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AJC Analysis of Ad #1: "The Beast Has To Be Fed"

 
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ccr
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Joined: 10 Aug 2004
Posts: 325

PostPosted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 1:35 pm    Post subject: AJC Analysis of Ad #1: "The Beast Has To Be Fed" Reply with quote

Very interesting article.

The article compares the first ad to the infamous LBJ "Daisy" ad run against Goldwater. IMHO, the second ad is more powerful than "Daisy"...

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0804/26adsimpact.html

Quote:
ELECTION 2004

Few saw attack ad before controversy

By JULIA MALONE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/25/04


WASHINGTON — The television ad that ignited a furious debate over Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's Vietnam war record was sponsored by an obscure veterans group and ran in just three states in early August.

But in the age of 24-hour cable news, radio talk shows and the Internet, that was more than enough. The ad was replayed, dissected and discussed until most of the country saw it, or at least knew about it. And the ad's sponsors, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, became a household name.

This is hardly the first time a modest ad buy has rocked a presidential campaign. Forty years ago, the Democrats ran the famous "daisy" ad, which featured a little girl counting flower petals before cutting to a launch countdown and a mushroom cloud from an atomic explosion. The chilling implication was that Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, who was challenging President Lyndon Johnson, would be liable to push the nuclear button.

The daisy ad aired only once as a paid TV spot, but the message was so raw and controversial that television networks ran it many more times as part of news segments.

The potential for such a magnifying effect has grown far greater in today's all-news-all-the-time world.

One week after the first broadcast of the ad charging that Kerry didn't deserve all of his war medals, the swift boat group was mentioned 257 times in newspapers and on television, according to research by the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs.

"It's unprecedented" for a regional ad run, costing no more than $500,000, said the monitoring group's spokesman, Matthew Felling.

A survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found that 57 percent of the public has either seen or heard about the ad. Moreover, the poll found that 31 percent of those who had viewed the ad doubted that Kerry had earned all his medals, compared with only 12 percent of those who had not seen the ad.

Those results are in keeping with experiments that show attack ads have an impact, said the Annenberg Center's director, Kathleen Hall Jamieson. "People pick up negative information faster than positive," she said.

Even so, a network of independent Democratic-leaning groups have aired more than $60 million in ads attacking President Bush, and none has sparked the publicity of the swift boat spot.

Michael Cornfield, a political scientist and chief researcher for the Pew Internet and American Life Project, said he is perplexed over the swift boat ad impact, when it has long been known that some Vietnam veterans were bitter about Kerry's anti-war activism.

Possible explanations are that Kerry, by making his war record so prominent in his campaign, "laid himself open" to the attack or that a network of conservatives had been lying in wait to ambush him on the issue, Cornfield said.

Another possibility he suggested was that a slow news month just as Kerry reduced his ad buys to conserve money for next fall combined to magnify the story.

"The beast has to be fed," he said.

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Dimsdale
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 527
Location: Massachusetts: the belly of the beast

PostPosted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 2:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
One week after the first broadcast of the ad charging that Kerry didn't deserve all of his war medals, the swift boat group was mentioned 257 times in newspapers and on television, according to research by the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs.


She doesn't mention the virtual media blackout on the SBVT since their inaugural press conference on May! The "mention count" would be nearly zero between May and the beginning of August!!

You might also be interested in "John Kerry's soldier-smearing" by Brent Bozell
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/bb20040825.shtml
He talks about how the press has suppressed Kerry's 1971 testimony.

Also, "Put up or shut up, Sen. Kerry" by Ben Shapiro (who, by the way, is still in college!) http://www.townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/bs20040825.shtml

Both very good reads on the SBVT issue.
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