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edward long

Association of Old Crows

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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.

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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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  • Abhishek Tongia

    • +1
    Nov 14 2012: Absolutely yes. Paid Political Advertising should not either be allowed or restricted to a limit. As we all know in this era, Marketing, Advertising works and moreover when Internet Advertising goes viral it works more than million fold. With this, if content being served is negative, then impacts the viewer and people who follow this particular viewer in drastic manner. If this viewer is persuasive in nature, then you can imagine how would he himself build a potential community who might believe in certain negative manner which that advertising wanted to for certain time.

    Laws should be made stricter by the authorities looking after institutions like media be it electronic, vocal or print.
    In India, paid political news are being served to the viewers with all the prejudices which newsmaker wanted to and then in the race of more viewers media people try and glorify that nonsensical issue and suddenly something negative gets burst out of it. People involved in Journalism need to work with a lot of maturity to ascertain that basic and primary definition of journalism doesn't get butchered. Thanks Edward for this topic
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      edward long 100+

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      Nov 14 2012: I included just electronic mass media because of the subtle but powerful effect it can have. I am pleased to see you mention journalists needing a cleansing from all their accumulated biases. Decades ago when I was in school the fudamental ethic of Journalism was Truth Without Bias. Today's journalists and their employers are unashamed to be labeled as Liberal, or Conservative, pro this and con that. I'm afraid the butchering you speak of is accomplished. Thank you for your perspective sir!

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