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March is Women's History Month!

Campaign Sound Bites: Does Truth Matter?

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

In other appearances over the last week, Mitt Romney has been hammering a comment President Obama made about business owners. You didn't build that - that's the quote. The Obama campaign protests that the comment has been taken out of context. The Romney campaign says it points to a deeper truth about President Obama's philosophy.

NPR's Ari Shapiro examines whether the truth matters.

ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: From the very beginning, this campaign's relationship to the truth has been shaky at best. Mitt Romney's first ad quoted President Obama, saying...

(SOUNDBITE OF AD)

SHAPIRO: In fact the president never really said that. Here was the full quote.

(SOUNDBITE OF A POLITICAL AD)

SHAPIRO: The Democrats pulled a similar trick in January after Mitt Romney answered a question about health care in New Hampshire this way.

(SOUNDBITE OF AD)

(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)

SHAPIRO: The latest quote in this tug of war over the truth came from President Obama in Roanoke, Virginia.

: Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, that - you didn't build that.

SHAPIRO: The Romney campaign released this ad in response, featuring a small business owner from New Hampshire.

(SOUNDBITE OF AD)

SHAPIRO: The New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper reported that the company featured in the ad received government support, $800,000 in tax-exempt revenue bonds to set up a manufacturing plant. Yesterday, the Obama campaign released this TV ad which will run in six swing states.

(SOUNDBITE OF OBAMA CAMPAIGN AD)

SHAPIRO: On CNBC, Romney suggested it doesn't matter whether the comment is being taken out of context.

: I find the speech even more disconcerting than just that particular line. The context is worse than the quote.

SHAPIRO: This effort to dig down to the true meaning of a candidate's comments rests on a few assumptions. Most basically it assumes that truth matters. It assumes that people want to know what a candidate actually said and meant. It assumes that distortions are bad. In fact, behavioral psychologist Dan Ariely of Duke says those assumptions may be false. He's author of "The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: Why We Lie to Everybody, Especially Ourselves."

DAN ARIELY: And we recently did a study on this. We just asked a few hundred people online to what extent they think that their candidates could be dishonest if it promoted their political agenda.

SHAPIRO: He found that people were totally comfortable with politicians of their own party being dishonest to get elected.

ARIELY: And by the way, for Democrats, this was a slightly more endorsed position than for the Republicans. So the Democrats are more willing for their politicians to lie to a higher degree than the Republicans.

SHAPIRO: There is lots of evidence that people don't necessarily seek the truth. They seek to have their beliefs confirmed. Pablo Boczkowski of Northwestern University studies the way people consume news.

PABLO BOCZKOWSKI: What I see in our research is that people want to get the news that speaks to their beliefs and the issues that they are interested in, and they are willing to avoid the rest.

SHAPIRO: So what did President Obama actually mean when he said "you didn't build that," or what did Mitt Romney mean when he said "I like to fire people"? Increasingly the answer seems to be: you don't want to know. Ari Shapiro, NPR News, Washington.

WERTHEIMER: People may not be looking for the truth, as Ari suggested, but they are forming opinions. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News polls shows most registered voters now have lower opinions of both the president and Mitt Romney. Of the voters who have seen, heard, or read something about the campaigns, 44 percent have a less favorable view of Mr. Obama; 27 percent have developed a more positive view. When it comes to Romney, 43 percent said their view is now less favorable, with 28 percent saying their opinion is more favorable. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Ari Shapiro has been one of the hosts of All Things Considered, NPR's award-winning afternoon newsmagazine, since 2015. During his first two years on the program, listenership to All Things Considered grew at an unprecedented rate, with more people tuning in during a typical quarter-hour than any other program on the radio.