Pros and Corns in Political Campaign - Term Paper Example

 «Pros and Corns in Political Campaign» The past few decades have witnessed a rampant growth in political advertising more than ever before. Unlike the other democratic countries, the United States’ election campaign has drawn the attention of the entire globe. All esteemed dailies, magazines and other electronic media like internet and television have dedicated their lion’s part for political advertising. The issue whether political advertising needs to be regulated or not has aroused enormous controversy. The strong influence of both print and electronic media has its own pros and corns in political campaign. It is true that today politicians can hardly hush up their gluttony and malfeasance from the savvy media persons. Yet their hegemony might be misused by the same political parties. The latter possibility shows the need of certain swift and sure regulations. The US has its own rules and regulations for the same. There is no doubt that negative campaign ads would supply wrong impressions regarding candidates and those advertisements are usually “funded by special-interest groups, prey on fear and use innuendos and half-truths to promote their candidate.” (Editorial: More Regulation of Campaign as Needed. 2008). Political advertising is recommended to be regulated for its dangerous possibilities of conveying false information. Since the politicians are often blamed for their pseudo sincerity the public might feel a paucity of right information from the advertisement. In the meanwhile a candidate with highly admirable qualities can be little noticed due to the inadequate amount of marketing. In such a cut throat competition even his noble ideas could be washed away. If the advertisements are regulated, people can easily pay heed to the ideas of all candidates. Misinterpretation in advertisements raises questions of trust, ethics and accuracy. (Schmieg 2008). A political case study of advertisements shows that people easily succumb to the “agendas of corporations masking as amateur users”; the famous “Harry and Louise” advertisement, sponsored HIAA was a clear propaganda against Bill Clinton’s policies on health care and political observers hold that the ad had a very negative impact on his political campaigns. (Schmieg 2008). The common man never understands the vested corporate interest behind advertisements of this sort and sop it is necessary that some sort of controlling or monitoring of ads having political motifs is necessary. The role of media in Political advertisement is more prevalent today. The public usually approach media for all kind of information regarding the elections. The mobilizing ability of media is undeniable. From past to present media has been the main means of advertisement .After the introduction of electronic media such as Radio, TV and internet the advertisement doubled ten times than that of the previous decades. Media offer great opportunities even to the candidates who have a little chance to win. And the media make an artificial spirit of competition among the people and candidates. On the whole, election provides them a big deal. Today media is in the cat’s paw of political parties. They try their level best to avoid any kind of conflict with media. News editors are often influenced by various factors .Moreover political parties have their own media lineages for political advertising. The advancement of electronic media has immensely increased the political interest of people in the United States. It gave chance to the public to have a live experience of current political events and campaigns. Media especially TV has provided them opportunity to interact with the various election candidates. Other than the mere election campaign, media has become the best tool of governments in its executive functions. It was the beginning of a new trend of media conference. In contrast, the over reliance on media has its own negative impacts. In a sense world is in the strangle hold of media. They can easily mobilize the people according to their secret agenda. Today the major portion of its time and effort is allotted for political as well as commercial advertisement. The absence of strict regulations on this regard adversely affects the community as a whole. . The fast growing information technology has made the concept of global village true. A short span of time is enough to spread news of international and national importance. Likewise, in future political advertisement also will have far reaching consequences. For example the last election in the US, had taken the keen interest of people all over the world. In 2008 election campaign Obama and McCain utilized the media at its maximum level. Obama in his radio address put forward wonderful plans ranging from the expansion of roads and bridges to his policies on information technology. The voice of the US candidates reached every nook and corner of the world. The current technologies were highly used by them. The future can expect more sophisticated strategies used for political advertising. Political parties may use their own satellites and TV channels. Candidates may give advertisement on internet and may plead vote to each every voter via email. The above mentioned future possibilities would breed certain negative effects. Expenses on advertisements will go higher and as a result the economic balance would be questioned. However, using internet for advertisement will help the political parties to reduce their expenses and political advertisements through websites and e-mails are proved to be a highly effective political campaign strategy. Ben Charny points out that even though the Federal Election Commission has put some regulations on advertisements published on websites, many of the internet publishers are unaffected by such regulations. Studies have also proved that the number of Americans using the internet for political information has almost doubled between 2000 and 2004 to 62 million; almost 18% of the Americans gathered information on the 2004 presidential election through the internet. (2006). To what extent political advertising can be used as a means for the effective administrative functions of government is debatable. Through advertising, government can ease its administration tension and simultaneously public opinion on certain policies can be easily collected. It can communicate all information at a high speed to the public. This kind of advertising invites open criticism on particular issues and policies which might be helpful for a creative government to reconsider its functions. In the same way it helps the public to be more reactive and respond to political issues at the right time. Though advertising would create misunderstanding and confusion among the people, after all, since it makes some healthy criticism and discussions, to a great extent, it helps the government in effective administration The conventional method of political marketing has been replaced by the most modern communicative alternatives. For instance the recent past presidential election of the US released gruelling debates among the public. The strategies followed by both candidates Obama and McCain included highly modern marketing techniques. Their election campaign not merely covered internal affairs. Moreover they had to discuss almost all sorts of global issues like nuclear weapons, Iraq, new foreign policies etc. The fund raised for the 2008 political advertising by both the candidates had its own significance for its notable increase from that of the previous election. The costs have more than doubled in only eight years ($448.9 million in 1996, $649.5 million in 2000, and $1.01 billion in 2004). The great US election also witnessed wide use of internet for the campaign. Studies show that it was much for mobilizing people and raising fund in a short span of time. Obama set a record by raising huge amount from small donors this way. (United States Presidential Election 2008). Obama spent big amount of money on TV and radio advertising as well. He dared the same even in Indiana, Nevada, North California and Virginia the states that have not chosen a democrat for president for a long time whereas his opponent senator McCain was forced to limit the spending to eighty four million dollars in public money for his final two months. Regarding the fund- raising of Obama, McCain complained that he was not worried about his election but about the situation if candidates do not depend on public financing in the future. (After Record Month, Obama Fund Raising Slowed in Early October). During the 2008 elections both candidates Obama and McCain spent crores of million dollars. Some part of this extravagance would be fair enough to construct a new city or sufficient to eradicate the poverty of an African country. The excessive amount of advertisement cannot change the mind of an average citizen. The change of mind depends upon the change of policy and current events. Every 4 years, American people burn crores of Dollars without any productive purpose. The expense of elections all over the world has amazingly increased. The candidates collect all the money from the pocket of public. It would also cause financial crisis. There are rather strict rules and regulations for the commercial companies to abide with regarding its quality claims and they risk it till the periphery of its possibilities whereas in the case of political advertising such a quality control is often deliberately forgotten. Recently several proposals have been made to regulate political advertising. Some of them suggested that the ad should show only the speaker addressing the camera and must avoid getting the assistance of actors and other out sources. Only the exaggerated issues and indistinct objectives are debated repeatedly. 2008 election also was not different from this. Though did not succeed in its objective Washington State passed a law in 1984 according to which it was illegal to sponsor a campaign that obviously makes a false statement. According to Brooks Jackson the truth in advertising inculcate a false sense of security in people. (Sullivan 2008). Christain Schafferer in his study ‘The globalization of political marketing; An introduction” states that a new industry has been emerging over the past three decades which he names political marketing. He predicts that this new emerging industry would employ 7000 people at the end of 1990s who worked for living on campaigns. (Schafferer). Sara Ewing believes that political advertising should be held to higher standards and according to her every consumer has the right to receive the right information and she postulates that the inaccurate nature of political ads lead many consumers to mistrust even the best sort of consumer advertising. Thus, she argues that political advertising should gain more of customer confidence and for this these ads should be regulated substantially. (Ewing 2008). Similarly, Sarah O'Leary also fells that there needs to be regulations on political ads as many political ads because of its ‘proven falsity’ and immense wastage of capital. (O’Leary 2008). Swanson and Mancici (1996) make an elaborate study of the inter relation between politics and Media in modern democracies including the United States. The authors rightly identify that there is a shift of focus away from the voters to the election process with the immense spread of the role of mass media in elections (Swanson & Mancici, p. 1). According to them, the electoral politics in the United States is affected by structural factors such as the scope of the election, type of participants, stages of the electoral cycle, and factionalism. The basic goal of political advertising is to increase the number of participants in the election procedures as every increase or reduction in the number of participants is most likely to affect the results of elections. Proliferation through network television news, newspapers and radio characterized the political campaigning of the United States in its early election history; however, with the immense developments made in the field of science and technology have given rise to new ways of political advertising and the book shows how this changed technological scenario has resulted in the emergence of campaign specialists known as the campaign consultants. Political advertising is at its peak during election propaganda, and the duties of these campaign consultants during elections vary from candidate recruitment, campaign management, all phases of campaign media, fundraising, budgeting, scheduling, conforming to campaign laws, personnel recruitment and training, issue research on various policies, policy positioning, direct mail, computer networking, voter research that includes polling, focus groups, and in-depth analysis of the impacts of various policies, voter segmentation, target marketing, formation of various campaign strategies, speech writing, to even hair styling of the candidates (Swanson & Mancici, p. 34). As electoral structures became more industrialized, specialized, and professionalized through proliferation, the cost of political advertising and election campaign has also increased considerably and this has led to regulations of political advertising at the national level under the monitoring of the Federal Election Commission (Swanson & Mancici, p. 35). However, the funds spent on political advertising are at an increasing rate in United Sates with each election, which is elaborately dealt with elsewhere in this paper. (Swanson and Paolo Mancini (ed.) 1996). In their article entitled Reassessing the State of Political Communication in the United States, the authors point out four distinctive characteristics of the political discourse in the United States. According to the authors the political discourse in the nation focuses on detailed and specific policies; it produces high quality leaders and leaderships; it has become thoroughly democratized through technology and media and that the rhetorical politics of the nation has benefited the American community (Parry-Giles & Parry-Giles, 2001). The authors repudiate the argument that political communication in America is baseless as it undermines the major policy concerns and purport that “72% of the speeches, 84% of the commercials, and 93% of book chapters presented by the presidential candidates in 1992 focused on substantive issues and concerns” (Parry-Giles & Parry-Giles, 2001). The authors cite a number of examples from the presidential election campaigns of 2000 and show that candidates such as Steve Forbes, Gary Bauer, John Mc Cain, and Al Gore all had specific policy outlines on variety of major issues that worried the nation. The authors are also of the opinion that even negative advertisements are incapable of misleading the voters as they are best guarded against them and argue that in spite of the enormous level of political advertising in then nation, the elections have been successful in producing effective leaders who are able to meet the nation’s challenges. Thus, the arguments of the authors do not suggest the need for a regulation of the political advertising in the nation as they believe that political advertisements have in a way enhanced the prospect of choosing the right candidates. (Giles and Giles, Shawn 2001). There have been many studies on the social responsibility of journalists and the media personnel in offering unbiased messages to the citizenry regarding candidates and their policies as part of political advertising. Televised political advertising is the strongest weapon used by political parties and candidates to highlight their strengths and the journalists do have a social responsibility to remain unbiased. Lynda Lee Kaid, Mitchell S. Mckinney, John C. Tedesco and Kim Gaddie (1999) believe that the core of democracy is the inter relation of government, the media, and the citizenry; for them, the media has got a pivotal role in maintaining a meaningful relationship among the three by offering information that would assist citizens to come to ‘informed and rational decisions’. For them, the journalists need to understand how television advertising influence the decision making process of the voters and need to provide an objective interpretative mode of information that is not influenced by hidden political agenda or policies. People are more easily attracted by televised mode of political advertising and therefore it is highly challenging for the journalists to display social responsibility by unveiling the falsity and ulterior motives of such negative and deceptive advertisements. A study conducted on the ad watches in the newspapers and Local TV channels by the authors proved that out of the 143 newspaper adwatches, 80% of the candidates covered in the ads were presidential candidates in the newspaper samples collected whereas it was 36% for the local television stations. It was also identified by the researchers that both television and newspapers provided three times advertising coverage to the Republicans as compared to the Democrats. (Kaid et al 1999). It is thus evident that there is absolute disparity in the amount of political advertisements through media and this prompts one to think of regulation of political advertising to make the election results less affected by the falsity of political advertising. David G. Tuerck’s book The Political Economy of Advertising (1978) is a seminal work tries to establish a distinction between commercial advertisements and political advertisements. For him, the Federal government has become the major advertiser as well as the regulator in the State. He finds that there is a double standard in the Federal Governments regulation of advertisements as “the market for ideas is constitutionally protected, while the market for goods is not” (p. 62). He is of the opinion that an in-depth study of the political economy is necessary to determine which of the advertisements are thoroughly political in nature so that they can be removed from “the whole system of exchange relationships” (p. 63). For him, the purpose of commercial, institutional, and classified advertisements are to facilitate voluntary exchange between the advertiser and the consumer whereas the basic motif of economic advertisement is to gain power. (Tuerck (ed.) 1978). To conclude, it is mandatory that is better clarity and distinction between commercial and political advertisements and due importance is to be given for the regulation of negative advertisements in both the cases. New Perspectives on Political Advertising (1986) by Lynda Lee Kaid, Dan Nimmo and Keith R. Sanders provides a detailed analysis of the various types of advertisements employed by political parties. The authors point out that Ronald Reagan spent 60% ($18 million of $30 million) of the federal fund that he received on advertising of which 70% was spent for television advertising alone in 1980; similarly, Jimmy Carter spent 74% his advertising money on television. The book also focus on some sorts of advertising formats used between 1952and 1984 and are still prominent. They are primitive ads, negative ads, visual ads, cinema verite ads and documentary ads. Among the primitive ads Eisen Hower and stevenads were more notable. Yet both are not in practice in today’s campaigns. Though there were certain advancements in this method until 1984 it was widely used. The year 1964 witnessed the commencement of negative ads. This method is termed so because it emphasized more on tearing up the image of the opponent other than expressing the qualities of the speaker. The visual nature of the ads became more colourful by the year 1968 and it is estimated that 80-85% of the T.V ads are visual. Cinema verite ads were introduced by Charles Huggenhimin1972. It was a technique in which the candidate himself appeared in a real life setting interacting with people. Ronald Reagan’s campaign of 1980 started a new era of documentary ads. In that adds Reagan’s accomplishments as an effective governor were shown. (Kaid, Nimmo and Sanders (eds.) 1986). Along with the advancement of technology the strategies of political advertising has been changing throughout the era. The only thing that continues without any change is the rampant increase in the extravagance for the election campaign. Political advertising has become mere pomp and show today which adversely affects our nation. To conclude, political parties should change their focus towards the issue according to its priority. Time is up for the political leaders to reconsider their concepts especially for a nation like the United States which is putting its efforts to balance its volatile market and economy steady. The above mentioned facts and studies show the inevitability of adequate regulations in political advertising and campaign. Bibliography After Record Month, Obama Fund Raising Slowed in Early October. [online]. News Voa.com. 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