How much of the campaign advertising that you see on television can you trust?

Now, now, now. Let’s not have any quick, snide, responses. We get too many quick, snide statements in the commercials.

Our newspaper friends are running articles these days assessing the accuracy of political commercials. We think their articles are too important to be buried on page A8, as the Kansas City Star did today. But they are good things to read because they cut through the overstatements, misstatements, misleading statements, innuendo, and manipulation that is the hallmark of today’s political advertising.

Today’s examination on A8 of the Star looks at a couple of commercials from the Blunt and the Carnahan camps. The Ad Watch pieces rate the spots on the basis of accuracy, fairness, and relevance. Robin Carnahan’s side gets more stars than Roy Blunt’s side today, 10-7.

We hope to be able to pass them along to you whenever we see these articles. And, frankly, we hope our newspaper colleagues let us know when they run them (we can’t read all of the newspapers in Missouri or even read all of any single newspaper in any one day). We’ll pass along the articles or the links to them so you can go to the newspaper website and read them yourself.

It’s all part of a slogan used a few years ago to promote the work of journalists: If we didn’t tell you, who would?

Certainly not the candidates and their advertising strategists.