Campaign statements can be used carelessly | News, Sports, Jobs
The 2024 presidential campaign was full of drama, but it cannot compare to the events of 1968.
That election saw President Lyndon Johnson withdraw from the race, Robert F. Kennedy assassinated during the campaign, and riots broke out in the streets of Chicago outside a Democratic convention marked by anger and division. That fall, Republican Richard Nixon made a once-improbable comeback, defeating Democrat Hubert Humphrey by seven-tenths of a percent in the popular vote, after having been politically written off earlier in the decade.
The Nixon campaign of 1968 also saw a flood of television advertising. Looking back, the Washington Post described how Nixon’s campaign ads “were relentlessly stimulating and relatively detached from facts and figures. It proved once and for all that a presidential candidate can succeed on television by telling viewers not what to think but what to feel.”
Compared to the fragmented media landscape we live in today, the world of 1968 is a very different era. Audiences that once watched three major television networks, one public broadcaster, and one independent broadcaster are now spread across hundreds of channels, streaming providers, and websites. Campaigns still pour millions of dollars into advertising that appears on TV and online, but they are now joined by political action committees flush with money coming from unions, corporations, and wealthy individuals who can champion causes and candidates with little or no restraint. The overwhelming majority of these ads, ubiquitous in a swing state like Pennsylvania, aren’t as accurate with the facts and, like the ads of old, aren’t designed to appeal to the rational parts of the brain.
And this applies regardless of party and ideological orientation.
Of course, many of these ads will be just visual and aural wallpaper for many viewers and will be studiously ignored. But anyone who seriously sits down and takes in what they say would be wise to check the claims made for accuracy. The same goes for things that appear in social media feeds.
And although the “Media” is a popular whipping boy for left and right alike, but news outlets, perhaps considered old-fashioned today, are still some of the best places to find out reality from fantasy. This includes print media such as weeklies and, yes, newspapers. They have trained journalists on their staff whose job it is to get to the bottom of things and ask questions. The information in these outlets is verified.
Given Pennsylvania’s importance, you’ll likely see plenty of political ads between now and November. The best advice, as always, is for the buyer to beware.
