Ad Watch

An ad watch is a media report and evaluation of political advertising content. Washington Post columnist David Broder is credited with urging fellow journalists to be more watchful of political advertising messages and making coverage of advertising claims a standard feature of campaign news. Broder called for more ad watches following the intensely negative nature of the 1988 presidential campaign in which political advertising played a significant role in shaping campaign news coverage. In fact, televised political advertising is a prominent feature in most U.S. political campaigns. Televised ads, also known as spots, comprise a significant portion of presidential candidates' campaign budgets and figure substantially in most statewide and congressional elections. Candidates, political party organizations, and issue advocacy groups rely heavily on televised political advertising because it provides direct control of the messages targeted to voters. Ad watches provide citizens some assistance in processing and evaluating claims made in political ads.

Broder's call following the 1988 presidential campaign, and the negative nature of ensuing presidential campaigns, resulted in more ad watches as journalists attempted to police dishonest or ethically suspect campaigning. Ad watches fit nicely into the dominant horse-race style of political reporting as journalists are able to dramatize the attack and defend interplay of candidate ad strategies. When candidates use political advertising as a form of campaign dialogue—attacking opponents or responding to attacks—journalists are able to create news packages that contribute to political discourse and the fourth estate function of media. Beyond the fourth estate function of questioning true and false claims advanced by candidates and serving as an independent source of information about ad claims, political ad watches took hold as a form of political reporting for several news management considerations.

The dominant nature of political advertising in campaigns means that this campaign format serves as a continual source of political news for journalists. Furthermore, whether aired in their entirety or as an ad bite—or a short clip—ads transfer easily to the news format since they supply journalists with visual components for more appealing news reports. Unfortunately, no systematic approach to political ad watches exists. As a result, it appears that more negative ads become the focus of ad watches. Although history informs us that negative ads are frequently home to misleading claims, it also shows us that ads promoting a candidate tend to mislead the audience.

As far back as the 1952 “Eisenhower Answers America” presidential ad campaign, candidates manipulated messages contained in their spots. Eisenhower's [Page 9]ads manipulated audio and video content to give the impression that Eisenhower was responding to a range of citizen questions. Instead, Eisenhower provided staged answers to a variety of issues on his campaign agenda, and citizen actors later were drafted to ask questions that addressed Eisenhower's previously filmed answers.

By modern standards, Eisenhower's advertising strategy may not appear to be an egregious violation of ethical standards. However, more recent audio and video technological developments provide campaigns with tools capable of more blatant, deceptive, and ethically suspect strategies labeled as technodistortions. A more disturbing example of deceptive audio and video techniques by campaigns in political advertising was uncovered during the 1996 Virginia senate race featuring Senator John Warner and his opponent Mark Warner. One of Senator Warner's televised ads manipulated a 1994 photo that featured former Virginia Governor L. Douglas Wilder and Virginia Senator Charles Robb shaking hands while President Clinton was posed between the two. When the photo appeared in Senator Warner's advertisement, the face of Robb was seamlessly replaced by the face of Mark Warner, misleading voters to perceive that Senator Warner's opponent Mark Warner was shaking hands with Wilder and associating with Clinton. Senator Warner manipulated the photo in an attempt to link his opponent with two unpopular political figures in Virginia. In this case, the manipulation was uncovered and widely reported in media ad watches. It is extremely unlikely that ordinary citizens would pick up on this re-creation of history and virtually impossible for them to detect the photo manipulation techniques used in the spot.

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