Untruth in Advertising.

• Author: ISENSTEIN, HOWARD
• Position: Misrepresentation in ads that cover political issues and topics

Why the press needs to take on Harry and Louise

POSITIONED NEXT TO A PHOTOGRAPH of a smiling elderly couple named Ann & Fred of Nokesville, Va., a senior named Flo explained her message in a full-paged ad in The Washington Post this January:

"Hi I'm Flo! I want to thank the thousands of seniors who have written urging Congress to help seniors in need get Rx drug coverage. Please keep urging your Member of Congress to join hands with Citizens for Better Medicare to support bipartisan plans for Rx coverage. It's the best way to ensure seniors get the medicine they need and still keep Medicare financially sound."

But Flo didn't pay for that ad, and neither did Ann and Fred. Citizens for Better Medicare, an organization funded almost entirely by drug companies deathly afraid of government controls, did. Yet you wouldn't know that from the ad or even the organization's Website. In fact, ads like this are beginning to reappear--just in time to misrepresent issues during the election cycle--and if the media does as bad a job deconstructing them as they did during the health-care debate of 1994, we won't be able to sort through their distortions, or even know who paid for them.

Interest groups have been running issue ads for years. When U.S. steelmakers found themselves under pressure from imports they ran ads claiming that foreign makers were unfairly dumping their products. When Congress took up the North American Free Trade Act, labor, business, and other interests tried to influence the debate through ads. But issue ads really came of age in 1994 when those who supported and opposed President Bill Clinton's health-care initiative spent over $100 million dollars, more than what Clinton and former President Bush spent combined in the 1992 election, says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

The most prominent ads, featuring the famous "Harry and Louise"--sponsored by the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA), a vehement opponent of Clinton's plan--consciously sought to disguise their big business backing by featuring actors posing as a middle-class couple in their home. In a series of print and TV ads, Harry and Louise voiced vague but powerful fears about the plan that ended up having an important influence on its eventual scuttling. With opponents of the plan outspending proponents by two to one, a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, independent...