Mediamouse.org recently paid a visit to the three Grand Rapids-based TV stations--WOOD, WZZM, and WXMI--to look at the political file on what political ad spending has looked like since Hillary Clinton dropped out of the race in June. Here is the data from mid-June through late August:
WXMI 17
McCain $109,425
Obama $95,470WZZM 13
McCain $247,820
Obama $261,480WXPS/WOTV/WOOD TV 8
McCain $415,800
Obama $536,650
According to the publicly viewable data, Senator McCain's campaign has spent $773,045 on political ads at these three TV stations and Senator Obama $893,600. This means that the combined total of the two presidential candidates over this 10 week period has been $1,666,645. If the political ad trends are consistent with previous years, we can expect a much larger amount of money will be spent the last 2 months before the November 4 election.
Both campaigns have been running a variety of ads in the West Michigan market. Recently, an ad that has been funded by Texas billionaire Harold Simmons that links Senator Obama to a former member of the 1960s radical anti-war group the Weathermen has been airing in West Michigan. When visiting the stations to obtain the political ad data we found out that the stations have been receiving e-mails and phone calls complaining about the ad. Some sources are saying the ad violates campaign finance laws and some stations have refused to air it.
If people are complaining about the issue of accuracy, then a great deal of the ads that are airing from both campaigns should be scrutinized for inaccuracies. According to the Annenberg Political Fact Check, a non-partisan group that monitors political ads, there have numerous examples of false accusations in recent weeks. For example, in August the group documented that a McCain ad made inaccurate remarks about Obama's voting record on abortion and an Obama ad made false claims about McCain's position on the economy. So while the TV stations will make millions of dollars from paid political ads, the public will be subjected to misleading ads between now and November 4.
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