Political Advertisements: Do Americans care about the truth?

On Thursday night I attended a Q&A session with Robert McChesney author of Dollarocracy and Digital Disconnect. The session covered a wide range of topics from the future of journalism to the surveillance state and how it has affected journalism as a field.

However, what struck me as the most interesting was the discussion on political Ads. McChesney mentioned that in countries like Norway and Britain political Ads were not only illegal but seen as a horrible instance of dirty propaganda. 

This was news to me. I thought, like the US, all countries legally utilized political ads to sway voters as the election came to a climax. Of course, I knew the reality of the these ads: they were negative, extremely partisan and interpreted the truth however they deemed fit. 

USA Today did a story on the 5 worst political ads of 2012. In this article they examine the failings of both Obama and Romney to produce a clean campaign. In fact, they go as far as to say that 2012 may have been the worst and most slanderous year for political advertisements. The sheer volume of political ads is astounding, according to the article it would take a single person watching ads 24 hours a day for three years to get through all the advertisements for the 2012 election cycle alone.

All statistics aside, I think that the existence of political ads in America speaks to a more critical issue. Political contenders are forced to air these ads for one sole reason in my mind: Americans believe them. I know for example, that my family members who are not as involved in politics as me, put some investment in what is said in these ads. On a few different occasions my brother and sister would mention something said in a political ad in passing as an absolute fact.

The point that I’m getting at here is that Americans seem to have lost interest in the truth which makes way for this type of political campaigning. If politicians know the majority (and I stress majority because I knew this by no means pertains to everybody) of Americans/potential voters won’t bother to fact-check then they won’t see the need to stop advertising things that are simply not true.

If we want to see change in how our presidential elections are run we need to become more active participants. We need to make it known that we won't stand for middle-school tactics of trash-talking opponents rather we want facts. We want to know about candidates views on the issues, we want to know where they stand and how they plan on maintaining that position. Just because scathing political ads make good television doesn't mean we should sit back and accept them.