TV is the most popular form of media in the United States (and in may other countries, too), so in order to reach a large audience on a certain issue, there is nothing more obvious than using this form of broadcast. The influence of television commercials on individuals has been proven by numerous studies. Election campaigns used this media for many years already and when it comes to controversial topics, more and more non-party organisations use TV ads to support their favoured attitude.
When it comes to the health care debate, especially in 2009, before the bill was passed hundreds of campaigns used TV ads and clips on the internet. Suddenly, everyone wanted to influence politics directly and an endless swarm of advertising started. According to an article on USA Today, throughout 2009 all those groups spent about $ 57 million on health care ads.
In contrast to officially political campaigns, their ads seemed to be not as exaggerating but still many did not stick to pure facts either. Both sides regularly tried to outdo each other, as it appears to be customary in American debates (maybe you want to read more about this on Bloomberg.com). On the one hand, this might be part of the entertaining factor and makes people even more interested in certain topics. On the other hand, doing this on such a public basis is quite unusual in other countries like Germany. Moreover, here almost no organisation that is not directly a political one tries to interfere in such debates. This is the reason why to me these TV ads are so interesting. Americans might be used to it, but I am not. So I enjoyed watching numerous video clips and picked two TV ads with directly contrasting attitudes on the same part of the topic:
Americans United For Change is a group founded in 2005 to oppose Bush. Now they are dealing with several topics which they think desperately need change.
