I received a piece of campaign literature today that looks like a newspaper. I’m annoyed. So this will be a combination Pitting, and request for how common this sort of thing is in local political campaigns.
Masthead is “Podunk County News”, Volume 1, Number 1, Free Edition.
Main headline is “We Need John Dipshit As District Attorney”. Then there is an “Editorial”, attributed to nobody, which purports to explain why “we” endorse Mr. Dipshit for DA.
Nowhere does it give attribution. On the back page there is an ad paid for by his election committee. Does that refer to the whole rag? Has anyone else seen similar materials elsehwere?
To sum up:
This is obviously supposed to fool people into thinking it’s a real newspaper of some sort. Is there anything illegal about that? Or does it just make the candidate not only a dipshit, but a sleazy dipshit?
How can I mess with them? There is a phone number urging readers to call for a free ride to the polls next week. When I called, an answering machine picked up and it appears to be the candidate’s home. Opportunity?
I don’t know, but a couple of years ago I was handed a “newspaper” at a movie theatre. It was a Gotham City newspaper. I asked the girls handing them out if it was an ad for a new Batman movie. They said it was. I asked who was going to play Batman, and they said they didn’t know. They said that the studio was keeping it a big secret. Looking on page 3 of the paper was a picture of Christian Bale. Um, yah think it might be Christian Bale? Because I’m thinking it might be Christian Bale.
What bothers me is there is precious little to clue in the unwary that this is not a real newspaper. The one line saying it’s an ad is in very small print at the bottom of the last page, and could be construed to apply only to that page.
I think we should all be more upset at this kind of campaign tactic. The more I look at this thing sitting on my desk, the more angry I’m getting.
Maybe they were told to say that, to make you read the fake paper.
But, those type of fake newspapers are kinda cool. As would be a paper copy of the Onion or something. But the kind the kind the OP is talking about: yeah, I hate them. It’s like those fake news programs that are just ads that appear on TV or radio. But, at least with them, you can easily recognize that they aren’t the normal people. With a newspaper, you might think it’s a new paper, or one you just hadn’t heard of.
If you do call them on it, they’ll likely say that nobody would be stupid enough to think it was real. But they wouldn’t be doing it at all if they really believed that.
I’ve never run across this particular bit of political dipshittery before.
I’d say that it’s dishonest and misleading but I’m starting to wonder if there’s any part of the political process for which those statements don’t ring true.
ETA: I almost forgot the second part of my intended post. I don’t think that there is anything out and out illegal about this. So long as it is labeled so as to indicate who paid for it (presumably John Dipshit’s campaign) I don’t think there would be any legal reason that they couldn’t do this.
Well, I’ve done this. Produced a tabloid newspaper-type lit piece, once with 180,000 copies printed & distributed, another time 160,000.
But this guy seems to have made some basic mistakes in it, really undercutting the effectiveness of the piece.
‘generic’ sort of name – no indication of who produced it. What’s the point of that? You want readers to understand who the piece is from, so they know who supports these candidates. Ours had names like Ward 12 Democrat or Minneapolis Democratic News. Real clear attribution.
single candidate focus. We always did these for the whole ticket city-wide, with lots of different candidates included. The point is to save money; high-volume printing of the piece, with the cost divided up among many candidates. Also, having lots of candidates included in a newspaper-type piece increases the likelihood that people will actually read it. Busy people often won’t read lots of individual political lit pieces, but are more likely to read one with candidates for all the offices in it. Plus with lots of candidates included, all the campaigns will distribute it, so you can get a copy delivered to every voters’ doorstep.
anonymous editorials. Who’s influenced by anonymous stuff? We always had such an editorial or endorsement, but it was authored by a well-known & liked political figure, someone who was NOT running for election that year. Like our Congressman or a Senator in the City election year. And it included a picture of them, and their signature in bold. You want their reputation with people to influence them to support the candidates they endorse.
But even the OPs’ badly-done piece is probably legal, as long as it has identification of who produced & paid for it. And provided that the ‘name’ isn’t confusingly similar to a real newspaper in the area (and even then, it would have to be that newspaper, not you, to claim damages from this).