Aug 27th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Help Marc Ambinder With His Conundrum
My former colleague Marc Ambinder is facing a dilemma:
McCain campaign airs provocatively misleading ads.
The press has a conundrum.
If we want to point out how misleading they are, we air the ad.
McCain’s campaign wins the point.
If refuse to point out how misleading they are, McCain’s campaign escapes criticism.
I can think of a few possible ways out of this specific dilemma. But here’s a larger point. Journalists construct “narratives” about political personalities and campaigns that color their coverage. Maybe this observation ought to influence the press’ narrative about McCain.
If you have other suggestions for Marc, why not email him or leave some thoughts in comments I can pass on.
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53 Responses to “Help Marc Ambinder With His Conundrum”
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August 27th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
he’s either a liar, or he’s old and confused. you choose.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
which is?
i think you have enough courage to say what the word is in your own blog. if you don’t, i don’t think you are suggesting others imply or say the words in their respective media. if you are..i think there is name for ppl like you..
is that chicken?
August 27th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
I agree with you. The media could create a narrative in which something like this is even possible. There he goes again, lying, er, misrepresenting Obama’s record. Then they could actually start asking him about his policies and why he keeps mistrepresenting them as well.
Also, Ambinder should turn on comments, it is a bad sign if you have to turn them off.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Is it that difficult to:
1) Tell viewers/readers that the ad lies.
AND
2) NOT air the ad.
????
August 27th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
I have some suggestions for Marc, but they’re not printable.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Or he could just admit that there is no “liberal media bias,” and they’re all afraid of being called anti-American or not getting invited to the next barbecue.
The scummy dirtbags in the media are almost as responsible as the Bush administration for the fall of this country.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
For those of you a couple of minutes too late, the better, original version of Matt’s post read:
Journalists construct “narratives” about political personalities and campaigns that color their coverage. There’s a sentiment that Obama is perhaps an overconfident man, so everything he does is scrutinized through a lens of potentially problematic arrogance. Insofar as people feel that John McCain is repeatedly trying to mislead the American public and to manipulate the press into misleading the public on his behalf, they might want to similarly adjust their narrative about the trajectory of McCain’s life and his campaign. There’s a word for the kind of person who deliberately says stuff that isn’t true.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
In principle, the lies should be picked apart– in practice, since there’s no fast or easy way of doing that, it’s not going to happen on the teevee. And McCain’s people can easily confuse the issue if anyone actually tries to do the right thing. Realistically, Obama’s the one who has to get through. He’s got to do it.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Yanno, there was a time when John McCain HAD to lie.
When he was a POW.
/snark
August 27th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
I’d like to see Wolf Blitzer have Zakaria and Joe Klein “analyze” the ad. That would be pretty good.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
This isn’t that complicated. If you’re in the media, you can do both: a point by point rebuttal makes for a great segment; “McCain says X (play clip), but in truth, Y.”
If you are Obama, you run an ad that spends 45 seconds claiming McCain kills puppies for fun, is a Vietnamese Manchurian candidate, and whatever fun falsehoods you can dream up, then 15 seconds saying, “actually none of that is true, but neither are most of the things McCain says about me.” The media is outraged but at least has to notice the McCain lies.
-J
August 27th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
The annoying thing is that they air the false ads on news shows because they are “controversial”. Then, they don’t talk about why they are controversial, they just discuss if they will be effective. Once I saw the same ad run several times on national cable news only to hear ” …they’ve only run this ad twice in small markets…”.
That’s a helluva bargain. Pay to run an ad twice in a small market and get it run ad nauseum for free nationally in prime time.
If they are going to run the ad, they must tear it apart. Anything else is an in-kind campaign contribution.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Ask Marc how the wind in his hair feels as he rides McCain’s tire swing.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
It is not necessary to play the ad for the viewers in order to report the fact of the ad. Somehow newspapers and magazines manage to print reports about politics without airing any video at all.
When McCain, or Obama, airs an attack ad it should be reported as such. The lies in the ad should be debunked. The opposing campaign should be given a chance for rebuttal. In no circumstance should the ad be played in its entirety for the viewers to decide for themselves.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Advice from neuroscientists:
1. State the facts without reinforcing the falsehood
2. Tell the truth with images
3. Provide a compelling storyline or mental framework for the truth
4. Discredit the source
August 27th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Um. The word would be LIAR. Look, McCain was born in a military hospital in the Canal Zone. From that day to the present, he hasn’t been off the public payroll. His predominate interest in life has been military affairs. He knows nothing about diplomacy. He knows only military bluster and coercion.
I tremble at the thought of McCain as Commander-in-chief. He’s like the man with a hammer, who sees every problem as a nail. McCain has spent his entire life either in the military or thinking about the military. He will make Cheney look like a pacifist. You can see it taking shape in Lieberman and Graham’s WSJ editorial (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121970826711471167.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries)
His most recent outburst on Georgia was wrong. And surely, the way he interjected himself and his lapdogs, into a delicate situation was PRESUMPTUOUS in the nth degree. We don’t need a war (hot or cold) with Russia, and we most certainly don’t need a candidate trying to score political points intervening in the president’s conduct of foreign affairs.
He is very certain about his military judgments, but he’s very often wrong or misinformed. The day after 9-11 he was publicly calling for an attack on Iraq. He was even asserting with confidence that the anthrax was from Iraq.
He’s been campaigning on the surge, saying that Obama doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he said that the Sunni Awakening couldn’t have succeeded without the surge. But his great mentor Gen. Petreus doesn’t agree with him. And now Maliki is on the verge of crushing the Sons of Iraq and with them, the Sunni Awakening.
His character assassination of Obama is really pitiful, but all that he has left is his ambition to be president. He’s desperate, so is it any wonder that he’s in deep denial about his low road campaign?
August 27th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
He should unroll it, starting at the end of his penis. Hope this helps.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Tell Ambinder not to be a disingenuous prick. He “aired” the ad a few posts earlier on his blog without bothering to point out that it’s fraudulently misleading (and he still hasn’t done so). So where’s his conundrum? He followed standard Ambinder operating procedure — if the McCain camp puts something out, repeat it verbatim without crticism.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I get annoyed by journalists, who have no qualms calling Biden a plagiarist, refusing to call McCain a liar.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Why not show Obama’s comment immediately before the ad, and afterwards discuss quite plainly how the ad takes Obama’s words out of context in a manner typically called lying. Next, discuss how Obama’s words are completely unobjectionable, as the Soviet Union had countless nuclear weapons aiming at us and Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon. Then a discussion of why factual observations of this sort might offend or anger McCain, and bring up the possibility that he really likes casting himself in heroic terms–just like George Bush–against an evil enemy. Indeed, he likes this so much that he’ll strengthen Ahmadinejad’s position vis-a-vis the ayatollahs by pretending he runs the country, when he really doesn’t. Finish with a confused debate about whether McCain considers contemporary Russia a greater threat than Iran.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
How about instead of running the ad in its entirety you break it down like Zapruder? After each 2-3 seconds you pause and interject the truth. Source the truth with clips of interviews, accepted quotes or writings, etc. Label each 2-3 seconds of misleading or lying video for what it is. Summarize McCain’s ads for the deceptions found within. Now the public is left with the memory of the ad for the jangled mess of contradictions it is. Start with the “Tiny” ad, as it presents a rich target field.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
The purpose of TV “News” is to make money by selling advertising. The modus operandi involves reporting or making up controversy and/or excitement (prurient or otherwise).
What better way to manufacture controversy than to forthrightly call McCain out?
August 27th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Before I read this post, I had already sent him an e-mail. Here it is below:
I think your analysis in the “McCain Ad Shell Game” post misses the mark because it assumes the media must cover ads like the dishonest one put forward by John McCain in the way it always does.
The McCain campaign does not win the point if the media acknowledges, without any sort of qualifications, that this ad distorts what Obama said with respect to the threat posed by Iran. The media does not even have to show the ad to make this point. For example, Fox News could report that “John McCain has spent $X million in several swing states claiming Barack Obama said Iran is a ‘tiny’ threat. However, Obama never said that the threat from Iran was ‘tiny’ in and of itself. Instead, what he said was that the threat from Iran was ‘tiny’ when compared to the threat we used to face from the Soviet Union, a country with far more people, money, and natural resources than Iran, and also a country that had thousands upon thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at the U.S. At this time, it is believed that Iran has no nuclear warheads, and is years away from having such capability.”
However, the media (in what I believe is an obsession with faux objectivity and conflict), when presenting an ad like the dishonest one put forward on Iran by the McCain campaign, waters down their analysis with terms like “somewhat misleading,” “allegedly out of context,” or it just reports on the ad in a “McCain says X, Obama responds by saying Y, who knows who is right, let’s ask two partisan surrogates/hacks” sort of way.
To the extent the media does not improve the quality of its own news analysis, you are right, McCain’s ad presents a conundrum. However, it is a conundrum of the media’s own making.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
For the record, products of the Center for American Progress Action Fund are not allowed to disparage the character, qualifications, or fitness for office of electoral candidates. Keep that in mind when considering the wording of my post.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Here’s a way out: Confront McCain
“Senator McCain, a video press release from your campaign blatantly misrepresents your opponent’s words. If you can’t tell the truth about what Barack Obama said, why should the American people trust you to tell them the truth about anything else?”
or
“Senator McCain, why are you and your campaign lying to the American people?”
or
“Dude, Obama and the Truth are totally getting screwed right now. Can you pass the cornbread, John?”
August 27th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
You know, the media’s addiction to question marks is the real problem here.
Sure, you can air an awful, lying ad and say, with a shrug and a question mark, “Is this ad misleading?” But, as Ambinder points out, that gives McCain the point - he gets his ad out and the distortions in it become a “partisan” issue that the media is above resolving.
The real alternative is this: be firm about how messed up the ad is. No question marks. Headline: “New McCain Ad Distorts Obama Record.” Better yet: “New McCain Riddled With Falsehoods.” And so on and so forth.
If the story is that the guy’s fibbing, make it clear in the story. Too often, the news spots about cheap ads are, “Oh, McCain’s running this ad,” rather than, “Woah, this ad’s filled with BS.”
August 27th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Ambinder had his chance. He was at the event where McCain was asked a weak question (youtube.com/watch?v=tIK9ZawRMlg). Perhaps Ambinder could have asked a better follow-up then, and he’s had months to ask a better follow-up since. He didn’t do either, and he didn’t completely disclose all the details of the person McCain was asked about.
Of course, I don’t expect the issues with that person to resonate with many Dems due to their party’s link to similar people.
August 27th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
First of all, Ambinder is suffering from a phony trial of conscience, here. Just do some actual journalism and demonstrate that McCain has been repeatedly lying. Make that the Ambinder headline for a post a week and see what happens.
Second, whether we are in print or on television, journalists are quite capable of reporting facts and demonstrating when someone is lying. In print, a journalist might lead with the headline (as other people are suggesting) “McCain Ads … Demonstrably False as to Material Questions of Fact/Lie/Smear/Attack Patriotism/Character Assassination/Slime/Muck/Ooze/Filth/Rubbish/Refuse,” whatever the reporting bears out.
On television, this is similarly easy. CNN/MSNBC/Fox(!) fill their screen with boxes of text, graphics, and scrolling words. That baseline text (usually in capitals) tells the casual viewer what the program is talking about. (On Lou Dobbs, for example, it is usually “ALIENS ADVOCATE AMNESTY AGENDA, ASSAULT AMERICA.) SO if that big baseline text says “McCain Ads Repeatedly False” or “McCain’s Dishonesty”, that’ll do just fine.
August 27th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
For the record, products of the Center for American Progress Action Fund are not allowed to disparage the character, qualifications, or fitness for office of electoral candidates. Keep that in mind when considering the wording of my post.
Wow, Matt. Just…. wow.
August 27th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
501(c)4 gets us every time.
August 27th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
The only sufficient corrective to ads like this one is that when a candidate chooses to air it, he gets whacked so hard by the media that it’s unequivocally an electoral loser.
Stop laughing. At least for a minute.
Seriously, that’s the best way for stuff like this to be addressed. There’s no way (thankfully) to bar or censor the ads, and due to the nature of mass communication and human psychology, there’s no way for an opponent to effectively respond on point. (As opposed to a responding incendiary ad against the original admaker, possibly on another topic, which, for now, is the best available response.)
The media, representing the public interest, using the public airwaves, etc. etc. have to just call it out. Hard. Do it without running the ad, if appropriate. Lying to achieve public office should be considered a disgusting, disqualifying act that reflects on the liar’s character. As long as ads like these are treated as saavy tactics from quote-unquote “people who know how to campaign,” instead of what they are, nothing’s going to change. Candidates will only stop running these ads when running these ads causes them to lose elections instead of win them.
August 27th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
As others have said, if there’s a lie or inaccuracy in an ad, just say so. You don’t have to air the ad, just have the talking head accurately read the BS portion of the script, and describe why it’s BS.
Or, use the frickin’ Daily Show method, using clips of the ad in question. BS #1 = clip 1, leading into analysis of why it’s BS; BS #2 = clip 2, etc. This allows one to report on the BS without acting as an unwitting tool for propagating the BS.
If that’s too hard, just air clips of what ever the Daily Show had to say about it. They seem to have this down. That this is even an issue is a symptom of newsrooms that are too rushed (or lazy) to do their job properly.
August 27th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I concur with a Says-
Someone (perhaps one of those news reportery people) should do his job and stick a microphone in Senator McCain’s face and ask him why all of his ads or so full of @&^$. The reason why McCain gets away with this sort of thing is that his campaign doesn’t have to defend itself when it tells a blatant lie.
August 27th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
This is a real test for Ambinder. A real test for his journalistic skill and integrity. Will Ambinder meet the test?
August 27th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
The narrative is, as you note, the problem. Part of the solution is to stop using words like “misleading” and start using words like “lie,” “liar,” “false,” “delusional,” “crazy,” “McCain is a condescendingly arrogant asshole who actually believes that you are stupid enough to believe this nonsense he puts out,” etc. “Misleading” is weak tea and implies a kernel of truth that’s being distorted when what McCain and the Republican party do is to ignore truth altogether. And McCain’s lies should, in each and every case that they’re pointed out, be tied to a comparable lie from Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, et al.
August 27th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
The thing is McCain isn’t really airing lots of these ads. So it isn’t a news story. Presidential Candidate puts together a little video isn’t a news story. McCain is just using the media to avoid paying for actually playing ads. It’s a scam plane and simple. If the ad can pretty much only be seen on the news it is not important. No one will no about it. Call McCain a liar if he’s lying but never play an ad that would have zero impact if it wasn’t played by the media.
August 27th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
I might be misreading Ambinder’s site — but did’t he just put up a link to the ad *without* mentioning that it’s a lie a few posts below his post about the ethical conundrum? At a minimum we could reply that ethical journalists ought not to pass on such ads without comment.
I agree with Matt that the problem is the frame that journalists are using for McCain. The story of McCain is the gusto with which he has dumped every position or ethical stance which earned him the label as a Maverick and someone we could count on for Straight Talk. Yet somehow the press still uses the frame that he’s a straight-talking maverick. The media mustered the gumption to point out that Hillary’s Gas Tax Holiday was a first class pander. Why hasn’t McCain been pinned with the same? etc. etc. If the media — including Ambinder — had been doing its job on reporting the McCain campaign, this ad would fit easily into the appropriate narrative — which is that the McCain campaign long since concluded that it can’t win on the merits of the debate and is resorting to the low road tactics of smears, distortions, and outright lies. Bonus points for noticing that part of the appeal of his Obama is the rejection of that style of campaigning. Then we could have the interesting narrative of whether the low road works, and if so (a) what that says about the voters and (b) what can the high road campaign do to defend itself without giving up its commitment to the high road. There really is an interesting story to be told about what voters think they want, what actually works, and so on.
August 27th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Rather than complain about such ads, Dems should make their own which after all are going to be more truthful: McCain is a warmongering flip-flopping beer heiress marrying misogynistic once divorced prick who is trying to blackmail the country into making him the President because of his POW experience.
August 27th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
I think a prominent Democrat should make a balls-out anti media attack speech on the convention floor. It’s about time the Dems take ownership of the “distrust of the MSM issue” that the Right has owned unjustifiably for years. It’d let the Dems show some teeth while still being civil to McCain himself, get them on the news cycle in a very unique way, and probably give them some bargaining power as far as it comes to shaping narratives.
August 27th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
I feel for these media people who just can;t seem to figure out their job.
How about “The McCain campaign has put out another misleading allegation. They said ______, but the reality is _________.” Is that so hard?
For example: “The McCain campaign has put out another misleading allegation. They continue to say that Obama is against off-shore drilling. This is not true. The question is about a moratorium on more areas to be opened for drilling. The reality is that 70-80% of the estimated reserves are in areas that are not included in the moratorium, and much of the other oil is in states that have been hostile to the idea of further drilling.”
August 27th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
There’s only a conundrum if you’re a broadcaster pretending to be a journalist.
If you’re a journalist, pointing out the errors IS YOUR JOB.
If you’re a broadcaster, you don’t care if the ad is true or false so long as you’ve been paid.
August 27th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
MY writes:
For the record, products of the Center for American Progress Action Fund are not allowed to disparage the character, qualifications, or fitness for office of electoral candidates. Keep that in mind when considering the wording of my post.
Ok, so you are not allowed to either slander nor libel McCain. I trust you are aware of the terms of the Sullivan rule; McCain is a public figure, so surely those rules apply. May I ask, in what sense does telling the truth, or what you think to be and have good reason to think to be the truth, constitute either slander or libel?
To deliberately mislead, in plain English, is to lie, is it not? If McCain is deliberately misleading then he is lying, plain and simple. Saying he is doing so is, under the Sullivan rukles, neither slandering nor libeling him.
Get a grip.
August 27th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Framing is all.
I think if a news item leads with the untruthfulness, closes with the untruthfulness, and in the middle explains exactly what the untruthfulness is, I think the reader will come away with “untruthful” (or “lies” or “falsehoods” or “my aunt fanny”) rather than “whoa, cool ad…”
And I think it’s important to have the TRUTH of McCain’s tactics out there.
August 27th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Don’t even bother to refute the Republicans’ charges. Use their lies to simultaneously argue “Not evil, just stupid”, and to also position them on a continuum of stupidity extending back eight years and further.
August 27th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
After sending a few e-mails Ambinder’s way… almost always factual corrections… that went completely ignored, I gave up.
August 27th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
If the Obama Campaign –and the DNC –were doing their jobs, the Republicans would be too busy trying to defend 8 years of a disasterous John McCain -George Bush- Dick Cheney regime to make up deceitful ads about Obama.
Only a fucking moron plays defense in boxing. Kick his goddamm balls, punch his goddamm throat, gouge out his fucking eyeballs and then kick his knee joint from the side to break it. When he falls down , kick his fucking temple and kidneys until he no longer moving. Keep on doing that and you won’t have to worry about how to defend against his left hook.
You can win a fight –including political battles — if you’re a fucking pussy. Nor can you be the President of the United States. Which is wise –because our foreign enemies are far more dangerous than an old man like McCain.
Given what a disaster the Bush Administration has been, the Democratic Party should be destroyed if it loses this election.
August 27th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Correction: You can NOT win a fight –including political battles — if you’re a fucking pussy.
Sigh. The Yglesias Curse strikes again.
August 27th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
OK, but do you just air the ad & leave it to the viewers to figure out how it’s misleading, or do you point out &/or discuss the factual errors in the ad?
The answer is obvious & that’s the real problem.
August 27th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
I really don’t understand the problem. The Republicans have shown themselves to be lying, stealing, dishonest, murderous cocksuckers over the past 8 years.
John McCain has been a Republican for 25 years at least.
What’s the problem?
August 27th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Njorl: “If they are going to run the ad, they must tear it apart. Anything else is an in-kind campaign contribution.”
Duh! By George, I think he’s got it!
This is WHY Obama is going to lose - something Matt or any other Democrat has yet to address rationally.
August 27th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
I would tell Ambinder that the title and first few sentences of the story are pretty important, so construct an accurate, informative lead, and don’t pull your punches. If the McCain campaign is running an ad that is misleading in some significant way, title the article/post “McCain Running Misleading New Ad” rather than “McCain New Ad: A Sophisticated Exegesis”
August 28th, 2008 at 12:55 am
How about if, when there is video evidence that McCain is lying or wrong, show THAT video, and simply state what the commercial says without actually showing it. The public may hear the lies, but it will SEE the truth.
August 28th, 2008 at 1:38 am
How about “John McCain is a liar.” Not “this ad is misleading” or even “this ad is a lie.” They could say, simply, “John McCain is a liar.”
Why is that so hard?