Use of Newspaper Political Adwatches from 1988-2000

Newspaper Research Journal, Fall 2004 by Glowaki, Chris, Johnson, Thomas J, Kranenburg, Kristine E

A analysis of newspaper advertising coverage found most adwatch stories examined both strategy and accuracy, while general advertising stories focused on strategy over accuracy.

While journalists continue to come under fire for campaign coverage that focuses too much on the horse-race aspect and not enough on analyzing candidate issue positions, at least one aspect of campaign coverage has earned praise from political observers: the political adwatch. While adwatches have their critics,1 supporters argue they perform an important watchdog function because political ads are so integral to candidates' campaigns as well as how the public judges candidates.2 Adwatches can help educate the public about whether individual ads are truthful and ideally reduce the effects of misleading ads.3

Most studies look at the effects of adwatches on voters, rather than look at the content of the adwatches. Studies that examine the content of political adwatches tend to focus on one election, while this study examines coverage over four campaigns. Finally, while most political adwatch studies only look at the adwatches, this study also examines how well the media performed its watchdog role by comparing coverage of adwatches with other political advertising stories. This study uses a content analysis to examine adwatch coverage in three national newspapers to explore whether the number of adwatches has increased over the last four presidential elections (1988 to 2000) in comparison to other political ad stories. This study also compares adwatch and other political advertising stories in terms of whether they stress the accuracy of the ad or its strategic elements.

The Watchdog Role of the Press

Under the watchdog theory of the press, the function of the press is to keep officers of the state from abusing or exceeding their authority.4 The press is to be the watchdog over the workings of democracy, "ever vigilant to spot and expose any arbitrary or authoritarian practice."5 The watchdog concept, then, argues that the press needs to be free to ensure that there is independent criticism and evaluation of the government and other institutions that might attempt to overstep their bounds of authority and impinge on the rights of the people.6

Watchdog Press and Political Advertising

Political managers assert that the events in the campaign, along with the messages candidates produce through advertising, will shape the choices made by critical sectors of the electorate.7 Political ads are an important part of poli tical communications because they are the only messages that the candidates completely control.8

There are several reasons it is important for the press to monitor political advertising. First, ads get people's attention and perform the role of a reliedupon source of political information. Patterson and McClure found the public received the majority of their information about the candidates' issue positions from ads rather than news reports.9 second, the press needs to monitor political ads because the advertising has a history of being misleading and deceptive. Kern argues the tendency of ads to send out deceptive information is troubling because there will always be a percentage of the population who believe that political ads, like product ads, might exaggerate but will not lie.10 Finally, press coverage of political ads has come under fire in recent years because of the tendency for journalists to focus on the strategic elements of the ads rather than the accuracy of their messages.11

Political Adwatches

The print adwatch began in 1986 in the Los Angeles Times}2 However, the practice didn't take hold until after a plea from The Washington Post columnist David Broder for journalists to probe the accuracy of political ad claims.13

The political adwatch or truth box can be defined as a news media critique of candidate ads, which is designed to inform the public about truthful or misleading advertising claims.14 Unlike other political advertising news stories, adwatches are specially denoted sections of the newspaper that analyze political ads to inform the public about claims that are exaggerated or false.15 Adwatches are designed to educate voters by raising their awareness about the accuracy of the claims in political advertisements.16 Several studies have found that adwatches blunt the effect of negative advertising. Jamieson and Cappella found that exposure to adwatches affects how people assess what is important and fair in a political commercial.17 They argue that the primary goal of adwatches is to dampen the power of misleading ads, and that changing voters' perceptions about the importance and fairness of a misleading ad presumably would reduce the weight of the ad in the decision-making process. Similarly, O'Sullivan and Geiger found that reading newspaper adwatch articles about political attack ads on television affected how respondents evaluated the candidates.18 When the claims of the candidate's ads were supported by the adwatch then support for the candidate increased, and when the claims were rebutted, support for the candidate decreased.19