Narrator: In Baltimore 's criminal justice system, there is talk and there are facts.

Martin O'Malley promised he'd reduce murders to under 175 a year, he didn't. Last year, Baltimore had 269 - more deadly than New York or Washington, DC.

O'Malley was caught manipulating crime statistics to make the City look safer and he's gone through 7 police commissioners.

While cities like New York have been able to get violent crime under control, O'Malley promised and failed.

How can we trust him now?

AD CONTEXT

While education has proven to be one of the major areas of contention in this year's gubernatorial race, toward the end of September, the Ehrlich campaign decided to switch the issue of focus from public schools to crime rates. On September 27, 2006, Governor Ehrlich's campaign released a sixty second radio ad airing in Baltimore and Washington markets employing Baltimore attorney William H. Murphy, Jr. to raise speculation about illegitimately arresting or detaining black residents (Donovan, Ehrlich ad slams arrests, 2006). The ad alleges that Mayor O'Malley “sanctions and directs the arrests of thousands of Baltimore city people – predominantly black – without ever charging them with a crime.”

This radio ad provoked the ire of the O'Malley campaign who responded the day of the radio spot's debut with a press release issued from their Web site. In that release, the O'Malley campaign charges Governor Ehrlich with “lying because he is losing.” The O'Malley campaign asserts: “[h]is false attacks on Baltimore 's schools failed – the race didn't move. Now, he's trying to mislead voters about Baltimore 's progress in reducing crime – which will fail, because people have heard it all before” (Bob Ehrlich: Lying because he is losing, 2006).

Less than three days after this heated exchange across radio and over the Internet, “Crime” debuted on television.

AD ASSUMPTIONS

It is not new nor novel to run campaign ads spotlighting a candidate's record on crime. Perhaps the infamous one is the “Revolving Door” ad from George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign against Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis. With solely black and white images of fences, bars, and guard towers, the “Revolving Door” ad employs ominous music and horrific sound effects to induce a sense of fear and terror in its viewers, relying heavily on the horror genre.

Ehrlich's “Crime” ad operates quite differently than “Revolving Door.” While still recognizable as a part of a subgenre that concerns itself with crime, safety and security, “Crime” is less informed by the conventions of horror (note immediately the ad's employment of color in contrast with Bush's reliance on black and white). The ad functions less to terrify viewers away from candidate O'Malley and more to ridicule and diminish Mayor O'Malley for his failed promises to reduce the homicide rate. It achieves such ends by intertextually linking this ad to the other recognizable means of depicting crime on television. In many ways, "Crime" imitates a criminal drama. When crime is the subject of television outside of the evening news, it is typically captured in entertainment shows like Cops, CSI, or Law and Order. “Crime” invokes the conventions of these shows (most specifically Law and Order) to situate the audience as smug, amused (though disappointed) spectators left to view Mayor O'Malley with the same chagrin allotted to the incompetent police officer on the criminal drama. “Crime” invokes this position of spectatorship in three key ways: through the construction of the “scary” city, through it use of still images and text, and through its choice of music.

THE “SCARY” CITY

As you can't have a criminal drama in Pleasantsville or Mayberry, every “good” crime show must take place in a scary city—a city rife with potential for violent crimes and suspenseful investigations. Governor Ehrlich's campaign works to create that atmosphere in “Crime.” Positioning the viewer high above the city in the opening shot, the camera then quickly zooms in, bringing the audience closer to the buildings until viewers are actually situated in the city watching a cop car patrol the streets. This four second opening sequence strongly parallels the use of city imagery in the opening of Law & Order, featuring shots of towering skyscrapers and cityscapes after cutting away to images of a cop cars and police officers in its opening credits.

It not surprising that this connection can be made within the first four seconds of the spot; it is characteristic of “the new media” to move extremely fast and condense meaning into visuals that are shown for fragments of seconds (Stephens, 1998). The visual language the ad uses, like all extant verbal language, comes “preowned” in Carole Blair's terms, and thus, it implicitly favors the recollection of certain referents over others (Blair, 2006, p. 53). In this case the referent that “Crime” calls to mind through its visual construction of the “scary” city is that of Law & Order or other televised criminal dramas. It is this visual quoting of Law & Order that helps to position the viewer as spectator. The “scary” city functions to cue the audience into the fact that they are about to consume another televised criminal drama.

USE OF STILL IMAGES AND TEXT

When not using visual imagery to construct the scene (either through the cityscape shots, images of cop cars, or pictures of graffiti), the remaining visual footage centers around a series of black and white still images of Mayor O'Malley. There are four still frames utilized and in each the Mayor is depicted as if he were in the process of explaining (or, as one might infer, possibly justifying). In the first of these shots, Mayor O'Malley is at a podium staring off into the distance away from where the audience would logically be positioned. In the second, the Mayor appears to be seated speaking into a microphone while others in the background seem to be staring at him. From the composition of the still, it is a posture that is recognizable as someone giving testimony (either for Congress or at a trial). In the third, the Mayor is shown surrounded by police officers pointing into the distance. O'Malley follows their direction, mouth agape, perhaps in mid-sentence. Finally, the ad frame ends with Mayor O'Malley's mouth open and his hands raised as if he is speaking. A man, who is positioned in the background, appears to be scrutinizing the Mayor's every word.

It is imperative to note here that all of these images have been decontextualized. All attempts to discern what Mayor O'Malley is doing in each shot are solely speculation. None of the images of candidate O'Malley in “Crime” are video footage, which could potentially provide more context clues as to the Mayor's actions. Instead, each of these still images were selected from a milieu of photos of Mayor O'Malley, removed from an unknown original context, and inserted into “Crime” to bolster the argument of the polispot. At issue here is what Messaris (1997) explains as “selectivity,” which is one of the most persuasive ways of creating a certain impression of reality (p. 147). As Parry-Giles (2000) explains, this process of selectivity, "decontextualization," and "recontextualization" alters meaning (pp. 212-214).

Yet, these still images do not simply appear in succession during the spot. The camera moves across each of these pictures. In some cases, the camera pans from right to left. In others it zooms in on Mayor O'Malley, and in others, it zooms out. In addition to the movement of the camera, headlines from local and national newspapers are displayed, and a newspaper type text appears on the screen backlit in either red or blue. The newspaper headers work to support the credibility of Governor Ehrlich's claims. As Nelson and Boynton explain, ads use “conventional elements of the popular genre that we call ‘news' to borrow credibility from that genre” (66).

The camera movement and lit text worked differently. Again, these elements of the ad work to facilitate an intertextual reading with other televised criminal dramas. Referencing again Law & Order, the red and blue backlight is a direct imitation of the manner in which the series name and actors' names are presented in the opening sequence for the show. The camera movement is familiar, too. There are relatively few moving images in the opening of Law & Order; instead, the drama features still images as the camera zooms in or out from the still. The text and camerawork in “Crime” is yet another means of referencing television's crime show genre.

MUSIC & SOUND

If the use of color was not enough to distinguish Governor Ehrlich's “Crime” spot from Bush's “Revolving Door,” the music illustrates another dramatic difference. As was aforementioned, “Revolving Door,” relies upon ominous music, the sound is unsettling and disturbing. It employs music of a horror spot. As Nelson and Boynton explain, “the use of music to communicate feelings is so manifestly important to political persuasion through TV spots that…reliance on attack ads has been accompanied by a turn to a distinctive music to communicate threat” (135). “Revolving Door” harnesses music effectively to communicate that threat.

The music used in “Crime” is not the typical horror music. It borders on “jazzy” and upbeat. The music sounds electronically synthesized and a faint drum beat is audible in the background. It is this music that largely prevents the ad from being a horror spot. The music lessens the sense a fear and provides another point of comparison with Law & Order, which utilizes a similar sound. The music, largely, evokes the entertainment paradigm. As Altman (1986) argues, the sound provides the hermeneutic cue for the audience to come and watch the visuals. The sound triggers the audience to assume the position of spectator. It is at once familiar and beckons the audience to involve themselves in the criminal drama that is unfolding. The message from the music is clear: come and be entertained by the spectacle but maintain your stance of disappointment in Mayor O'Malley's failures.

(RE) PACKAGING CRIME

The blending of generic conventions in “Crime” poses several interesting questions as to this ad's effectiveness. While “Revolving Door” is commonly considered a very successful use of the crime ad given its rhetorical resonance, the deviation of “Crime” from the horror theme poses some risks. Eschewing a crime-horror theme leaves the ad with crime-drama or crime-entertainment theme. The ad does not terrify; rather, it mocks. Yet, mockery is dangerous technique to employ as Nelson and Boynton (1997) explain in their discussion of satire. The audience first needs to recognize all of the generic conventions at play and then synthesize the correct message from these elements. Because of the complication of this process, ads that rely on satire risk failure.

WHO'S TALKING ABOUT THIS AD?

Baltimore Sun

Green and Donovan examine the veracity of some of the claims made in “Crime” as well as offer a brief analysis of Ehrlich's turn to whole negative ad spots. The article quotes Governor Ehrlich saying that a campaign that runs completely negative advertisements is an indication that it “has nothing to sell” (Green and Donovan, Ehrlich ad strikes at O'Malley's anti-crime record, 9/30/06 ).

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/

Washington Post

This article discusses the issue of culpability, questioning the factors that account for or contributed to Baltimore 's crime statistics. Overall, trends in crime reduction and the context in which Mayor O'Malley made his infamous promise to cut the annual total of homicides are also considered (Wagner, Ehrlich ads hammer O'Malley on crime, 9/30/06).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092901818.html

WBAL TV Baltimore

Operating similarly to factcheck.org, this Baltimore channel attempts to discern “the truth” of Ehrlich's “Crime” ad (Ehrlich TV ad checked for accuracy, 10/6/06 ).

http://www.thewbalchannel.com/news/10020851/detail.html

Mayor O'Malley Responds

Less than two weeks later, Mayor O'Malley responds to the allegations in “Crime” with his own ad seeking to clarify the “real record.”

http://www.martinomalley.com/video

Altman, R. (1986). Television/sound. In T. Modleski (Ed.), Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Blair, C. (2006). Communication as collective memory. In G. J. Shepherd, J. St. John & T. Striphas (Eds.), Communication as…Perspectives on theory (pp. 51-59). Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications.

Donovan, A. Ehrlich Ad Slams Arrests: New Campaign Criticizes O'Malley for Police Treatment of Blacks. Baltimore Sun. September 28, 2006. Retrieved October 17, 2006 from http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/politics/bal-md.crime28sep28,0,173894.story?coll=bal-mdpolitics-headlines.

Messaris, P. (1997). Visual persuasion: The role of images in advertising. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Nelson, J. S., & Boynton, G. R. (1997) Video rhetorics: Televised advertising in American politics. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Parry-Giles, S. J., (2000). Mediating Hillary Rodham Clinton: Television news practices and image-making in the postmodern age. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 17 205-226. Retrieved September 12, 2006 from EBSCO/Communication & Mass Media Complete database.

Postman, N. & Postman, A. (2005). Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business. New York: Penguin Group, Inc.