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Truth is a casualty in campaign ads
On the side
Camera never blinks: The Northeast Ohio Media Group has received attention for pulling its video of its editorial board interview with the gubernatorial candidates without explanation from its website, but keeping the audio online. Democrat Ed FitzGerald’s spokeswoman, Lauren Hitt, said the video went down when criticism was raised about Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, not answering why he put a gag order on rape crisis counselors and for refusing to look at his challenger.
At The Vindicator, we had video issues with the gubernatorial candidates. We interview candidates separately.
Kasich’s campaign refused to allow us to videotape his interview — the only time we’ve ever had that happen.
FitzGerald was videotaped, but Hitt objected when four clips went on Vindy.com a couple of days before the NOMG editorial meeting. In an email, she asked that we take them down as that gave Kasich “an unfair advantage,” and that “I was not aware it would be broadcast on the website.” However, FitzGerald and Hitt, who sat in on the interview to observe, were told as we started that it would be on our website; neither objected.
While there haven’t been a lot of them, until about two weeks ago, television commercials for those running in this election have been nasty. Even worse, many of them are inaccurate, deceptive, stretch the truth, and/or outright lie.
A federal judge struck down an Ohio law that made it illegal to lie, and apparently candidates on both sides of the aisle are fine with that.
We’ve had commercials with $7 cups of coffee, a candidate taking credit for Ohio’s economy using two reports that measure completely different things, candidates without delinquent taxes criticized for not paying their taxes, among other things.
In the past few days, two ads have stood out to me.
The first is from the campaign of Judge John P. O’Donnell, who is challenging Ohio Supreme Court Justice Judi French for the latter’s seat. Judge O’Donnell of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court is a Democrat and Justice French is a Republican though judicial candidates in Ohio don’t have party affiliations on general election ballots.
The Judge O’Donnell commercial says Justice French is “in the pocket of big utilities,” and repeatedly shows a cut-out of her head with three $20 bills behind her popping up out of suit jackets.
The issue is Justice French voting with the 5-2 majority in refusing to require American Electric Power to refund $368 million to its customers while receiving $6,325 in campaign donations from that company’s officials and employees around the same time as the decision.
Justice French said she wasn’t aware of the contributions until her opponent raised it, and that she had submitted her vote on the case before receiving the money as there’s a lag between the time a vote is cast and the court makes its decision public. It goes far beyond implying that the justice can be bought for $6,325.
When speaking Sept. 22 to The Vindicator’s editorial board, Judge O’Donnell raised the issue. “Although it wasn’t illegal or unethical to take that money, one wonders whether the better decision was to decline that contribution,” he said.
The judge added: “I’m not suggesting she decided the way she did because she got six grand.”
He waited to do far more than that in a TV commercial that started airing Wednesday.
Then there’s a commercial that ran several times earlier this week from the campaign of U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson, R-6th, that heavily infers that Jennifer Garrison, his Democratic opponent, is facing criticism now from the media for recent “false attack ads against” the incumbent.
The commercial uses a fake Akron Beacon Journal front page that states, “Garrison should be ashamed.” The newspaper wrote an editorial 10 years ago about Garrison that includes: “she and her pals should be ashamed” for attacking incumbent Nancy Hollister, a Republican, in a 2004 state representative race over Hollister’s vote against the Defense of Marriage Act.
Though there is an Oct. 11, 2004, date at the bottom of the ad at one point, the Johnson commercial is not clear on the time of the criticism and never mentions the reason. There are time constraints of a 30-second ad, but would a longer ad mention the context of the “ashamed” statement?
The newspaper demanded Johnson’s campaign remove its masthead from the commercial. Another quote on the fake front page also came from the paper.
The campaign complied Thursday even though Sarah Poulton, Johnson’s campaign manager, says, “The law and First Amendment permit the use of quotes from newspapers in political ads.”
Mark Riddle, Garrison’s campaign spokesman, said, “Johnson stooped so low lying” about Garrison and used a fake newspaper “attempting to sell it to the public as truth.”