No Matter Who Won The Election The Media Lost
by Larry Turner

Thank goodness the Presidential Election is behind us, together with all the hoopla that accompanies events of that magnitude. All that’s left are a few blowhards pontificating about how their predictions regarding the outcome were accurate no matter who won.

One loss is very welcomed, that being an end to the continuous advertising on all forms of media touting one candidate or another and explaining in no detail why that candidate must be entitled to your vote. Some of these ads became comical because of how inaccurate they were and how incapable they were of influencing the most naïve of voters.

Although all that is behind us, we as Americans must still address how lies were able to be perpetrated without restraint in one of the most important elections in the history of our country. Why should candidates and the media be permitted to blatantly lie in their efforts to capture votes?

Many of the political ads were lame to say the least and downright false in many others. A few examples:

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There’s the Senate candidate’s ad picturing the opponent as a snake in the woods.
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There’s an ad with a doctor stating without equivocation that in Florida a woman cannot receive an abortion until she is on the brink of death, followed by an opposing ad by the State Board of Medicine admonishing that position as being totally false.
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Of course, there were the pro and con marijuana ads featuring policemen who are paid by the public to protect citizens and not to be featured in the media favoring a position the voters were about to cast their votes for or against.

My wife worked for a Miami TV station in her youth and vividly recalls the station rejecting ads that were fact-checked and found to be inaccurate or unduly and unnecessarily abrasive to an opponent or some segment of the state’s population. Apparently, the current owners of these communication vehicles don’t care to, or won’t pay the price to, verify the statements being publicized to their viewers. What has happened to our “protectors”?

My greatest peeve about the election coverage is with the various polls that seem to have intentionally misled the public about who was winning. Undertaking to do that is important because psychologists can point to the class of people who want to be able to brag that they voted for this or that winning candidate. Is that proper campaigning?

Americans need to be aware of these trends and take action to see that they are corrected, the sooner the better.