AD CONTEXT

For the contentious gubernatorial race between incumbent Bob Ehrlich (R) and Baltimore mayor Martin O'Malley (D), education represents a central concern for Maryland voters, particularly after a poll conducted by The Baltimore Sun deemed education the most important issue facing Maryland (Fritze, The Baltimore Sun, 2006). On August 30, Governor Ehrlich released an ad titled “Succeed,” his fifth ad to focus on education. And according to Andrew Green of the Baltimore Sun, this ad is the first to mention Mayor O'Malley directly. Green characterizes the ad as “more strongly negative in tone than [Ehrlich's] previous commercials” (Green, Baltimore Sun, 2006).

On September 5, 2006 , Mayor O'Malley responded by releasing his own negative ad, “Education Cuts, and More,” not only highlighting Ehrlich's shortcomings on education, but also his ties to corporate interests. This ad attacks the Governor on a central campaign issue and culminates with a picture of Governor Ehrlich and President Bush together. The President currently enjoys a 34 percent approval rating in Maryland (Survey USA, 2006)

TWO STRATEGIES

In order to mobilize an attack on Governor Bob Ehrlich, “Education Cuts, and More” attempts to make “trust” the key issue. While billing itself as an ad about education, the combination of stark visuals, fast pace, and tense narration leave the viewer with the idea that, “if we can't trust him on education, how can we trust him on anything else?” The ad starts with a question about Governor Ehrlich's record on education but ultimately accentuates his ties to corporate interests. How does the ad accomplish its goals? Two strategies seem to emerge. For one, “Education Cuts, and More” exhibits characteristics of the news exposé in order to bolster its credibility, using conventions of popular investigative journalism to support claims that Governor Ehrlich has things he's hiding about his record. Second, extending the markers of education, the ad tests the Governor's record on education and corporate connections; Robert Ehrlich's failure on the exam suggests that he is the wrong choice for Marylanders in the next gubernatorial election. Together, these two strategies complement one another to form a negative picture of the Governor that works to create doubt more than it offers specific remedies to the state's education problems.

NEWS-STYLE CREDIBILITY  

Genres represent types of discourse through which meaning is created for persuasive messages. As Nelson and Boynton have pointed out, these genres are “rhetorical constructs” that “involve how we (re)cognize our worlds” (Nelson and Boynton, 1997, p. 34). Specifically, the genre musters and arranges symbols in ways that we often understand, combining visuals and language to tell narratives that seem almost second-nature to us. Political advertisements often resemble images, narratives, and arguments of popular films, television shows, and other advertisements (Nelson and Boynton, 1997).

“Education Cuts, and More” conjures up images of a news exposé involving the investigative journalist. The generic convention of a reporter-type figure delivering the “truth” to the people holds resonance in our culture, as seen in films like All the President's Men, where the hard-nosed reporter becomes a folk hero. Watergate helped popularize investigative journalism, which has become a staple of television news, on shows like 60 Minutes or Dateline, as well as the “3 on your side” type expos é s prevalent in local news. Within such newscasts, the reporter works on behalf of the consumer to expose corruption, conspiracies, or other misdeeds, asking questions like, “What is the Mayor doing to your drinking water?” or “Are the phone companies out to get you?” “Education Cuts, and More,” with its visual and auditory characteristics, hints that Bob Ehrlich is conspiring against us with powerful corporations while lying to our children. The ad's credibility, thus, is enhanced by its reliance on the generic form of the news exposé.

The first way that the “Education Cuts, and More” fits the investigative reporting genre is through its auditory message. The ad starts with a question: “Can we really trust Bob Ehrlich on education?” The narrator's voice is raspy, tense, and alarmist, reminiscent of a street reporter breaking news about a never before reported scandal. And paravocalically, the pace is rapid, connoting the idea that the evidence is piling up higher and higher against Governor Ehrlich. While the voice unveils its litany of charges, certain emphases are placed by the narrator on words like “broke,” “raise,” “increased,” and “deny.” The choice to highlight these action words suggests to the viewer that it's not just that Governor Ehrlich is incompetent or ineffective, but that he is actively conspiring against Maryland to violate the voters' trust.

The choice of music in “Education Cuts, and More” also supports the conventions of the investigative news segment. While for the most part indistinct and low in the audio track, the music has a news-style connotation, reminiscent of the opening tracks to news pundit shows or the background music to an investigative segment on the eleven o'clock news. Even more noticeable is the percussive ticks and tocks in the music, not only reminding viewers of the infamous 60 Minutes clock but contributing to an overall feeling of unease and anxiety. Nelson and Boynton have associated the sounds of ticking clocks in political advertisements with the conventions of the horror genre, where such sound effects are “communicating threats through feelings of dread and horror” (Nelson and Boynton, 1997, p. 138). While the soundtrack of “Education Cuts, and More” may not explicitly horrify the viewer, the music does suggest that Ehrlich is a threat to the audience's wellbeing and that time may be running out.

Perhaps more importantly, the ad's framing of the visual images connotes an investigative and conspiratorial tone. The ad features statistics chosen to support the idea that Bob Ehrlich cannot, in fact, be trusted on education. Each new bit of information comes onto the screen in the form of a photograph of Governor Ehrlich situated next to a condemnatory piece of evidence. These photographs and the alarming evidence appear side-by-side as an indistinguishable whole, mimicking the movement of a piece of paper being slid onto the screen and then slowly rotated as the announcer talks about each bit of evidence. The camera shot is stationary as these “documents” are presented with a fluidity that eschews any noticeable editing cuts. The hectic pace of the ad also contributes to a feeling of mounting evidence against the Governor. The visual techniques are reminiscent of an investigative reporting style where previously private documents are shown to the viewer for the first time as damning evidence against the subject of the story (Governor Ehrlich). Such generic features help enhance the credibility of ad's content.

The advertisement also works to create an affinity with the audience, increasing its journalistic, “us” against “them” message. The first sentence in the ad focuses on whether “we” can trust Governor Ehrlich. The inclusive “we” encourages the viewer to identify with the announcer and Mayor O'Malley, the ad's sponsor. Like investigative segments on local television news stations, the “we” connotes a sense that the investigators behind the ad are on our side and working for us. At the same time, the ad presents numerous pictures of Governor Ehrlich in such a way as to increase the distance between him and the viewer. In the ad, the Governor's photographs are always shown floating on a white background. By decontextualizing the photographs of Governor Ehrlich from any recognizable setting, the ad recontextualizes him within the sinister plot of the narrative. The photographs further such images of impropriety through the use of slightly distorted images situated in the ad's world of conspiracy and corruption. Shawn J. Parry-Giles argues that such decontextualization, where uprooting a photo from its original context, often totally redefines the meaning of the image (Parry-Giles, 2000, pp. 209-211). With Governor Ehrlich featured alone in many of the photographs, the ad likewise implies that the Governor is the sole person responsible for such corruption and broken promises. In addition, the images of Bob Ehrlich seem flat and slightly distorted. The images look, in a sense, like cut-outs, and the size of the photos are just small enough to distort the details of the Governor's face. With Governor Ehrlich appearing as a disembodied, shady photo in a journalist's file, the viewer is left with the sense that they are detached from him and that such a mysterious figure could not be "on their side."

Finally, the argument detailed by the narrator completes the investigative reporting story. The narrator argues that Robert Ehrlich has “a record of siding with the powerful corporate interests.” The vague wording of “powerful corporate interests” calls to mind large, shadowy entities that are deliberately working against us. By not naming these powerful corporate interests, the interests become one large, monolithic corporation that the Governor works for. We are left once again with the idea that the ad (and thus Mayor O'Malley) is on our side; Governor Ehrlich, conversely, is conspiring secretly against us.

THE GOVERNOR FAILS THE TEST  

The second underlying message of “Education Cuts, and More” is that Governor Ehrlich is a failure as governor—a theme that is re-enforced by each visual frame. Relying on familiar educational markers, each fact in the ad takes the form of multiple choice questions on a test that Governor Ehrlich is being asked to complete. The top answer for each fact is a negative statement about the Governor, written in a bold red and then “checked” off with a black X as the viewer watches. The bottom answer is visually subdued, written in a light grey. The answers themselves are obvious. When discussing the Thornton school project, for example, “broke promise” is the answer selected while “kept his word” goes unchecked. As the narrator turns to the topic of school construction, the choice is between “cut $176 million,” and “fully fund,” and the viewer knows which one is the right answer even though Governor Ehrlich does not. Because the bottom answer is not given the same visual weight, and because each page of the “test” moves by so quickly, the unselected answer is not the focus of the argument. Rather, the ad suggests that Governor Ehrlich failed his easy multiple choice exam and thus made the wrong choices for Maryland . Mitchell Stephens, in his book on visual imagery, suggests that words sometimes underline the thoughts expressed in the visual montage (Stephens, 1998, p. 190-191). The words in “Education Cuts, and More,” then, are less important for what they say than how they look on the screen and how they fit into our visual field, once again, reinforcing Governor Ehrlich's failed exam and his failed leadership as Maryland 's governor.

To further the audience's envelopment in this visual world, the viewer is invited to participate in grading the Governor's performance on the exam. At first, the answers to the test are left off—to be filled in with a black X in a red box as the narrator speaks. The answers could have been supplied in advance. Yet, the process of watching the selection allows the viewer to become more invested in the answer process, and therefore the outcome of the exam, in much the same way as Maryland voters will choose the next governor of the state. That choice is framed as one between “Corporate Interests” in black or “Working Families” in grey. Conflating the Governor with the President, the Governor's answer is provided as “Corporate Interests” is circled in red. The use of red is particularly important to the visual argument, as it not only brings to mind uncomfortable memories of school papers dripping with red ink, but also negative images of bureaucratic “red-tape,” which supports the argument that the Governor Ehrlich is in collusion with big-business much the same way that the President is commonly aligned with corporate greed.

The Baltimore Sun

On September 6, 2006, The Baltimore Sun printed an article entitled, “Candidates Face Off Briefly,” that referred to the general debate on the education issue between Ehrlich and O'Malley. Towards the close of the article, the “Education Cuts, and More” advertisement is mentioned as the newest platform of this debate. The article is found on O'Malley's news page:

http://www.martinomalley.com/news/955/candidates-face-off-briefly

On September 7, 2006, in an article entitled, “O'Malley Assails Ehrlich on School Funding,” The Baltimore Sun details the advertisement's argument against Governor Ehrlich. The article is most concerned with either refuting or upholding each of the points of the O'Malley campaign's argument. The article focuses less on the image aspects of the ad and chooses to look more at whether “facts” are presented in the argument:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/politics/bal-md.adwatch07sep07,0,6111271.story?coll=bal-mdpolitics-headlines

The Friends of O'Malley also posted this article on the official Martin O'Malley Web site, even though the article makes some claims against O'Malley's argument in the ad:

http://www.martinomalley.com/news/962/omalley-assails-ehrlich-on-school-funding

WBAL TV 11 (NBC) 

Similar to The Baltimore Sun 's analysis, on September 5, 2006, WBAL TV performs an “ad-watch” function on the “Education Cuts, and More” advertisement, taking each argument and debunking whether or not it matches Ehrlich's actual record. For the most part, the article seems critical of the language and evidence that the O'Malley campaign uses in the advertisement:

http://www.thewbalchannel.com/politics/9789267/detail.html

The Bob Ehrlich Response 

Bob Ehrlich includes a recurring “Get the Facts” post on his Web site where he answers Mayor O'Malley's campaign advertisements with bulleted responses to each of the “facts” that the Mayor uses. A specific post relates to the “Education Cuts and More” ad. In this post, Governor Ehrlich addresses each sentence of the “Education Cuts, and More” ad and provides bullets on how either the facts presented in the ad were out of context or outright contradictory. The refutation ends with the statement that “Martin O'Malley is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts”:

Fritze, J. (2006). O'Malley's tuition pitch. The Baltimore Sun . August 10, 2006. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/politics/bal-md.adwatch10aug10,0,16400.story?coll=bal-mdpolitics-headlines

Green, A. (2006). Ehrlich focuses on schools. The Baltimore Sun . August 30, 2006. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/elections/bal-md.adwatch31aug31,0,2898732.story?coll=bal-election-headlines

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.

Stephens, M. (1998). The rise of the image the fall of the word. New York: Oxford University Press.