Word: truth
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...This may surprise those who were under the impression that the "truth in advertising" standard applied to all advertising. Commercial companies are bound by restrictions that prevent them from making false claims about their products or those of their competitors. Certainly, corporations test those laws all the time, but they do so at a significant risk. When Kentucky Fried Chicken tried to claim that fried chicken could be part of an effective diet program in 2004, the Federal Trade Commission penalized the company, requiring it to pull the commercials and submit all advertising for FTC review for the next five...
...Some states have tried to establish their own standards for truth in political advertising, but with little success. Washington State passed a law in 1984 that made it illegal to sponsor campaign commercials that knowingly "make a false statement of material fact." Violations could incur fines of up to $10,000 for each instance, and could also result in election outcomes being voided. After 14 years, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional, prompting one of the dissenting justices to complain that it was "the first court in the history of the Republic to declare First Amendment protection...
...that may not alter their perceptions created by the original ad. It may well be that the standards for commercial advertising have worked too well, instilling in many viewers the belief that what they hear on television is mostly true. "You hear people say, 'The ads must have some truth to them, or they wouldn't let them on television,' " says Brooks Jackson of Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "Truth in advertising lulls us into a false sense of security...
...example is an exception, though, in a political environment that provides few incentives for scrupulous truth-telling. Candidates simply don't suffer for making false claims, unless those claims become part of a narrative that casts them as untrustworthy. Even then, they often choose to keep running the offending ads, knowing full well that the power of a 30-sec. spot will always outweigh media oversight. And the potential upside of making false claims about an opponent can be great, especially for a candidate who finds himself behind...
...feel-good ads that promote each candidate's virtues while saying nary a false word about the other. As long as candidates can get away with testing the limits of voters' gullibility and tolerance, they will. If the last few decades have taught candidates anything, it's that truth in political advertising is for losers...