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Do not allow paid political advertising on radio, tv, and internet.
Mass media is arguably the primary influence on the average person's decision-making. It was for this reason that tobacco product advertising was stopped. Political ads have become not much more than attempts to persuade voters to vote NO for something or someone. Most of the content is negative and derogatory, if not outright false. Useful, truthful information is getting more scarce with each election. More muck gets raked every time the campaign season rolls around. Better we should exercise personal initiative to inform ourselves about candidates and issues. Billions of advertising dollars are at stake so the mass media will probably flaunt their powers of influence to stop any such effort, I know the tobacco lobby sure did.
Closing Statement from edward long
123 comments by 23 participants covered the spectrum from status quo to take the vote away from women!
8 people agree with the idea of stopping paid political ads on electronic mass media. 15 people have other ideas. Most believe there is a problem with campaign ethics. Some of the suggestions are: free air time for candidates with fact checking; third party ads ok but not endorsed by candidates; do what other countries do; repeal sufferage; people need information made available to them because they will not get it themselves; a 9-step program was itemized in detail; purge voter ignorance by force-feeding education; all advertising is propaganda; people have already made up their minds so ads don't have much influence; 2 people like the idea but feel it is too difficult to execute (the tobacco ad prohibition carried little weight); one person prefers the status quo; one thinks negative ads are helpful. Thanks to all who shared their wisdom and energy. I will see if TED will allow a debate on this.
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Meethun Panda
If i analyse,there are 3 categories of people inclined to politics.
1. Likely Voters
2. Undecided Voters
3. Nothing to do with ..
The major concern lies to undecided voters,because they do not know whom to support. And here Politicians or political parties make the wrong use of media by provoking such that they will deal with their vote banking efficiently. Now we have reached to a point where it requires an utmost importance to challenge this situation.
- A stricter rule has to be governed for media, if it is proved that the particular media is driven by political funds.
- The editors have to take responsibility to check the credibility of their team and the unbias of any political parties.
Freedom of speech does not mean that people or mass media interprets something that favors to a particular group.The mass media should examine the facts, not claims.
There are few countries such as India, where most of the funds to media come from donation of political parties. Even if it is not election time, the way they publish their everyday contents, is bias or favourable to a political group. It is very easy to pursuade the uneducated people or in developed world, undecided voters.
And everyone knows the consequence of selecting wrong people in relevant places. It certainly becomes disaster. Hence, i say a stricter reform or rule should be implemented to restrict paid political advertising that promotes negative and derogatory content.
edward long 100+
Ezra Scarlet