Media buzz aided anti-Kerry effort
Ad ran in few states, but story was nationwide
By Mark Jurkowitz, Globe Staff | August 21, 2004
As the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth previewed another ad to air next week, a survey released yesterday said their first controversial attack on John F. Kerry's war record reached more than half the nation with the help of a media buzz created by talk radio and cable news.
The first spot, which began airing Aug. 5 and ran only in West Virginia, Ohio, and Wisconsin, triggered a counterattack on several fronts this week. On Thursday, Kerry accused the veterans of doing President Bush's campaign's "dirty work." A front-page story in yesterday's New York Times raised questions about the credibility of Kerry's accusers. And yesterday, the Kerry campaign filed a complaint against Swift Boat Veterans for Truth with the Federal Election Commission, claiming the group is illegally coordinating inaccurate ads with the Bush campaign.
Despite the questions about the veterans group's motives and methods, a poll released yesterday by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey discovered a remarkable ripple effect for what survey director Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson characterized as "an ad that barely aired."
"In a lot of echo chambers, the echo is louder than the sound that made it in the first place," said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.
The poll of 2,209 respondents found that more than half of them had seen or heard about the ad that accused Kerry of lying about his Vietnam record. Thirty-three percent reported viewing the spot, and another 24 percent said they heard about it, a phenomenon attributed largely to its widespread play on the cable news channels and conservative-dominated talk radio. Heavy consumers of cable news, for example, were more than twice as likely to have seen the ad as people who did not watch. Frequent talk radio listeners were more likely to have heard about the spot than less regular listeners.
In a Globe interview, Jamieson said the media became preoccupied with the ad at a time "in which there isn't a lot of other political news. The competing stuff on cable is Laci Peterson and Michael Jackson, and the political people wanted something to talk about. . . . It had conflict, it had pictures, you've got drama."
Chuck Todd, editor in chief of The Hotline, an online compendium of political news, remarked on the staying power of the flap over Kerry's war record. "Every day we've published since August 4 we've had a story [titled] 'Vietnam,' " he said. "Yesterday was day 15."
Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, which tracks the talk radio industry, called the controversy over the ad and Kerry's war record "a major part of the election 2004 election story. You have a lot of conservative hosts on talk radio, many of them backing Bush claims . . . It blends into the discussion of the election. It's part of the number one topic."
The Annenberg survey found a partisan tilt to the public's response to the ad's portrayal of Kerry's Vietnam service. Although 70 percent of those with a favorable opinion of Bush found the ad very or somewhat believable, only 19 percent of those who think highly of Kerry thought it was credible. Independent voters were almost evenly split about whether they believed the allegations.
There is some evidence suggesting the ad has had an impact. A new CBS News poll found veterans' backing for Kerry had dropped noticeably and suggested that "recent attacks on his Vietnam service" may have been a key factor. While veterans were split evenly between Bush and Kerry in the aftermath of the Democratic convention, Bush had opened up an 18-point lead with that group in the new survey. Todd said he had seen a West Virginia poll indicating that more than 60 percent of the state's residents had seen or heard about the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth ad, and that 16 percent said it had given them a less favorable view of Kerry.
Yesterday, the veterans upped the ante by rolling out another ad as part of a $600,000 buy that will begin airing Tuesday in three states where "Kerry has touted his military service," according to the group's spokesman, Sean McCabe. The spot features several veterans harshly criticizing Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony about atrocities that occurred in Vietnam. A statement quotes Admiral Roy Hoffman, founder of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, saying, "What John Kerry did made Jane Fonda look like a Red Cross volunteer. It was terribly demoralizing."
The Kerry campaign responded with a statement condemning "another ad from a front group funded by Bush allies that is trying to smear John Kerry. The newest ad takes Kerry's testimony out of context, editing what he said to distort the facts." The campaign also released records that it says indicate that two of the principals in the ad "are Republican activists . . . It's no wonder the Bush campaign refuses to condemn this smear."
The Bush campaign countered yesterday by describing the Democrats' FEC complaint as "frivolous" and said "real coordination is what John Kerry's campaign has been engaged in with the Media Fund, America Coming Together, and MoveOn.Org." Those liberal-leaning groups, like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, are tax-exempt organizations that have been active players in the presidential campaign. |
