Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Todays Culture and the Media

In the Article All News That Fits it discusses our overall economic framework today and how with growing social inequities, the American electorate remains overwhelmingly pro-Establishment- in favor of "keeping our social and economic frameworks essentially unchanged". Overall propaganda in our society in advertisements have also shifted to even our 'news' as well. As the article states that today, "Television news promotes the status quo by directing our attention toward a daily series of diverting but unrelated events, and away from deeper social problems that might lead up to challenge the current system. The common role of many news anchorman is to distract viewers from the disturbing parade of images that constitutes the news, and to assure that 'all is well'. with attractive women and flashy news reporters 'anchoring' the sway of the content in their show, it its those anchor men and women that become the show, not the news they are reporting.
 
People today need to realize the importance of the information that is being unrecognized, The viewers of many shows are denied information if it doesn't meet entertainment standards, there is no attention given to stories that are lacking strong visual appeal for the viewer.
The general goal of all TV with both news, others and commercials is to go after the human interest in the "story" or "advertisement"

Interestingly in the end of the first article it states that "our survival of a species may well depend on the nature of the information we get from our news media. of these, none is more important than television news, which reaches all social classes, all educational levels, and influences the thinking of more people than any other single social institution".     

The general commercial world has only grown throughout history and today our minds are constantly aware of the advertisements and the distractions they give us as viewers. "sometimes it seems as if the whole world is not just filled with advertising but dominated by it. Being dominated by money, advertisers are willing to pay a lot of money, for television remains the most important, the most dominant and influential product sold today.  Corporations wouldn't waste billions of dollars if their advertisements didn't work, and the truth is that when someone is actually shopping for products, the only given information they have about them is the one from an ad, so they go with what they are most informed about. 

An itresting fact is that "advertisments do not have to be literally true, "puffing" the product is perfectly legal. what is "puffing"? puffing is an exaggeration about the product that is so obvious just about anyone is cabable of recognizing the claim as an exaggeration.
The rule of advertising it that "nothing is what it seems, which brings up the rule of parity.
the rule states that when their are brands of the same kind of product that are practically the same, it can turn advertisements into being competitive with one another, any product can claim to have to "best" of the brands without any proof. the only proof is for if they claim to have a "better" kind. advertisers need other ways to make similar products seem unlike each other - even unique and special. An example of this is a weasel word, for medicine such as acne or cold medicine, such as "help", it is a claim that doesn't need to be proven at all, it doesn't say cure, or fix, only that it will "help", with not guarantee such as "help stop, help overcome, help you look etc..".  


something that people need to regain is a sense to develop and use critical thinking, reading, listening and looking ability, something that TV in general has taken away from the common person.

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