Decoding the Campaigns

We’re saturated with deceptive political advertising — aided and abetted now with spending by citizens, corporations and super PACs that seems to know no bounds. Add to that relatively cheap “buys” on the media landscape including television, the web, print media and social networks, and there’s no place for the electorate to escape. But help is on the way. This weekend on Moyers & Company, Bill asks political communication expert Kathleen Hall Jamieson to decode the political misinformation campaigns of 2012 thus far. Jamieson runs the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, including the sites FactCheck.org and FlackCheck.org. The show then moves from politics to poetry as Bill welcomes former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, who this week received the National Medal of Arts from President Obama. Dove was the youngest and the first African American to be named poet laureate in 1993. Through an intimate conversation and select readings, Moyers and Dove explore American history, language, culture and ideas. They also talk about the responsibility — and controversy — that comes with editing a prestigious anthology, as Dove was recently tasked for The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry.