Negative ads could be now-a-day called political advertising a la mode; that is how popular they become. However, they are also one of the most controversial issues of political advertising that is a problematic part of advertising in general itself. The truth is, negative ads are good in their primal idea – to reveal the truth; but only if they are truthful! They can also be very effective if well done – they are able to transfer a very strong message in a very persuasive way. But they can turn into a very unethical tool of politicians at the same time, when combined with lies. So in short, political advertising, and especially negative advertising should be truthful, we can all agree on that point. The problem is, how to achieve it? Unfortunately, there is no satisfying answer to that question so far. Actually, there are proposals such as restrictions of political speech. Sadly, first of all, these are very sensitive issues since it offends the first amendment of American constitution. Secondly, they do not seem very effective (Jackson). Therefore, so far political advertising and especially negative advertising is doomed to rather mislead voters than help them to make their choice.
In fact, in the USA, while untruthful product advertising can be strictly pursued, political advertising enjoys a full freedom of speech. That means that politicians can freely tell lies and nobody can punish. The reason why is the 1st amendment of American constitution– the key to the free democratic speech. In its primal idea, 1st amendment prohibits the state of putting any restriction to the free speech. It says: "Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech," and that applies to candidates for office especially,” (Jackson). The thing is, shouldn`t the voters` right to the truth be protected as well?
Especially in a matter of politics, the truth is an extremely sensitive, but also important issue. First, even thought many people refuse to accept it, politic is important and our choice of the leaders can affect great things. In fact, who to vote for is a difficult and important decision; it is not like choosing a tooth-past or a yogurt – there is the future of the nation to consider (Berger, 86). (Ironically, when buying a yogurt, costumers` right to know the truth is better protected than when voting (Jackson.) Therefore, the voters` decision should base on facts, see the whole story, and be preciously done. To achieve this, voters should not be manipulated by lies, unethical attacks, or omissions.
Second, in their primal position, politicians are supposed to be role models - the chosen ones, who give a moral example to the whole country. Of course, that is a little funny, if we compare this romantic idea with the reality, but that does not mean they shouldn`t even try. In reality, they don`t only refuse to try, they openly sabotage this idea when attacking each other with untruthful arguments, false emotional appeal, or fear factor.
Third, shortly, in democracy people have a right to know the truth. So what exactly is the relevant and valuable reason to deprive them from it? Well yes, there is the freedom of speech. After all, as Brooks Jackson pointed out in his article, “no one has ever said democracy was supposed to be easy.”
However, sadly, setting restriction on free speech of political advertising does not seem to be the absolute solution. In fact, in the states that accepted such a restriction, the new rules were not very effective (Jackson). There are two main reasons for this ineffectiveness. First, the pursued politicians can always argue that they did not know it was not true what they said (Jackson). In such a case, they would not offend the law and would, therefore, be untouchable. Second, even if the attack made by one candidate on another turns out to be based on a lie, the short-term effect created meanwhile can be so strong, that it becomes sufficient to cause a bad reputation of the attacked party (Jackson). In other words, the voters might never get rid of a bad feeling about the harmed candidate even if the attack shows up to be untruthful.
In addition, attack ads often produce attack ad responds, what can lead to a desperate nasty fight where one sometimes looses a track of who is the bigger liar (Newsweek). If that happens, doesn`t the point of political campaigning get lost? Does such a campaign help the voters to choose the right candidate, or does it rather blur the facts up?
Furthermore, there are attack ads that do not directly, or do not use any specific evidence to argue; instead they use irrelevant emotional statements that are not measurable and therefore cannot be proven wrong. For example, in a very simplified model, one party attacks another saying that the other one is immoral, but does not provide any specific reason or prof to demonstrate such a claim. Then, the harmed party would hardly officially complain about accuracy of such statement. They would rather hit back with a similar kind of attack like claiming that the others are evil. Similarly, they can send the message implicitly, without specific names, or direct connection in the way that everybody understands. A great example of such a ingeniously done negative advertising is the Daisy ad by Tony Schwartz created for L.B. Johnson in 1964 that referred to the possibility that his opponents – the Republicans use a nuclear weapon in Vietnam (House of the moving image). (Actually, in the world of advertising, this one is a real masterpiece.) So, in cases like that, a restriction of untruthful political advertising would be again powerless.
Certainly, it can happen that an attack ad is so inappropriate that the voters have rather the opposite reaction – they judge the attacker instead of the attacked one. In fact, the public generally says they hate the negative advertising. However, it has been proven that negative advertising works, sometimes even better than positive advertising. Specifically, it sends a strong message, if well done and well timed (Rohrer).
Finally, lets discuss the role of the media in political advertising. In the ideal case, media should always take a challenging approach to politics (Berger, 93). It should question politicians and what they say. Sadly, that is almost never the case (Berger, 93). That is partly because of media restriction, partly because of what suits media coverage in general, and partly because there is no more absolutely independent media (Berger, 93).
In fact, media itself has to follow certain restriction in their choice of what political news should be shown. First, they are prohibited to refuse political advertising based on its content, what means that they cannot reject one because they think it might be untruthful. Secondly, political discourse and positive political advertising rarely makes the news, as Bates explain in his article “Political Advertising Regulation:
An Unconstitutional Menace?” mentioned above. However, he concludes, political scandals, attacks, and races can easily make a news. That is why TV stations prefer such kind of choice. Consequently, it can easily happen that voters are provided with more negative political advertising than any other part of political campaign.
However, according to research, voters source information about candidates from advertising at least as much as from news, speeches, and debates (Bates). In fact, not everybody considers important to follow political events, but everybody watches TV or listens to the radio, or uses Internet, all filled with political advertising in the time of election. Therefore, it is easy to escape political discourses, but hard to escape political advertising (Berger, 86).
To conclude, political advertising in the USA, and especially its controversial part negative advertising, brings up numerous ethical problems that seem technically impossible to solve. Sadly, even though there are many restrictions on content of product advertising in the USA, there is no law that could protect voters from lies of political advertising, because such protection would be in contradiction with the First Amendment of American constitution that sets the right of free speech (Jackson). This legal weakness is especially sensitive in negative advertising, where politicians attack each other in media spots. However, according to experience gained so far, legal restriction undergoing the First Amendment are not very effective (Jackson). Moreover, there still is a passionate discussion going on about how appropriate such restrictions are, since they still do cross the constitution and could be therefore called undemocratic (Bates). Yet, political advertising has a great impact on voters, who often accept message send by negative political advertising as another source of information and then they base their decision on it (Berger, 86). Of course, such decision can further have a great impact on society and so messages send by political advertising should be as truthful as possible (Berger). Therefore, there is no satisfactory answer to this problem for now.
Reference:
Bates, Stephen. “Political Advertising Regulation:
An Unconstitutional
Menace?”. Gato Institute. September 22, 1988.
<http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa112.html>
Berger, Arthur Asa. “Political advertising”. Seeing is Believing: An Introduction to
Visual Communication. Rowman and Littlefield, 2011, ed.4.
<http://www.aef.com/pdf/BERGER~Ch6.pdf>
Jackson, Brooks. “False Ads: There Oughta Be A Law! – Or Maybe Not”.
FactCheck.org. June 3, 2004. May 10, 2007.
<http://www.aef.com/pdf/BERGER~Ch6.pdf>
Museum of the moving image. “1964 Johnson vs. Goldwater”. <http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1964/peace-little-girl-daisy>
Newsweek. “The Smear Gap”.
<http://www.newsweek.com/2008/08/17/the-smear-gap.html>
Rohrer, Finlo. “Do attack ads crush the opposition?”. BBC News Washington.
October 2010.
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11473185>
