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Government Control of Political Ads Political ads these days are mostly negative ads trying to expose the weakness of there opponent. Negative ads bend the truth to make there opinion seem better than there adversary. The main goal of political ads should be to inform the country of there political view on the government issues. People in this country should educate themselves on the issues and the way each candidate stand on the issues besides political ads. In the other hand shouldn’t we hold the future leaders of this country to a higher standard than the common man?
The negative ads of this election are working on the same principle. This is what this candidate is going to do wrong so vote for me I’ll change the government. The negativity of the ad is a double edge sword sometimes the criticism can hurt your campaign. Is it really wrong for a candidate to go after his opponent about his opinion on an issue? Research shows negative ads are more likely to focus on issues, are more specific and contain many more facts than positive ads(Geer,Goldstein). The real issue is not negative ads but, the truth value of these political ads.
In this election there have been negative ads thrown back and forth doing this campaign year. Both party have been bending the truth by taking bits and pieces of facts to go there way. In one ad were Obama said that McCain plans to risk your Social Security in the stock market. In fact that the plan is that you can voluntary put one third of your social security into private accounts managed by the government(Fact Check). This is just one ad that deceives its audiences of the real truth of were a candidate stands.
So with the misleading these ads are doing to the country should the government step in control what is said in these ads? Well with the first amendment we have the freedom of speech but, these are people that are trying to lead this country. I would be nice to see the government monitor the truth value but, corruption could easily happen with them allowing the candidate they want to win to get away with twisting the truth. So we just have to educated ourselves outside the ads about each candidate and make the best choice for the country.
Government controlling political ads isn’t the way to go to manage this problem of negative ads. We can just trusted that first amendment that gives the candidates the right say whatever they want to gives the media to report on this ads to help the public better dissect these ads. The government has already got to much power in control our lives lets at least keep one of the principles our country was founded upon. I best way to fight this issue falls on each American to do there part in educating themselves and spreading the truth to there friends and neighbors about each candidate running for office.