Negative political attack ads spread misinformation

Posted Oct. 20, 2022

By Reed Mulkey

Opinions Editor

As voting comes closer to an end people are finalizing their voting choices. Oftentimes people vote strictly based on ads seen on TV. 

Negative political ads attacking the other opponent/opponents circulate everywhere spreading possibly incorrect information. On the other end, politicians make overly positive political ads about themselves that can also be misleading. 

This year people of Oregon will be voting for a new governor. Kate Brown can no longer run for governor this year so Oregon is going crazy over this change. Tina Kotek, Christine Drazan, and Betsy Johnson will be running for governor this year.

  Kotek served in the Oregon House of Representatives representing district 44 for 15 years. Darzan served in the Oregon House of Representatives for three years and Johnson served in the Oregon State senate for 14 years this is not the limit of any of their experience. 

Political ads from Kotek include her talking about how she is an advocate for food banks and for children, loves budgeting and policy, and that she is in the LGBTQ community. She talks about wanting to make a difference with investments in education and housing. She wants paid sick leave, expanded background checks for buying guns, raised minimum wage, 100% clean energy, and reproductive freedom but she never talks about how she plans on getting there. I'm sure that she talks about it in some kind of debate or speech but watching just her ad would not be enough to vote for her, this is one example of why political ads aren't a good source of research. 

Political ads from Johnson include how she wants to give all other time to improving Oregon, but it's very hard to find any political ads that talk about her beliefs and morals or what she wants to do to improve Oregon, simply going off of her ads would be nearly inhuman and in ways, a little light-headed. 

Political ads from Darzan talks about how she believes in family and community, how she doesn't want to put personal agendas over hard-working families, how tax is too high, she believes that Oregon streets are messy after the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, she says that more than a thousand criminals have been released into our neighborhoods and that we need to fix the homeless crisis. She said that both Kotek and Johnson would be the third term of Brown and she is the new direction. She talks about the homeless crisis but doesn't say anything about whether she is going to kick them off the street, make more jobs accessible, or build more homeless shelters. Once again political ads just simply don't have enough information to vote for someone. 

These ads are not a good representation of the person unless you watch the negative and positive ads from every campaign and do your research. A political candidate can say whatever they want true or not in their ads. Someone might say that one of their opponents believes in a certain thing or make them look bad when said person doesn't believe in that thing at all. 

Looking at the positive ads is not great either. These ads show only the good sides of a person, the stuff you want to see. If someone says they want to end the homeless crisis make sure they say how before believing them because their process might be terrible. Most of all make sure you know what you want our state to look like before voting or looking at political ads just so that you know where to even start.