This Wednesday night I had the privilege of listening to an amazing speaker. My friends and I ran over to Duke Family Performance Hall and flew up the stairs to get a middle seat on the second level of the theatre, sitting at 6:58pm. We stared ahead or looked down at the crowd below as we waited for the event to begin. At 7:10, Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson was introduced to the crowd. Dr. Jamieson has written a total of 16 books, has been featured on Bill Moyers' show, Washington Post, CBS, and others. An article was written about her this week in the Charlotte Observer, honoring her for her work. She is Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at University of Pennsylvania. She runs a site, FactCheck.org, and a sister/daughter site, FlackCheck.org. Both are very useful tools for thinning out the deceptions and lies inherent in political ad campaigns.
The crux of her political mission is to get the false ads and lies out of political campaigns. One way she does this is through FlackCheck, where there is an option to email your local stations, demanding they only air ads that are factually accurate. Stations can turn down independent ads (those by Super PACs are to be accented here) if the manager of the station is even a little bit worried about the factuality of the ad. Jamieson believes that the advertiser has the responsibility to keep ads factual and the manager has the responsibility to turn away ads if she doubts the credibility of the ad's facts.
Jamieson described the formula for attack ads, and showed a riveted crowd examples of each form of attack ad. Jamieson is quoted saying, "Many ads we view as most problematic are most problematic because of the meaning we attribute to them." An example she provided was Johnson's notorious "Daisy" ad from 1964. The ad didn't once mention LBJ's opponent, Barry Goldwater, but the emotional affect of the ad was great and still remains powerful today. She showed many ads that FlackCheck created about the Lincoln/McClellon presidential race of 1864, all in the style of current presidential candidates' ads. Ads might shift the focus of the election from the candidate running the ad to the candidate in opposition, calling a voter to ask, "Do I really want to vote for the opponent... would that be a wise choice?" which is a negative focal point instead of a vote based on character, value, and opinions of the running candidate. The issue with current ads, Jamieson stated, is that they "activate cynicism and depresses learning about the current system", when ads should be informative and loaded with facts instead of propaganda and lies.
Jamieson hopes that through education and proliferation of the truth in politics, we can fix our broken system of political ad campaigns. When asked if there really is any true difference we can make, Jamieson responded well, saying, "if we can fix any little part of anything right now, that's better than doing nothing." She hopes that stations will follow the examples set by many Ohio stations a few years back, and not allow certain ads because of their false representations. She hopes that every citizen will watch news from all points of view - FOX, MSNBC, and CNN alike. Ways to stay educated include weekly quizzes on FactCheck, avoiding listening to post-debate discussions on major stations (since not much effective, substantive language is ever involved in them), and becoming wary of viral emails.
I really appreciate the time and effort of Dr. Roberts for organizing Dr. Jamieson's visit, and I especially am thankful I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Jamieson speak twice.
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