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Media Ethics: Issues and Cases 8th Edition by Philip Patterson, Lee Wilkins
Edition 8ISBN: 978-0073526249Media Ethics: Issues and Cases 8th Edition by Philip Patterson, Lee Wilkins
Edition 8ISBN: 978-0073526249 Exercise 6
The Facts Behind the Ads: Oregon Changes a Campaign
LEE WILKINS
University of Missouri
Beginning in 2010, the Oregon lottery employed an ad campaign with the slogan that "97 cent of every dollar comes back to Oregon." Print ads for the next two years sometimes went even further. One that ran in the Oregonian in 2012 claimed that "ninety-seven cents represents over $500 million that is returned to Oregonians every year to help support job creation, schools, state parks and watersheds."
Oregon, like many states, established a lottery in the 1980s through an amendment to the state's Constitution that was approved by the voters. The Oregon lottery was approved in the midst of the 1984 recession, and supporters hoped that lottery proceeds would help turn around the state's economic situation. Voters also have specified how they want the money to be spent through various ballot measures. Since its inception, lottery officials say that the lottery has paid out more than $19 billion in prize money and more than $7 billion to support activities specified by the voters. The statute enacting the program specified that at least 50 percent of the lottery proceeds be awarded as prize money and that no more than 16 percent of the gate fund administrative activities.
Lotteries have always been controversial. President Thomas Jefferson favored them as a form of painless taxation. Contemporary public officials have noted that because gambling is so common, legalizing it and regulating it to ensure the integrity of the system is important. States have also used lottery proceeds to plug budgetary holes. Critics have objected to lotteries for a variety of reasons ranging from a moral objection to "games of chance" to a public policy-based concern that relying on revenues from gambling-which are not always consistent-shifts the burden from traditional taxpayers to the vagaries of gamblers who may not contribute the same amount of money to a state's general fund from year to year. Phrased more simply, this criticism asserts that it is too big a gamble to fund important public programs such as education or environmental preservation on lottery winnings.
Oregon's lottery became a particularly important revenue stream. The state is one of a very few that charges no sales tax; property taxes in Oregon are high in comparison to neighboring states and its income tax is higher than some surrounding states as well. But, without a sales tax-and Oregonians have defeated statewide sales tax proposals multiple times-that state itself has fewer consistent revenue streams than most. Like all state lotteries, Oregon's lottery is heavily marketed, and claims that the state benefits from the lottery have always been part of the marketing pitch.
In June 2012, the lottery decided to phase out its two-year-old campaign. The reason: the campaign had been given a "pants on fire" truthfulness rating by PolitiFact Oregon. The "pants on fire" rating was not only a way of questioning the truth of the claims, it suggested that the claims themselves were ridiculous in the extreme.
As reported by the Oregonian , the lottery campaign's claims were based on math that included something called "churn"-a process whereby a gambler's initial bet of, say $20-is added to a player's "winnings" of, say $10-resulting in $30 of revenue even though the $10 winning never existed as money in the system. The claim also assumes that all winners were from Oregon (unlikely) and that the winners spent all of their winning within the state (equally unlikely). State representative Carolyn Tomei, a Democrat from the Portland suburb of Milwaukie, asserted that all the winnings were not going back to the state. "I looked at that ad and thought, 'What is the public supposed to take away from that?' It's so people will feel good about the lottery, and what is the point of that?"
It took the lottery less than a week to mothball the "97 cent campaign" after the Oregon PolitiFact rating. Lottery spokesperson Chuck Baumann told the Oregonian that the lottery was moving on to a new campaign but that it still stood by the 97 cent figure.
Should advertisements for products and services be subject to the same sort of scrutiny as ads that support governmental activities?
LEE WILKINS
University of Missouri
Beginning in 2010, the Oregon lottery employed an ad campaign with the slogan that "97 cent of every dollar comes back to Oregon." Print ads for the next two years sometimes went even further. One that ran in the Oregonian in 2012 claimed that "ninety-seven cents represents over $500 million that is returned to Oregonians every year to help support job creation, schools, state parks and watersheds."
Oregon, like many states, established a lottery in the 1980s through an amendment to the state's Constitution that was approved by the voters. The Oregon lottery was approved in the midst of the 1984 recession, and supporters hoped that lottery proceeds would help turn around the state's economic situation. Voters also have specified how they want the money to be spent through various ballot measures. Since its inception, lottery officials say that the lottery has paid out more than $19 billion in prize money and more than $7 billion to support activities specified by the voters. The statute enacting the program specified that at least 50 percent of the lottery proceeds be awarded as prize money and that no more than 16 percent of the gate fund administrative activities.
Lotteries have always been controversial. President Thomas Jefferson favored them as a form of painless taxation. Contemporary public officials have noted that because gambling is so common, legalizing it and regulating it to ensure the integrity of the system is important. States have also used lottery proceeds to plug budgetary holes. Critics have objected to lotteries for a variety of reasons ranging from a moral objection to "games of chance" to a public policy-based concern that relying on revenues from gambling-which are not always consistent-shifts the burden from traditional taxpayers to the vagaries of gamblers who may not contribute the same amount of money to a state's general fund from year to year. Phrased more simply, this criticism asserts that it is too big a gamble to fund important public programs such as education or environmental preservation on lottery winnings.
Oregon's lottery became a particularly important revenue stream. The state is one of a very few that charges no sales tax; property taxes in Oregon are high in comparison to neighboring states and its income tax is higher than some surrounding states as well. But, without a sales tax-and Oregonians have defeated statewide sales tax proposals multiple times-that state itself has fewer consistent revenue streams than most. Like all state lotteries, Oregon's lottery is heavily marketed, and claims that the state benefits from the lottery have always been part of the marketing pitch.
In June 2012, the lottery decided to phase out its two-year-old campaign. The reason: the campaign had been given a "pants on fire" truthfulness rating by PolitiFact Oregon. The "pants on fire" rating was not only a way of questioning the truth of the claims, it suggested that the claims themselves were ridiculous in the extreme.
As reported by the Oregonian , the lottery campaign's claims were based on math that included something called "churn"-a process whereby a gambler's initial bet of, say $20-is added to a player's "winnings" of, say $10-resulting in $30 of revenue even though the $10 winning never existed as money in the system. The claim also assumes that all winners were from Oregon (unlikely) and that the winners spent all of their winning within the state (equally unlikely). State representative Carolyn Tomei, a Democrat from the Portland suburb of Milwaukie, asserted that all the winnings were not going back to the state. "I looked at that ad and thought, 'What is the public supposed to take away from that?' It's so people will feel good about the lottery, and what is the point of that?"
It took the lottery less than a week to mothball the "97 cent campaign" after the Oregon PolitiFact rating. Lottery spokesperson Chuck Baumann told the Oregonian that the lottery was moving on to a new campaign but that it still stood by the 97 cent figure.
Should advertisements for products and services be subject to the same sort of scrutiny as ads that support governmental activities?
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Analyzing the midrange issues of the "Fa...
Media Ethics: Issues and Cases 8th Edition by Philip Patterson, Lee Wilkins
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