Look at context behind campaign ads

Regardless of which candidates people support in this fall's election, I hope each person will closely scrutinize the television ads being run and check for misleading, erroneous or facts that were “cherry-picked” as truthful information.

For example: a recent TV ad stated that Mitt Romney was governor from 2003-07 in Massachusetts and his state had a very low 4.7 percent unemployment rate. That is all true. What it fails to explain is that he was governor during the only non-recession years of that decade. The 4.7 percent looks good until you compare it to the “national average” of 4.4 percent when he left office. Massachusetts had the 29th “highest” unemployment rate when he took office, but it was the 18th “highest” when he left office. Romney's record on creating jobs is far from being good.

Gary Matson

Cedar Rapids