all I Know Is What I Read In The Papers - Will Rogers

"All I Know Is What I Read In The Papers" - Will Rogers

There have been many criteria over the past few centuries that measured one's political clout and influence: divine right, property, money, and acquaintances. In the twentieth century, particularly the past two decades, the political power to influence others resides in information: the more information you have and the more you know how to use it, the more potential influence you have. People rely on the media for their information, as it is the most easily accessible, efficient, and passive way of acquiring knowledge. Unfortunately, the media is not completely reliable as it can and has been manipulated by politicians, their parties, and their governments. This makes the media a powerful weapon as politicians use it to effect voters political choices through advertising, change popular opinion on issues of state, and debasing political campaigns through smear tactics.

"You can make a candidate someone they aren't. You can protect them from someone they are, or make them more of what they are".-Senator Norm

Atkins(1)

"An election is like a one day sale…the product (candidate) in a sale

(campaign) is only available a few hours on one day".(2)

The main goal one hopes to achieve by advertising something is to make it marketable so people will purchase it. Since what a politician hopes to ultimately do is persuade people to vote for, or buy, their political platform, they would be foolish to not take advantage of the captive and passive audience of the advertising mass media. Unfortunately politicians and their management take advantage of this medium to manipulate voters' choices. Two cases of advertising manipulation on voters was during the Canadian National Referendum of 1992 and the Quebec Referendum of 1995. During the National Referendum of

1992 over the Charlottetown Accord "three hours of free broadcast time was made available during prime time on every radio and television network that met the statutory criteria"(3) according to the Referendum Act. The act also states that "half (of the time) is allocated to the ‘Yes' and half to the ‘No' side"(4).

This allotment of advertising time did not take into account the print advertisement that was plastered al...

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... in that matter"(22). Truedeau floored Bouchard by saying that "the federalists would have done better in the recent Quebec referendum "(23) if the Yes side didn't

"make Quebeckers, especially former premier Rene"Levesque, look like victims"(24), Politics is a very dirty game, and if you don't develop a thick skin to deal with the rhetoric then you will not survive the smear campaigns.

"I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets"(25)

The mass media in all its manifestations has a mandate to be a forum for views both directly and indirectly through advertising and journalist reporting, This massive forum has been the place, for many years, that politicians have had their voice. Like many other institutions, the mass media has been utilized as a tool of the political world with which politicians, their parties, and their governments capture the fixated and passive audience, thus making the media a powerful device to affect voters political choices through advertising, change popular opinion on issues of state, and debasing political campaigns with smear tactics.