|
|
Article: Can Campaign Advertising Be on the Level?
- Article from:
- Campaigns & Elections
- Article date:
- October 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Campaigns & Elections, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Campaigns are learning that voters expect ads to be fair and honest....But who sets the standards?
TO ASK THE QUESTION is to cause skeptics' eyebrows to raise. An oxymoron? An impossibility? A joke?
Yet the media's "truth boxes" reviewing campaign ads indicate that reporters apply a set of ethical standards to political advertising. Voters' reactions to campaign ads that backfire imply there are ethical standards in voters' minds that cause them to punish a candidate who crosses an ethical line. Even political consultants take the question seriously, as they did in a panel devoted to the subject recently at an American Association of Political ...