Beware TV Political Ads

Watching television is going to be more than a little annoying this fall. A misguided ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court allows unlimited contributions to candidates. As a result, office seekers have plenty of money for television advertising, and so you will see endless political ads around the clock. Saints preserve us!

To add insult to injury, most of these commercials will be negative - attacking opponents, often through the use of unflattering photographs, selective presentation  of their records, and distortion of their words.

The Mitt Romney campaign provides ready examples of how an
opponent's words can be distorted. In his first ad attacking Pres. Obama,
Romney's staff shows a film clip of Obama saying, "If we keep talking
about the economy, we're going to lose." These words were taken out of
context. Obama was quoting an aide to then presidential candidate John McCain
who in 2008 spoke those words anonymously in an interview.

What  Obama really stated was, "Senator McCain's campaign actually said, and I quote, 'If we keep talking about the economy we're going to lose. ' Romney's campaign deleted 'Senator McCain's campaign actually said, and I quote,' and left Obama saying "if we keep talking about the economy we're going to lose."

How serious was this distortion of the truth? Politifact.com is a project operated by the St. Petersburg Times. Its reporters and editors check the factual accuracy of statements made by Congress, the White House, lobbyists, and interest groups. These statements are then given a rating on a "Truth-O-Meter" which can range from "True," "Mostly True," "Half True," "Mostly False," "False,"
to "Pants on Fire" (from the taunt, "liar, liar, pants on fire").

Mitt Romney's campaign ad was given a "Pants on
Fire" rating.

More recently, Romney stated (7/25/12) on a campaign ad,
"President Obama was saying success 'is the result of government,' not
'hard-working people' when he said, 'if you've got a business, you didn't build
that. Somebody else made that happen.'"

Once again, Politifact.com tested the accuracy of Romney's  statement. 
As it turns out, Romney again took Obama's remarks out of context. Here is a
fuller presentation of what Obama said. "If you were successful, somebody
along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges . . . The point is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. "

Obama continued. "So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That's how we funded the G.I.Bill. That's how we created the middle class. That's how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam.  That's how we invented the Internet. That's how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people . . ."

How did Politifact.com rate the truthfulness of Romney's statement?  "We believe, as do our friends at FactCheck.org and the Washington Post Fact Checker, that Romney has seriously distorted Obama's comments."

Poltifact.com gave Romney's statement a rating of False.

Well, why do candidates like Romney make false statements
that they know will be exposed as such by objective referees like
Politifact.com? That has to do with "low-information voters." Many
people are not particularly interested in politics and don't follow it closely.
However, when these low-information voters are sitting in their living room,
and one political ad after another flashes on the television screen, they can't
avoid politics.

If a (false)statement jumps out at them ("Obama says
you didn't make your business successful"), low-information voters don't
have the background information to judge whether or not that claim is correct.
But, the statement is startling, so they not only assume that it's correct; but
they remember it,  and use it as a basis for their votes.

Why aren't  candidates like Romney concerned that low-information voters will discover that their statements are incorrect when checked by Politifact.com? Because low-information voters, who don't care much about politics anyway, aren't  going to go to the time and trouble  to check a claim's accuracy on the Internet.

So, as you're being bombarded with political commercials on
television in the run-up to the November election, there's a good chance that
what you see on the screen is false, and should be ignored.