Brief 3 - Advertising Ethics

During presidential campaigns, television advertisements have been a mainstay of politics as long as television itself. Recently in the 2016 presidential race, both candidates ran ads attacking each other, or "Smear campaigns." Let's take a look at one.

What he believes | Hillary Clinton

This video plays the ethics component relatively safe. At the start, it's just quotes from Donald Trump, devoid of context. Then it gets into more vague attacks with the caption "And [Trump] did this:" before showing news footage of sexual assault charges brought against Trump.

Now was the Clinton campaign suggesting that Donald Trump was indeed guilty of the claims brought against him? They certainly seemed to be implying it by juxtaposing the words "did this" with footage of accusations that would later be proven false. But there is wiggle room here: it could be that what Trump "did" was provoke accusations against him. Maybe these accusations were provoked by something that Trump did, like running for president against a corrupt regime. Naturally this wiggle room is enough for plausible deniability on part of the video creators.

The most important part in clarifying ethics in this video is the caption "Approved by Hillary Clinton, paid for by 

Hillary for America," followed by the This idea of being transparent in political advertising is important.

Now let's look at a video that Trump ran.

Do you really need to ask?

This video shows Hillary Clinton asking a question out of context: "Why aren't I fifty points ahead?" The ad goes on to say that Director James Comey of the FBI said she lied about her emails. They then play a clip of Comey saying "There was classified material in the emails." In my opinion, this is a risky move by the video's creators. The exact quote of what Comey said was not that she lied, but that there was classified material in the emails that was on her unsecured server. The idea that she lied comes from context between what Comey said and what she said in her hearing, not directly from what Comey stated, as shown in the video itself.

The rest of the ad is implications of Hillary's foreign relations policies to allow ISIS to spread, along with a quote pointing out how she called roughly half of Trump's supporters "A basket of Deplorables." Not the most upstanding campaign, but not an ethical breach either. My favorite part is the snarky line at the end of the video: They show the clip where Clinton says "Why aren't I fifty points ahead you might ask." with the narrator chiming in: "Do you really need to ask?" This video also closes with a statement of transparency. A caption reads "Paid for by Trump for President INC, approved by Donald J. Trump" along with Trump saying "I'm Donald Trump and I approve this message."

When it comes to the third parties, they tend to not be as vicious in their personal attacks. Let's look at some ads from the alternative candidates from the race and see what they had to say.

Jill Stein - The Greater Good

Stein opens up with criticizing Trump and Hillary in vague, appropriate terms. But even though her campaign has less smear than the top two contenders, her claims get a bit shaky when it comes to ethics. She claims her new green program will "Create 20 million new jobs. halt climate change, and make wars for oil obsolete." Which is quite an impressive claim if it has any truth to it.

Sadly, most third party candidates have no chance of winning a presidential race. So the ad campaigns they run during the election are more designed to give themselves a career boost rather than be strictly competitive. So Stein can afford to pretend to take the high ground without dirtying herself in the political mudslinging. She can also afford to make dramatic claims that will never be tested. Maybe we really missed out on the 20 million new jobs and an end to all the wars in the middle-east, but I doubt it. As a final note, even though Jill Stein appears in her own video, explaining her message to the people, she still has a transparency disclaimer at the end of her video. After all, even if she said the words, it doesn't mean she approves of the context the video used them in. Trump's words were used in Hillary's ads, and Hillary's words were used in Trumps ads. So even though she is speaking directly into the camera, she still has the caption "Paid for by the Jill Stein for President Campaign" with the words "I'm Dr. Jill Stein and I approve this message."