People will swallow lies if they're repeated often and loudly enough. Well-known tactic (I swear, I'm not going to invoke Godwin's Law...).

So, in general, I'd buy that negative ads focus more on specific issues and content, but that's about it.