You don't need to be a detective to find the truth in political advertising.
Common sense, a little skepticism and some legwork will help separate fact from fiction in the expected onslaught of commercials for the 2008 elections.
In the six months leading up to the last presidential election, the candidates, national parties and a host of independent special interest groups paid for 501,259 TV spots across the country, according to studies by the University of Wisconsin.
Largely because Ohio again will be a political battleground, TV viewers should expect to see thousands of ads leading up to the March 4 primary election.
How do you find the truth?
"Clearly, you're not going to get the full story from the political candidate any more than you'd get the full story from just the prosecutor or just the defense attorney in a criminal trial," said Brooks Jackson, director of factcheck.org, which calls itself a nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer advocate for voters sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
"These guys are advocates. They are not trying to educate you. They are trying to persuade you."
A small measure of skepticism is always appropriate with political ads, experts say.
"If something really grabs you about what a candidate is saying, look into it some more," said Arthur J. Kover, an ad researcher at HCD Research, a New Jersey firm that gained notoriety for predicting the powerful impact of the "Swift boat" ads in 2004.
Kover, retired marketing department chair at Fordham University's Graduate School of Business and a management fellow at Yale, endorses a common-sense approach to dissecting political ads.
"If the commercial is negative - really outlandishly negative - question it," he said. "Nobody can be as bad as that.
"If there is negative advertising, why doesn't the candidate speak up more about what he or she offers?
"And, if a candidate makes anything sound really easy, question it."
TV viewers should remember that candidates seek to create name recognition, said Tom Sutton, a political science professor at Baldwin-Wallace College.
In the primary elections, ads talk to the most faithful party loyalists and often reflect the most extreme views of each wing of the political parties. Hot-button issues - like abortion, immigration, foreign trade, religion, gun control - will be featured.
In the general election, candidates' messages will bend back toward a centrist position to make them popular among the largest group of voters, including independents.
"If you really want to know the full story, you can't just consume the ads and then go vote," said Sutton.
"You need to do a little legwork yourself. Go to the Internet and do some research."
While factcheck.org and its seven-person staff usually generate about 20,000 visits each day, it got 300,000 visits daily in the final weeks of the 2004 campaign.
When an ad makes claims on a particular issue, enter that issue on your favorite Web search engine, said Sutton.
Postings identifying special interest groups will surface as will political endorsements from those groups. The information will be generally reliable, but will favor their point of view, he said.
Also, Sutton and others send TV viewers to the Internet to see how much money special-interest groups donate to candidates.
Kover, who spent 20 years as an ad man and another 20 as an academic, admits that he has deeply rooted personal views on TV ads.
"I'm really convinced that nobody really believes advertising any more," said Kover.
"I think it's a question of hope.
"People really don't believe any of these people or any of the ads much. But, how much hope does it raise that it might be true?"
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
dsartin@plaind.com, 216-999-4043