Fact-checking online political ads


Kim Brooks
Babbling Brooks Column
By: 
Kim Brooks
Express Editor

Fake online politics 

Kudos to the co-founder and CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, for staying out of the political arena as we near the 2020 Presidential Election. 

Last week, Dorsey announced that Twitter would start banning all political ads. Dorsey said political messaging should be earned, not bought. 

In stark contrast, founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, said Facebook would continue to run political ads, even those that are blatantly false. Facebook does not plan to fact-check any political ads paid to run on its site, something Zuckerberg said is not Facebook’s job. He said it’s the job of reporters and journalists and the news to fact-check, not social media. 

And that’s where I have an opinion…

Social media is very influential. No matter what age you are, if you see or read something on Facebook, more times than not, you think it’s legit. “I saw it on the Internet, it must be true.” False. 

Allowing political parties, individual campaigns, and even those campaigning for or against candidates to run inaccurate ads on your platform is doing harm. It’s misinformation. It’s misleading. It’s just wrong. 

By banning political ads, Twitter could lose about $20 million in revenue. Despite the income, that’s not enough to jump on the bandwagon. 

Again, in contrast, Zuckerberg was quoted as saying, “In a democracy, I don’t think it’s right for private companies to censor politicians or the news. Banning political ads favors incumbents and whomever the media covers.” 

Google has yet to weigh in on the controversy. Eighty-four percent of Google’s revenue comes from advertising. More and more ads are shown on YouTube, which is owned by Google. 

There seems to be a social media/online war for political advertising, and I’m praising Twitter for bowing out of the race, so to speak. While individual candidates should be allowed to have a platform on social media and say what they want, when it comes to online advertising, checking the facts is important. 

When it comes to local candidates, it’s good to see we don’t have false advertising circulating around. 

When in doubt, always educate yourself on who the candidates are, what they stand for, what their backgrounds are, etc. Watch debates, if possible. Go to their websites. Read where they stand on major issues. Don’t rely on social media for your complete election coverage. Most of it’s probably tainted anyway…

Iowa’s connection to country music 

Yes, Iowa has a rich history in country music, and I’m not talking about the great country music entertainment we get every summer at the Great Jones County Fair. 

Famed documentarian Ken Burns recently produced a documentary all about the history of country music. “Country Music” is available on PBS and is definitely worth a watch. 

The eight-episode, 16-hour documentary traces the roots of country music from the 1930s to the mid-1990s. 

It was halfway through the first episode that they mention “Iowa.” That got my attention. 

The town of Shenandoah in southwest Iowa helped in the start of country music in the 1920s thanks to radio. Two seed companies in Shenandoah were competing with one another for customers. So, one of the companies decided to start its own radio station to run commercials. Aside from just broadcasting commercials, they used local musicians (country musicians) to perform live on the station in between their commercials. 

The radio station grew so much that people flocked to Shenandoah to see these musicians perform live for the radio. The documentary showed photos of downtown Shenandoah full of people, much like the track during the GJCF. 

It‘s neat to know that Iowa has a connection to the history of country music.

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