I Guess Bad is the New Good

On my blog, there appeared an ad for a media group, McCleskey Media, who I guess produce political ads.  On the main page, there are slides of the different advertising awards they won for different political ads.  I figured, if these ads are so good maybe I should check them out.  I clicked on the "Our Work" tab on the top of the page, and of the first seven ads I picked to watch six, were negative ads.  I'm guessing I didn't pick the only six negative ads on the page.  If these are the ads which are winning awards and elections, I guess going negative is the way to go. Do I think negative ads are better or worse than "content-free" ads, I'm honestly not sure, which by itself says something.  It should be obvious that negative ads are worse than anything positive but, they the "content-free" ads are so useless that it may actually be a tossup between the two.

What do TV Ads Do?

What is the real point of a political TV ad?  When it comes to products or services, the main purpose of an ad is to create brand recognition.  Is that true too by politics?  Is the point of TV ads for politicians just to get their name out there so people recognize it, and not to explain the ideas which the politician stands for?  If this were true then the popular "content-free" ads should be the perfect ads, because they are simple and they give the politician a recognizable, positive image to the politician.  If this were true then, in my humble opinion, negative ads would not be as popular.  I think the reason negative ads are so popular in politics and unpopular in any other sort of market, is because the aim of political advertising is different than regular advertising.  I think the point of political advertising is to create the believe in the minds of the viewers that the candidate featured in the ad, is the best person for the job.  It is not like when one is shopping and you decide to buy the brand you know.  People go to vote with the intent to vote for a certain candidate, so the aim of political ads is to create the belief that this candidate is the best, or in the case of a negative ad, the worst person for the job.  I think this is why there is so much negative advertising in politics and so little in regular market advertising.

You Gotta Watch What You Say Around Those Smart Kids

The spokesman for the State Department, Phillip Crowley, resigned on Sunday after remarks he made to a group of students at MIT.  He publicly criticized the treatment of PFC Manning, who was responsible for the leak of secret documents to Wikileaks.  After having been the administration's spokesman on the Wikileaks issue, Crowley comes out against his treatment by the DoD.  Interestingly enough, he did not recant his statement at any point.  I guess it makes sense that after his resignation there is no reason to try and hide his feelings, but why not recant and try and save his job?  It seemed that he was on his way out anyway, having been distant from Secretary of State Clinton, and having had a new deputy, who, many believed was soon to replace Crowley.  I guess that happened sooner than expected.  It was clear from another statement that he did not disagree with the imprisonment of PFC Manning, but only with his treatment.  I think it might be possible that since he saw himself as on the way out, he may have wanted to go out with a bang, but thats just my opinion and is based on no evidence.

The lesson seems to be, that when in a powerful position, one always needs to watch what they say.

The Freeness of Freedom of the Press

In our class discussion on Monday about New York Times v. US,  we discussed Justice Black's strict interpretation of the Constitution, meaning that when the First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" means literally no law, and the President act above that.  This idea of strict reading vs lose reading of the document is an argument which comes up often in other places.  The debate is centered around questions such as, do we read the Constitution today as it was read then?  Do we read it with the mindset of attempting to understand what the framers meant by it?  Do we read it as a document which was meant to be kept and read the same way as a when it was written or is it a living document which changes with the times?  These are questions which have been the basis for Constitutional debate for the last 200 years, and I don't really think I'm qualified to answer them for anyone else, but if I were a Supreme Court Justice and I needed to decide how I was going to read the Constitution, I would read it as it was written.  My reasoning for this is, that when there have been things in the Constitution which needed changes due to social changes, Amendments were made, and if the potential for Amendments is possible, then who am I to decide that the Constitution means something other than what it explicitly says.

FCC Censorship

Today's discussion about censorship of the media during war time reminded me of an episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, an NBC show from 2006-2007, about a late-night sketch comedy show.  There was an issue where the network was being fined by the FCC for carrying coverage of a soldier swearing on air, after an RPG exploded nearby.  The network executives felt that this fine was unfair because it was not something they could control and it was unexpected, and most importantly, thats what happens in war.

It brings up an important point which now exists with embedded reporters, which is, how much of the real war do we really wanna see?  It seemed that in this case, although fictional, the FCC didn't want the people to see the "real war" and everything it entails, only the clean version.  It also reminds me of, I believe, the only footage of the first plane hitting the WTC, where the firefighter who was on a training exercise swore when he saw what happened.  In that case, networks aired the video with a disclaimer about the expletive, while in the case in Studio 60, it was live and therefore there was no chance for a disclaimer, but should the FCC have fined them? It comes down to the issue of how much of war, is the government and media really willing to show us?