Students who attended yesterday’s convocation got a lesson in how to analyze deceptive advertising from a well-known political researcher.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, was the keynote speaker. She is the author or co-author of 11 books about the intersection of politics and media. Her latest, “UnSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation,” is intended to be a handbook for cutting through spin, she said.
“Spin is the sin of omission,” at least in its benign form, she said in an interview with the Emerald. “In its less benign form, spin is active deception.”
Jamieson asked the students attending convocation to think of a list of political issues about which they have a strong opinion. She told them to imagine that the person sitting next to them “disagrees 180 degrees.”
“When you graduate I know how to tell if you had a good university education,” she said.
The way to do that is to see if university graduates are willing to have meaningful dialogue and friendships with people they disagree with, she said.
She said many people don’t talk about disagreeable subjects simply because they don’t know how. If political talk shows provide the only example people know for having conversations, there’s good reason they wouldn’t want to engage each other, she said.
“They’re just plain rude. If you think that’s what political talk looks like, why would you want to do it?” she asked.
Jamieson said people seek out information that reinforces what they believe and reject facts they disagree with, while thinking that those with different opinions are extreme and “nutty.”
“Both sides of the political divide right now feel comfortable using language about each other that you wouldn’t use to describe the person sitting next to you,” she said.
After the 2004 election, Jamieson studied voter beliefs created by misleading or completely false political ads during the election cycle. The ads were determined to be misleading by the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org.
“We thought it was inaccurate to say that John Kerry as president would ban the Bible or that he had voted 350 times to raise taxes,” she said. Falsehoods about President Bush included that he would reinstate the draft and cut social security benefits to seniors already receiving checks.
“Where two sides disagreed, people stand behind their own side,” she said.
She showed videos of some campaign ads, including one from NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights advocacy group, that said Chief Justice John Roberts, who at the time had yet to be confirmed by the Senate, supported clinic bombers.
“Now conservatives, did you hear that attack on you?” she asked. “Your ideology excuses violence.”
She said supporters of abortion rights “stood up and said, ‘We don’t argue like that.’” Such a response is how all misleading ads should be treated, she said.
Jamieson mentioned a question from the Emerald earlier in the day about accusations that she listened to Rush Limbaugh. She said she listens to the conservative talk show host, as well as his counterparts on Air America. She said everyone should listen to both sides.
Student Eric Coffer agreed. He called himself an independent voter.
“I do listen to Rush Limbaugh on occasion and I agree you can’t judge people by what they listen to,” he said.
Michael Eyster, vice president of student affairs, estimated between 3,200 and 3,500 students attended convocation. Steven “Duff” Pace, a history teacher from Enterprise High School, was given the Oregon High School Social Studies Teacher of the Year award.
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