Op-Ed: Misleading political TV ads are filling up California’s ‘news deserts’
The political advertising industry and its supporters are so eager to claim victory after the close of the California primary runoff elections Tuesday that they’re resorting to tactics that even the most ardent campaign finance reformers have admitted don’t work.
In a desperate attempt to paint a rosy picture of Tuesday’s results, the industry and its donors have resorted to a new line of attack: they’re running false statements in media accounts that claim voters made a mistake and turned out to vote for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders.
In a coordinated campaign that is only the latest example of the industry’s increasingly desperate tactics, the industry and its supporters are now targeting the California primary by running more than 50 different false statements in media accounts that claim voters made a mistake and turned out to vote for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders.
The “misleading” ad buys, which are designed to mislead voters, have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from trade groups funded by corporations and wealthy individuals.
The “misleading” ad buys, which are designed to mislead voters, have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from trade groups funded by corporations and wealthy individuals.
This time around the industry is using a new tactic to accuse California Democrats of running a “Berniebusting” campaign, but this time, instead of running misleading statements, they’re running a series of outright lies.
“The truth is, this was simply a close election,” said California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton, who has spent months helping to craft strategies to win the primary while staying neutral. “It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have been in the race and it doesn’t mean we didn’t win a big plurality. But this is not the result we wanted. It’s not the result voters deserve. And to suggest otherwise is unfair and outrageous.”
“This is what people need to understand,” he added. “They don’t understand that California is a blue state that can either be a swing vote as we saw in Florida or it can be blue. And in California, it’s blue. We are blue.”
On social media, some of the ad buy’s proponents have gone to considerable lengths to defend their actions, claiming that they are only running misleading ads when the facts don’t fit