Wow! I've been absolutely thrilled by the overwhelming positive response to the Green Party’s attack on attack ads. Change the Channel on Attack Ads campaign went viral when it was launched on Monday. Over 36,000 views on YouTube at time of writing, and yesterday it was even listed under “Most Popular” on YouTube’s home page. In an online CBC poll, 88% of respondents said they dislike attack ads. A friend of mine said that it felt like a rare moment of victory in the “otherwise grim political mess” within which we are mired.
On Monday I promised a longer post on attack ads, and here it is. Consider this piece a response to the lame column penned by Jeffrey Simpson in today’s Globe, where he utterly misses the point. Although he acknowledges “the Greens are right in theory”, he takes the defeatist stance that attack ads are here to stay. Well, this is why should go.
The truth of the matter is that attack ads contribute nothing to the national political discourse. Neither do they play a meaningful role in election day deliberations, and voters most certainly do not need political attack ads to help them make sophisticated, informed decisions at the ballot box.
The effect of these ads is decidedly detrimental. There’s no question, of course, that attack ads work – otherwise, politicians wouldn’t bother with them. It’s how they work that is the problem. Political attack ads chip away at in the essential underpinnings of any functional democracy – citizen engagement and participation. They don’t simply provide voters with helpful information upon which they can assess their political options – attack ads encourage voters not to vote at all, and trivialize political discourse.
But how does driving down voter turn out help a political party? Look again to the last election – the nastiest ads were run by the Harper Conservatives. The function of these ads was not to encourage voters to support the party that ran them. Rather, the point was to discourage voters from casting a ballot in the first place. An Angus Reid poll found that Conservative “roll-the-dice ads” on then-Liberal leader Stéphane Dion and his green tax shift plan may have persuaded 11% of Canadians not to vote at all. Even though some of those who stayed home were Conservative voters, the ads still delivered electoral advantage to the Conservatives, because about half a million more Liberal voters than Conservative voters didn’t bother to vote.
US researchers have linked exposure to negative ads with lower turnout in both local and national elections. This trend has appeared in Canada, too. Attack ads first became prominent in Canada in the 1993 federal election, when voter turn out was 72%. Only 15 years later, we see that voter turn out has plummeted to a record (and disturbing) low a mere 58% of eligible voters bothered to exercise their democratic right to vote in the October 2008 federal election.
And recently, the use of poisonous attack ads has ceased to be confined to the writ period. The Harper Conservatives have perfected the art of going negative between elections. Without election-time spending caps in play, the sky is the limit. They have also pioneered the use of personal attack ads against their (mostly) Liberal opponents, as a pre-writ, offensive move – an attempt to shape public opinion not simply on issues, but on personalities. Whatever your political leanings, I hope we can agree that the Dion “Not A Leader” ads, and the Ignatieff “Just Visiting” television ads were slanted personal attacks that were at once an embarrassment and did nothing to inform voters about the actual issues. Presenting an idea for honest discussion has intrinsic value, but personal attacks merely attempt to divert attention away from real problems.
So how do political parties get away with it? You may be surprised to learn they are exempt from broadcast advertising standards. That’s right – Tim Horton’s couldn’t run attack ads against Starbucks the way Harper can against his opponents. Shouldn’t political parties be held to a higher standard than coffee vendors?
Higher standards might help, but there’s a better solution. We should follow the lead of other countries like the UK, South Africa, Belgium, Chile, Sweden, Ireland, and more, and disallow political parties from running TV ads in the first place. If we don’t do something about attack ads soon, it won’t be long before Canadian politics looks even more like the vitriolic brand of politics we see south of the border – an atmosphere we see fueled year-round by biased, misleading, and personal attack ads.
People around the world are taking to the streets to take back democracy. Yet in Canada, our own democracy is being manipulated by backroom political operatives and spin doctors who seek pure partisan advantage, rather than dialogue on real issues. Democracy cannot function without an engaged electorate capable of honest debate on topics of importance. Attack ads are antithetical to this goal, and it’s time to send them packing.
Camille Labchuk is the Ontario representative on the Green Party’s Federal Council.
http://www.camillelabchuk.ca/2011/03/09/the-truth-about-attack-ads-theyre-destroying-democracy/
