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Show Me the Money

Part 5: Becoming an “Ad Cop”

by Brooks Jackson

As the 1992 presidential campaign began, CNN’s Political Director Tom Hannon made me an offer that all my journalistic instincts told me I should refuse: become a campaign “Ad Cop” policing the candidates’ TV commercials for accuracy. My job would be to nail any misleading or false ads, and to give our viewers the real facts.

I had misgivings. I had — still have — an old-fashioned idea of what good journalism should be: objective, fair, balanced. Good reporters never characterize — they describe. When a public official tells a whopper, good reporters never call him or her a liar. Instead, they report the lie along with the facts that might lead any breathing human to conclude that the official’s pants are aflame, metaphorically. But what Hannon had in mind was that I should be using TV graphics to slap words like “False” and “Misleading” in garish red letters right across the faces of the candidates — one of whom was to be the incumbent President of the United States, George Bush. I could just imagine the telephone calls to the CNN brass the day after I called the President a liar on CNN.

But Hannon convinced me. TV ads had come to play a huge role in campaigns, especially “attack ads” that accused opponents of anything from tax evasion to wife-beating, sometimes on the flimsiest evidence, or no evidence at all. Meanwhile the news media had been letting candidates and their paid consultants get away with it. We covered the often high-toned speeches the candidates were making to audiences numbering in the hundreds and thousands, while ignoring the down-and-dirty statements their ads were making to audiences numbering in the millions and tens of millions.

So I took the job, and to my amazement have had no reason to regret it since. If there were any outraged calls from the White House or the Clinton campaign to CNN’s executives, I never heard about them. And after the campaign, more than one political consultant told me they appreciated the job CNN had done, even when I was telling viewers how their ads were intended to deceive. At least I was keeping their opponents honest, they said. And reaction from viewers was overwhelmingly positive.

Hannon was right — good political coverage today requires an “Ad Cop.” Here’s how to do it.

Find the Ad

You’ve heard the old gag about the recipe for rabbit stew that begins, “First, catch a rabbit”? The same idea goes for your “Ad Cop” story.

Start with the campaign staff, letting them know you need broadcast-quality dubs of all their ads as soon as they begin to air, if not sooner. But don’t depend on them to give you everything, especially in the last days of a campaign.

Any ads airing on your own station should be available for dubbing from your advertising department. If the ad sales staff is reluctant to cooperate, appeal to station management. As a final resort, arrange to tape the ads off the air. The best time is usually around news broadcasts, when political commercials tend to cluster.

In state-wide races, be alert for different ads airing in different markets. You may want to work out a swap arrangement with stations in other markets in your state. Don’t forget cable outlets or stations aimed at minorities. Is the candidate saying the same thing to the Spanish-speaking audience? I once found a George Bush ad that made a downright false claim in a Spanish-language ad. They said their own translation was at fault — an accident. I’m not so sure.

Don’t overlook radio ads, which are often much more negative than TV ads. Groups like the National Rifle Association often run radio-only campaigns on small, rural stations. It’s cheaper and, they figure, hunters and gun owners will get the message.

As a backup to your own ad-collecting efforts, ask the campaign organizations to alert you to what the other side may be doing. They often employ volunteers to monitor all the TV and radio stations and to tape any new ads they hear. If these tapes are not of broadcast quality themselves, they still allow you to begin your research on the factual content while you work to obtain a better tape from the station, or off the air.

Finally, beware of “sucker ads.” Sometimes campaigns hand out copies of ads they have produced, hoping to get some free publicity. Make sure the ad is actually airing before you do a news story about it.

What to Check

Your main job is to check facts, so start by sorting out the factual claims from the rhetorical bluster. If the ad says, “my opponent voted against the death penalty 27 times,” you can look up the bill numbers and check the voting records. But what is there to check out if the ad says — as a famous Ronald Reagan commercial did — “It’s morning again in America?” Don’t bother to call the U.S. Naval Observatory; they don’t deal in metaphors or opinions.

Here are the kind of statements that should get an Ad Cop’s blood pumping:

• Example: “She voted for the biggest tax increase in history.” Oh yeah? What vote? How big was the increase? Compared to what? Measured in nominal dollars or in dollars adjusted for inflation? How big was it in percentage terms? Wasn’t that really a rather small increase when measured as a percentage of the most prosperous economy in history? And didn’t it mainly fall on a small percentage of the most wealthy taxpayers?
• Example: “He voted to cut Medicare by $200 billion.” Really? Wouldn’t Medicare spending continue to go UP under the “cut” you mention? Didn’t your own bill also call for a somewhat more modest slowdown in the rise of Medicare spending? Would either of the “cuts” really reduce the level of care the elderly can expect from this program? How? Who says? How do they know?

And don’t neglect the positive ads, either. In my experience, candidates are just as prone to exaggerate or falsify their positive statements about themselves as they are their attacks on their opponents.

• Example: “Under Gov. Smith, the state of Utopia had the highest growth in literacy in the nation.” Perhaps so, but from what level? If Utopia still had the lowest literacy rate in the nation, despite the improvement under Gov. Smith, your viewers might want to know.
• Example: “Congressman Jones won the coveted ‘Defender of the Republic Award.’ ” But who gave it? Military contractors? And who else received it? Were they all Republicans? All Democrats?

And don’t neglect to check the visuals. Have the images been edited or altered? Do the pictures show what the ad says they show? Are those “man in the street” interviews real voters, or campaign workers for the candidate? Are staged events being passed off as real? Did that newspaper really run that headline? Was it really a page-one screamer as the ad shows, or a three-paragraph filler on page 16? I have encountered ALL these kinds of visual fakery, and more.

Finding the Facts

Now that you have isolated the claims you want to check, where do you turn to check them?

Start with the candidates themselves. Because journalists are so aggressive about checking ads these days, most campaigns “footnote” their ads, supplying citations and source material to back up their claims. Get whatever backup material the campaign is supplying, but don’t stop there. Check with the opposing campaign to see if they have any complaints about accuracy. They will often be the first to spot a false or misleading claim and can sometimes supply documentation. Obviously, you should not accept either side’s claims or documentation at face value. Check it out!

• Example: The ad says, “NewsMonth Magazine called candidate Smith ‘the best.’ ” But you’ve seen what movie ads do when they quote movie reviews, so you pull up a copy of the magazine to see what ELSE it might have said. Aha! It called Smith “the best campaigner, but a poor lawmaker.” Your viewers should appreciate getting the full quote, in context.
• Example: The ad cites a university professor’s study as authority for a claim. You call the professor, read her the ad’s language and ask, “Does your study back that up?” The professor says, “No, that’s a dishonest reading of what I said.” Get a quote, or, better yet, get her to say it on camera, and you have nailed a false ad.

Checking out the documentation offered by the competing campaigns should only be the starting point. This is where your skills as a reporter will show. The sources you check will be determined by the facts you are checking.

Deciding What to Say

You have the ad, and you have the facts. Now what?

Calling a candidate’s ad “False” or “Misleading” is a serious step, not to be taken lightly. It violates the tradition of “objective” journalism to characterize a statement in any way. So, err on the side of caution. Constantly challenge your own judgment by asking yourself, “Can I back that up? Can I prove that?”

• “False.” This is the most serious charge you can make about an ad, and I have used this word in only a very few cases. I use it when I can prove a statement is factually incorrect, and when there is no reasonable way it can be interpreted otherwise. In the 1996 presidential campaign Bob Dole ran an ad accusing Lamar Alexander of raising Tennessee’s sales taxes 85 percent while he was governor. In fact, sales taxes increased only 22 percent. Dole’s ad was false and I said so.
• “Misleading.” Much more often an ad uses facts selectively, or quotes out of context, in a way designed to leave an incorrect impression. Not a lie, exactly. But the sort of dishonesty that might get a journalist fired in a heartbeat if presented as a news story. Example: in 1992 Pat Buchanan ran a primary ad accusing some key George Bush advisers of being “foreign agents” whose names appeared in “Justice Department files.” Wow! And it was all true! But the Bush aides were not spies or criminals, as the ad seemed to imply. They were merely lobbyists for foreign corporations, and had filed the required disclosure reports with an obscure office of Justice. A classic case of an ad that was factually true, but clearly misleading. And I said so. I probably use the word “Misleading” ten times more often than the word “False.”
• “Unfair.” A good word to characterize ads that present facts seriously out of context, or that fail to mention pertinent information in order to create a false impression. Similar to “Misleading.”
• “Exaggeration.” A much better word to use than “False” if the facts are only wrong but not terribly far off the mark. Did the ad accuse the opponent of wasting “millions?” Was the waste in fact a mere $1,200,000? Calling that “False” would be too harsh.
• “Not the Whole Story.” This covers another common situation, when an ad’s statements are true — as far as they go. Perhaps it is true candidate Smith missed 47 key votes during the last session of the state legislature, as his opponent claims. Would it help to know that 40 of those votes took place while Smith’s daughter was lying gravely ill in a hospital? You get the idea.
• “In Fact...” If you have done the research, pondered what to say, and still are not comfortable characterizing a statement one way or another, then don’t. Just use the phrase “in fact...” and go on to give your viewers the additional facts they need to judge. This is the most neutral of all the phrases you can use. But be careful; by using it you are implying, even if not saying outright, that there is something fishy here that bears a closer look. Use it as appropriate.
• “True.” Hey, when they’re right, they’re right. And you should say so. Just be as sure as you would be before calling something “False” or “Misleading.”

Finally, judge each statement and each ad on its own merit. Just because you have called one candidate’s ad misleading does NOT mean that you must even the score by saying the same thing about one of the opponent’s ads. Be thorough, fair and honest about each story and each ad. Be open minded. Set aside any personal biases. If in the end your stories criticize one candidate’s ads more harshly than those of another, then it is their fault, not yours.

Putting it On the Air

The production of a TV ad-watch story is more important than you might imagine. Done improperly, your attempt to de-bunk a false or misleading ad can actually backfire, causing viewers to believe the ad more, not less.

This may seem illogical and improbable, but research conducted by Kathleen Hall Jamieson at The Annenberg School for Communication has shown it to be true. Visual information — the ad you are showing while you talk about it — is far more powerful than aural information — the words you are speaking. Your voice track may be saying, “The ad you are looking at is false,” but the viewer’s brain is thinking, “Isn’t that an interesting picture, and what’s that boring announcer droning on about? I wish they would shut up.” To overcome the message of the ad, you must overpower it with your own, using both audio and video.

Here’s how we do it at CNN, using techniques based on Jamieson’s research:

• Preview your story, so that viewers know in advance that they are about to see a critique of the advertising, an analysis of its accuracy and fairness. You do the stories using a series title and logo. My stories were called “Ad Police” in the 1992 campaign. Now we call it “Fact Check,” a less hostile-sounding phrase. Many use the term “AdWatch.” Your anchor should set up the story with copy preparing viewers for the fact that you will be taking a skeptical look at the content of the campaign ads, such as, “Our correspondent sorts out fact from fiction.”
• Present the ads in a way that telegraphs to viewers — visually — that they should be watching for a story about an ad, not the ad itself. Do not show the ad full screen, except perhaps for a few seconds at the outset. At CNN we “squeeze” the ad back into a graphic TV set, a “box,” showing viewers in a visual way that the ad itself is not the news. Furthermore, the box is canted, set at a slight angle. The space around the box is used to show a logo — “Campaign ’98” — and basic information about the ad, for example: “Smith for Senate ad; Democrat, Illinois.”
• Use graphics to reinforce your reporting. At CNN, my standard technique is to play the portion of the ad I am about to critique, then freeze the ad and overlay it with an animated banner: “Misleading” or whatever characterization is appropriate. The ad’s message has been replaced in the viewer’s sight with my own message about the ad. I also use graphics to reinforce my supporting facts, often with text that appears in the space to the left of the ad “box.” For example, “Study’s author says it shows opposite of what Smith claims,” or “Smith missed votes while daughter was ill.” Viewers can grasp and remember facts more readily when they hear and read them at the same time.

Pitfalls to Avoid

Don’t rush. Checking the facts in an ad often takes more than one day. And it is far, far better to be late than to be wrong. Besides, the typical political commercial runs for at least a week, more often for two weeks. It is actually to your advantage if viewers have seen it and wondered about it before seeing your report.

Avoid “cop mentality.” Don’t assume all, or even most ads are dishonest. They aren’t. Too many “ad cops” over-use terms like “False” and “Misleading,” and by so doing they undermine their own credibility, in my judgment. All advertising involves a degree of puffery, and viewers fully realize that. Reserve your toughest remarks for ads that are clearly over the line. Is the ad the political equivalent of going 35 miles per hour in a 30-mph zone? Save your outrage for somebody going 50 in a school zone.

Don’t expect to change the world. Your stories won’t stop political fakery or dishonest political commercials. But you can expect viewers to appreciate sound reporting and honest appraisals of the political ads that inundate them during the political season. Realize that the ads you critique may run 100 times, while your story will run once or twice. And while political scientists debate whether or not ad-watch stories “work” by changing viewers’ minds, as a journalist you shouldn’t give that a thought. In the end your job is to present the facts. What viewers do with those facts is up to them.

Brooks Jackson is a correspondent for Cable News Network. He can be contacted at 820 1st St. NE, Washington, DC 20002; (202) 515-2937; Fax: (202) 515-2967; e-mail: brooks.jackson@turner.com.

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