Buzz
As election season heats up, voters will be bombarded with campaign ads on TV. Every one of these ads will end with a disclaimer where the politician featured endorses the message, often saying or being quoted as saying, 'I approve this message.' But why is this required, and how did it begin?
This practice is relatively new. In 2002, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act was passed, introducing the Stand By Your Ad provision. The Act, supported by then-senators John McCain and Russell D. Feingold, aimed to legitimize campaign donations by prohibiting large corporate contributions. Stand By Your Ad requires federal candidates to publicly endorse their ads with 'I approve this message.' This was meant to reduce mudslinging in politics, where candidates would attack each other relentlessly and deny responsibility. The hope was that politicians would reconsider using dirty tactics if they were forced to take responsibility for their content. Consider it a self-enforced act of political accountability.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has strict rules about how the disclaimer should be displayed. It must appear at the end of the ad, stay on screen for at least four seconds, be readable on a contrasting background, and take up no less than 4 percent of the vertical height of the screen. In most cases, the candidate will identify themselves and say the message aloud as well.
If a candidate does not approve the message, the ad will typically identify the organization, group, or individual responsible for it. There is often also information about who funded the commercial.
But does this 'play nice' rule actually have an impact? Research conducted by the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and published in the Journal of Marketing Research in 2018 suggests that the answer is: not really.
In 2000, negative campaign ads made up 29 percent of political persuasion spots, but by 2012, that number jumped to 64 percent. During the final week before the 2016 presidential election, a staggering 92 percent of ads were negative in nature.
One possible explanation is that by endorsing a negative message with 'I approve,' candidates might actually come across as more credible to voters, as they seem willing to stand behind what viewers may interpret as factual statements. A study involving 2000 people, using both real and fictional ads, found that while 'I approve this message' didn't affect perceptions of positive or personal attack ads, it did boost trust in politicians using policy-based attack ads.
The mere appearance of federal oversight, even without any actual regulatory approval, seems to lend credibility to a message. As long as a candidate 'approves' the message—whether it's positive or negative—voters might consider their subjective statements to be the truth.
