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Truth Watch: Why Political Ads Can Be Misleading

By Political Reporter Marshall Zelinger m.zelinger@krdo.com Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/mzelinger COLORADO SPRINGS - NEWSCHANNEL 13 wants to make sure you're fully informed when voting in the November election. You need to be cautious when reading the political mailers and advertisements you're getting. There is no oversight committee for political campaigns. "It's not a matter of whether it's okay to be false, but it's a matter of what you can get away with," said UCCS Marketing Professor Dr. Tom Gruen. "The objective is to persuade. If we can persuade by confusion, if one can persuade by not telling the truth." Political campaigns tend to skew facts in the favor of their issue. Sometimes there's a hint of truth, other times the claim could be factually misleading. "There's a little bit more freedom to put ads together that are misleading because people are not accountable," said Dr. Gruen. "In the case of an issue like 2C, there's no relationship that continues after the election is over. People tend to live at a lower standard when they don't have that level of accountability." On the website for the "YES on 2C" campaign, A City Worth Fighting For, there's a claim that if 2C fails, "Colorado Springs will see a significant decline in our quality of life." That's a statement of opinion, and tries to persuade you to vote for the ballot issue. The "No on 2C" campaign, Families Worth Fighting For, make two claims that could be seen as misleading. On the "Vote No on 2C sign" there's a claim "200% Property Tax Hike". On a recent mailer, there's a claim that 2C would triple your property tax. "We're seeing a lot of, certainly misleading things, things that I couldn't even understand as a PhD, to be true," said Dr. Gruen. As we explained in a previous NEWSCHANNEL 13 Truth Watch, 2C would more than double the amount of the city portion of your property tax by the year 2014. The city portion of your property tax makes up just 8% of your entire property tax bill. When put in context, a vote for 2C would be a 200% property tax hike, but only on that 8% portion of your property tax. The new claim of tripling your property tax refers to 2C increasing your city mill levy from five mills to 15 mills. The city portion of your property tax would triple in mill levy, more than double in cost, but again we're only dealing with 8% of your entire property tax bill. The sign and the mailer are based on facts, but are misleading without proper context. "You're going to be in business for a long time, I suspect, doing Truth Watches," said UCCS Political Science Professor Josh Dunn. "There's a grain of truth probably buried deep within the advertisement. They can always say that if we had inserted that word ‘city' taxes, then it is accurate." NEWSCHANNEL 13 also put a "No on 300" mailer to our Truth Watch. We told you the claim "since 1997 Doug Bruce cost the taxpayers over $1.8 million trying to destroy our City..." is misleading. The mailer shows five different elections in which Bruce had an initiative on the ballot. The $1.8 million represents the amount the city of Colorado Springs spent sending legal notices for those elections to voters. What's misleading is that even without a Bruce initiative on the ballot, those legal notices still would have been sent out because of other issues on the ballot. Legal notices are required by state law. To say Bruce is to blame for the city spending $1.8 million is misleading. However, because of his initiatives, the legal notices were probably longer, meaning more cost to print more pages. That's the cost of holding elections, though, not the fault of a person putting an initiative on the ballot. "Even if it turns out that it can't be directly traced to Doug Bruce, they (No on 300 campaign) can probably put together a plausible argument about how they thought that it could be traced to him," said Dunn. "If you don't have a reckless disregard for the truth, then you should be fine." "Who is responsible for the ad?" said Dr. Gruen. "In another week the election will be over. Who will know what damage has been done? Who could possibly sue somebody for a misleading ad? And how would anyone access damages." The Supreme Court has set a legal standard for fighting misleading political advertising. That standard you need to prove is "actual malice". "That doesn't mean malice as in you have anger towards someone, but rather that you have a reckless disregard for the truth," said Dunn. "And that's a very high hurdle for public figures to actually get over, if they want to win a libel or slander suit." Political advertising can get away with being misleading, whereas places you do business with cannot. "Businesses are subject to a higher level and a higher standard," said Dr. Gruen. "Any business that does interstate commerce is subject to governance by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and therefore they're subject to fines or being sued if they mislead consumers." Dr. Gruen gave NEWSCHANNEL 13 two examples of promises that businesses need to keep. "For example, Wal-Mart always advertises lowest pricing, and they've had to adjust their claims to make sure that they really do comply, that they really can keep what they promise," said Dr. Gruen. "Whether anybody can beat a Dealin' Doug deal or not, I don't know, but that's certainly not a misleading statement by any means." NEWSCHANNEL 13 asked Professor Dunn why we shouldn't come to expect political ads to be 100% truthful. "Because people want to win elections," said Dunn.