Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Truthfulness in Political Ads
There's a new website, http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/, that goes through both presidential candidate's political campaigns and checks them for truthfulness. The website searches sites for the facts and then later posts whether or not the facts are true or not. This website it great because it lays out the facts and presents them in a clear format. I think this website it interesting for us as public relations practitioners because politics can be a large part of the field of public relations. Also, because PR people get a bad reputation for spinning stories to make their client look good, it's interesting to see that some websites go back and track whether or not what you are claiming is true.
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7 comments:
Wow, that is a very interesting site. It's probably a very good idea, since there is so much heat surrounding political ads and the election this year in general.
That's so neat there is a Web site for this now. So many of the political ads, well all of them, bend the truth and mislead voters by omitting critical information. I'm in a media ethics class right now and we're doing a project where we pick a presidential ad and research all the claims to check for truthfulness. It's been so interesting.
That sounds like a great website. I also agree that it is a good idea. I like that someone is checking up to see if what the media says about the election is true.
.Thanks a lot for giving me something that millions of dollars in political campaigns could never give me the truth! The ability to get around the puffery and get to the truth is priceless. As a moderate I closely monitor both sides of the spectrum and I truly try to look through all of the garbage and seek out the facts. Regardless of your political affiliation I think you can learn a lot from looking at the other sides view or simply looking at the facts and putting the fallacy of emotion towards your political party aside.
Neat site! Unfortunately, regardless of this widespread realization that campaign ads are misleading and at times hold little truth, they will not end.
Very interesting website, I like the idea a lot. I only wish I had learned about it earlier while we were doing this exact same thing for Media Ethics...
It is great that we now have an outlet to verify the facts presented by a candidate. I think it also creates added accountability for the candidates; now, they must be sure to present truthful messages, or the media and public will become aware that they are presenting false information.
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