Checkered Facts
The ad “McCain: Fact Check” uses a number of propaganda techniques in its brief 31 seconds:
- Imagery
- Positive / negative words
- Poisoning the well
- Misrepresentation
Imagery: The video paints the Obama camp as vicious predators via footage of a hungry pack of wolves (scavenging for dirt on Sarah Palin). Additionally, three photos of Obama (in black and white) convey anger and despair. In color photos (taken with the camera looking up at their faces), Palin and McCain smile and look determined.
Negative Words: “attacks”; “false”; “misleading”; “dig dirt”; “drops in the polls”; “try to destroy [Governor Palin]: [Obama's Politics of Hope are] “empty words.” Obama is referred to by his last name; Palin is called “Governor Palin.”
Poisoning the Well: The McCain ad uses this powerful logical fallacy not only to predict future bad actions by Obama but to associate such behavior with desperation: “As Obama drops in the polls, he’ll try to destroy her.”
Misrepresentation: The video associates the spoken statement “The attacks on Governor Palin have been called false … misleading” with an image (superimposed over the picture of a grimacing Obama) of the FactCheck.org logo and the phrase “completely false”…”misleading” 9/8/08.
McCain ad misrepresentation
But as FactCheck.org itself points out in its September 10 posting “McCain-Palin Distorts Our Finding,” FactCheck used the phrases “completely false” and “misleading” to refer to anonymous Internet postings, not to any statement by Obama: “We have no evidence that any of the claims we found to be false came from the Obama campaign.” FactCheck also notes that the McCain ad distorts its quote from The Wall Street Journal (the Journal did not use the phrase “dig dirt” to characterize the mission of a team of lawyers Obama allegedly sent to Alaska (a mission that Obama’s campaign say did not happen).