Posted on 10/20/2004 6:06:30 AM PDT by the Wayne
John F. Kerry's strategists pride themselves on the sheer speed of their advertising effort as they churn out one response after another to President Bush's attack spots.
Now it turns out that some of the Kerry commercials are being written, edited, produced and put on satellites for the purpose of generating news articles. They have not actually aired on any network or local station -- except in reports about the Democrat's campaign.
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(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
To make this information hit home: Imagine the amount of precious time and effort Kerry would fritter away when under pressure in a National Security Event.
America haters united against the republic.
Since Sept. 1, the Kerry camp has released and publicized more than half a dozen commercials, on subjects ranging from taxes to health care to the war in Iraq, without buying time for them, either nationally or in battleground states. Others have run in only one or two markets after being unveiled with considerable fanfare. In effect, these have been video news releases purporting to be substantial paid advertising.
"We're certainly not trying to be disingenuous," Tad Devine, a senior Kerry adviser, said yesterday. "We've announced that we've created these and are prepared to use them at a time and place of our choosing." He said the Kerry team had to be able to show Bush's campaign "that the gun is loaded on this side, too."
Evan Tracey, an analyst at TNSMI/Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising, called the phantom ads -- which have routinely been covered by The Washington Post and other news organizations -- "political product placement. But they're getting away with it, because the press is playing them. When the press covers a new Bush ad, the story always adds 'and Kerry released an ad of his own.' He's getting into the news chatter."
Mark McKinnon, Bush's media adviser, said the president's campaign has never announced an ad that has not run.
While the Kerry campaign has spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising this fall, Devine described a two-step process that has not been publicly disclosed. First, an ad is made and announced, and then the campaign does research -- including focus groups, people-meter groups and overnight tracking polls -- to determine whether the Bush attacks are working and whether the campaign should spend money on the response spot.
"I'd consider it malpractice in political ad-making not to have the stuff ready and for us to be prepared to be engaged," Devine said. He acknowledged, however, that the ads are announced "to engage in the free media" -- meaning to garner publicity -- regardless of whether they wind up airing.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, said that Kerry aides "shouldn't imply they're going to air something if they're not." But she called the coverage "a failure of journalism to ask the question we ought to ask about every single ad: how much and where."
Two of the Kerry ads released last weekend -- one attacking the Bush administration's handling of flu vaccine, the other accusing the president of a plan to slash Social Security benefits -- have not aired.
Another ad that has not been broadcast responded to a Bush spot that showed Kerry windsurfing in opposite directions by describing American casualties and beheadings in Iraq and accusing the president of running "a juvenile and tasteless attack ad." Still another included footage of a Bush ad slamming Kerry's health care plan, citing media accounts that the Bush attack contained "outright fabrications."
The Kerry campaign has also made small ad buys to draw headlines. On Sept. 25, the Kerry camp released a commercial -- in response to an anti-Kerry ad on terrorism by the independent Progress for America -- that accused Bush of "despicable" and "un-American" politics. It aired only on a Washington cable station.
On Oct. 11, the campaign put out an ad that said: "After nearly four years under George Bush, the middle class is paying the bigger share of America's tax burden and the wealthiest are paying less." A Kerry spokesman said it began airing only yesterday, in Minnesota. An ad about Vice President Cheney and Halliburton has run only five times, in Oregon and Harrisburg, Pa.
Why pay to have the ads aired when the MSM will air them for you for free?
Even if a Kerry ad directed toward a journalist influences 100 regular people, their influence is still out numbered by the vast number of average Americans. Plus, that's running on the assumption that everyone is going to vote the way that Kerry and the "influenced journalist" tells them to.
"We're certainly not trying to be disingenuous," Tad Devine, a senior Kerry adviser, said yesterday. "We've announced that we've created these and are prepared to use them at a time and place of our choosing." He said the Kerry team had to be able to show Bush's campaign "that the gun is loaded on this side, too."
"TIME AND PLACE OF OUR CHOOSING"? Isn't that what President Bush said to OBL/Taliban after 911? Ted Devine is a nutter(rolling eyes)
While this demonstrates that the other side lies and cheats (we already knew that), it is bad news for us. It means they have a lot more money left for the last 10 days. It is consistent with past Kerry practice to unleash a torrent of ads at the end.
This is not about convincing reporters. It's about getting free air-time on the newscasts with ads that never or rarely run as paid ads.
This is a "back door" way of getting a lot of free advertising which the liberal media is more than willing to allow.
The idea is that the reporters will turn around and advertise them for free as a "news" story.
You are both correct. It's called being cheap.
Prairie
Well, it is kind of hard for us to complain about this, when the Swift Boat Veterns for Truth ads were played and discussed ten times more in the "free media" than they were actually shown in paid ads. Those ads changed the election. These silly little fake ads by Kerry are simply more evidence of their obsession with tactics while they are getting killed on substance.
It must be much cheaper to produce many advertisements for one or two airings each (free, compliments of the complicit media) than actually to pay for running a few advertisements many times each.
Maybe Bill Jones ought to try this tactic in CA, since I haven't seen or heard any ads from his campaign since the March Primary. Given that he's so far behind Boxer, maybe the local media can overlook his party affiliation.
So what? Does it really matter if there are only 1000 journalists out there?
If the MSM "journalist" in the national press corpse shows words, summaries, and attitudes and inflections (from a supposedly "unbiased" reliable source!) to twenty million people for free, then your "ad" has bought incredible leverage in the voting public that tries to be "well-informed"!
Oh how we are so NOT surprised. ping
It's out-and-out DNC/K-E Campaign coordination with the willing and complicit, CFR-abusing media! In the stretch, the pliant media are better and cheaper than any 527!
The Dims know how much inefficiency there is having multitudes of their sychophants converting faxed talking points into news items. Here, they cut to the quick, get rid of the middle-men, and save TV (and radio) broadcast outlets all that drudgery. Just like the typical ploys of the Left, they love to make people beholden to their freebies, giving recipients the opportunity to slack off and not break a sweat, which means generating "fair and balanced" news stories will inherently take more time, effort and money than simply airing the Kerry campaign spots.
It's abuse and corruption!
We'll definitely need overhaul in this area, come the next Congress!
HF
It's a strategy to allow the MSM to contribute to the Kerry campaign, via free media coverage/fawning, under the guise of "news".
That's exactly what they're trying to do.
They just want to convince everyone (including themselves) otherwise.
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