Happy Friday, Show MO Facts supporters! For today’s blog post, we’ll evaluate and fact-check an advertisement posted on Twitter and Youtube by Mark Alford. Alford is the Republican nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 4th Congressional District. If you are from West Central Missouri, this election is relevant to you! The election on November 8, 2022, will determine how the 4th district of Missouri will vote on issues of immigration, elections, and abortion in Congress as these were the issues highlighted during the 4th Congressional District GOP debate. This district represents approximately 783,000 Missouri residents making it crucial that nominees, such as Alford, are held to high standards of truth to assure that residents are best informed when they go to vote!
Alford is most commonly known for being a conservative TV anchor for Fox 4 News Kansas City. In this ad titled “Truth,” Alford is seen appealing to his established connection with conservative TV viewers by reminding them of his time as the “conservative TV guy.” Additionally, he appeals to conservative opposition to liberal ideas by stating that he will tell the “liberal woke mob” that he is taking back America. In the final seconds of the ad, Alford briefly mentions that he cares about securing our elections, borders, and the Second Amendment, but never outlines any policies or suggestions on how he plans to do this.
Claim: Mark Alford fought for the Truth as a TV anchor for Fox 4 News Kansas City
Fact: While Mark Alford is a renowned anchor for Fox 4 News Kansas City, many of Alford’s broadcasts focused on entertainment, opinions, or comedy segments. Recent academic research has claimed that media is increasingly focused on entertainment rather than standard professional journalism. In fact, many news media outlets have increasingly formatted tv news into infotainment due to competitive pressures to have popular, appealing, and easy-to-read headlines. Mark Alford is no exception to this. We decided to research news clips of Alford on Fox 4 News Kansas City to examine whether he advanced accurate news or fake news during his time as a news anchor. It was found that many of Alford’s news segments only dedicated a few seconds to a news report before he spent the rest of the time advancing his personal views or making jokes without factual evidence to back up his claims.
For example, Alford’s broadcasts often involved the testing of uncertified medical inventions, reports on AirPods, mini-horses, and parrots on set, as well as his opinions on styles of MMA fighting. Alford even posted highlights of his time as a news anchor on his Youtube account. Many of the highlights the candidate, himself, wanted to show were funny moments where he said “tits” instead of “tips.” While this is not to say that Alford did no news reporting during his time on Fox 4 News Kansas City, he definitely did not focus on finding the truth during his time there either.
Claim: Alford will fight to secure our elections, border, and the Second Amendment
Fact: Alford has supported Donald Trump in his false claims of election fraud and has stated his support for finishing Trump’s border wall along the southern border. In a previous advertisement, Alford has also claimed his support for absolute second amendment rights, though our previous blog post has demonstrated the misleading nature of his claims. While Alford has demonstrated his ideological positions on these issues, he has no policies to back up his claims. Upon checking Alford’s campaign website, he had no proposed policy solutions to support his positions. Even in Alford’s interview with ABC News in July, Alford could only use sound-bites that would appeal to the conservative base but was never able to iterate specific policy plans he had to support his positions. Without specific policies, how is he going to fight for the Missouri voter? How can he assure that he will pull through with his policy positions? Missouri voters have no policies to fact-check his claims with. If Alford is going to campaign on “Truth,” it is important that voters from the 4th Congressional District in Missouri are able to gain real news or information from him, rather than the sensational sound bites that he has used to appeal to conservative voters both during his time as a news anchor and as a Congressional candidate.
Despite the absence of evidence to back up his ideological positions, Alford’s ad appeals to the conservative voter by using demeaning language to describe the opposition. Alford states that he will tell the “liberal woke mob” that he is taking America back. This use of deprecatory language against liberals has been a common soundbite for members of the GOP. Instead of outlining his policy positions, Alford chose to attack the “liberal woke mob” in order to appeal to Republican voters who increasingly distrust the Democratic Party. Alford uses this soundbite so that he can appeal to Republican ideology without having to outline any real policies. Sensational sound bites do not promote the Truth, instead, they encourage the proliferation of fake, misleading, and unsupported statements that are damaging to a democratic society.
Alford is campaigning under the assumption that conservatives will recognize him as a TV news anchor, but his ad misrepresents the amount of “Truth” he spread during that time. Therefore, we rate this advertisement HIGH on our Pants on Fire O-Meter. Not only is his claim untrue, but it encourages sensationalism over real information. It is important that Missouri voters are aware of this so that they can vote based on facts, rather than name recognition.
Thank you for reading Show Mo Facts! Be sure to follow us on Twitter as well as like and comment on this post. Also, send us any ads that you see and would like us to cover through our Contact page. If you’d like to check out another blog from our class, we recommend Gateway To Facts. They are fact-checking the MO DNC. Find them here!
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