Michigan Truth Squad cries foul on political distortions

With the primaries only a few weeks away and a crush of mailings, television, radio and internet advertisements expected to flood Michigan airwaves and the inboxes and mailboxes of state residents over that span, the Center for Michigan has launched the Michigan Truth Squad to distinguish true claims from false.

“It allows the Center and voters to keep candidates honest on the campaign trail,” said John Bebow, executive director of the Center for Michigan, a non-partisan think tank founded in 2006 with the mission to “assist our state through its current period of wrenching economic trouble and to lay the foundation of informed hope for a better future Michigan.”

The Michigan Truth Squad website came online in June, before many of the primary contests in the state really started heating up. But as the Aug. 3 primary draws closer and the pressure goes up, Bebow says he expects the things to “get nasty.”

Not that they already haven’t. The group’s two referees, freelance journalist and former business columnist Rick Hagland and syndicated columnist Susan Demas, have scored 26 commercials, fliers, websites and other forms of political communication.

Demas says the writers spend several hours researching each advertisement for honesty, reviewing news reports, court and other official records. Then they score the claims with a rating of no foul, warning, technical foul, foul or flagrant foul.

Those categories are defined as:

Flagrant Foul: A statement that distorts or incorrectly states a fact involving an individual. It’s one thing to point out differences between candidate’s records. It’s another for a candidate to attack an opponent with false information or to inaccurately present his or her own political record.

Technical Foul: A statement that implies something that isn’t quite true and deserves additional explanation, or that is entirely false.
Foul: A statement that distorts or incorrectly states a fact involving policy.

Warning: A statement that could easily be misconstrued, but is generally truthful.

No Foul: Not every tough political ad is a foul. Sometimes the Truth Squad will review an ad and find that it is, indeed, totally accurate, even if it is not nice.

Of the 26 political ads reviewed by the team, 17 have been labeled as some sort of foul — breaking out as four technical fouls, 10 fouls, and 3 flagrant fouls. They have also issued five warnings, and four no fouls.

Both Demas and Bebow pointed to many of the negative spots flooding the airwaves in the Republican gubernatorial race, primarily from third party groups rather than from the campaigns themselves, as examples of ads that distort reality.

Demas pointed to ads by a group called Americans for Job Security. The two spots the group has run, both aimed at Rep. Pete Hoekstra, have been labeled “foul” by Michigan Truth Squad, and the first ad — “Disappointed” — was withdrawn from three West Michigan television stations.

The organization shares the same Virginia mailing address as WWP Strategies, which is a paid consultant to the Cox campaign. That address is also shared by Crossroads Media, which created the ads. Despite those coincidences the Cox campaign denies any involvement with Americans for Job Security.

“That’s another thing we’re trying to do with the Truth Squad, is track these [independent] groups down,” says Demas.

“Those are out of state groups inserting themselves in our elections,” says Bebow. “If you’re not ticked off by those ads, then you’re not paying attention.”

Another example of an independent group engaged in the campaign is the Michigan Civic Educational Fund, which has launched a website and radio commercial attacking Republican Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard. The radio commercial, which has since been removed from the airwaves, alleges Bouchard had an affair with an employee of the department he manages. The Truth Squad labeled the ad a flagrant foul, calling it “one of the worst kinds of political sleaze.”

That group also has shadowy ties to the Cox campaign, and again the Cox team denies its involvement in the ads.

But some of the distortions are not about a candidate’s opponents; some of them are about the candidates themselves and their track record.

The Truth Squad called a foul on Republican Secretary of State candidate Michelle McManus for her own website. On the site she labels the massive Service Employees International Union(SEIU) and the disbanded Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) “extremists” that have “broken election law.” Neither group has been charged or convicted of election fraud, the Truth Squad reports.

But it is not just Republicans or independent groups acting in the Republican primaries the group is taking on. In a June piece, the Truth Squad took on the Michigan Democratic Party and press releases it send out about state Sen. Cameron Brown (R-Fawn Township) and Oakland County Clerk Ruth Johnson, both Republican candidates for Secretary of State. The Truth Squad called a foul on those press releases.

These releases from the MDP contain personal attacks and catchy quotes. They criticize Johnson and Brown on important policy questions, but do not provide any information on early voting proposals or Driver Responsibility Fees. The releases feature fleeting references to policy as a means to tear into Republican candidates.

Demas says that with greater volume and variety of political advertisements these days it is increasingly important to have independent groups fact checking the claims. She pointed to the role of groups like FactCheck.org on the national level. And she noted that the Associated Press does a generalized review of ads in its Ad Check program. But the Truth Squad is focused on the Michigan election only.

Bebow says the group will rate an advertisement a day until the November election. The group is asking Michigan residents to tip them off to misleading ads, and is offering prizes for the tip of day, tip of the month and a grand prize for the best tip this election.