I know it's technically the "collaborative research project," but I've been tagging everything Oral History anyway, so why stop now? :)
Anywho, for one last, slightly random, post, I thought I'd comment on the class presentations. There was some pretty interesting stuff up there, but one thing really caught my attention - "unethical advertising." I heard a couple of groups using this term and never got a straight definition from anyone. It's an interesting question, though. What is unethical advertising?
We've been discussing The Elements of Journalism by Kolvach and Rosenstiel in my Evaluating Writing class. According to this book, there are certain agreed upon standards by which journalists live. I agree with Kolvach and Rosenstiel; when I pick up a news article, I have certain expectations as to the validity of it. I expect that the journalist has conducted his/her investigations according to an objective method and presented what I need to know in the article without adding or subtracting.
However, I don't have the same expectations for advertising. Short of outright lying (which is prohibited by law), I think anything goes. When people design labels and commercials, they are designing them with business, with the biggest profit, in mind. Why? That's their job; that's what they're paid to do. Does that make them unethical because they aren't highlighting the pieces that will not sell well? Would the people labeling them unethical do any differently if this were their job?
When I look at any piece of advertising (or politics, for that matter), I know that I'm only being shown the good-looking parts of the story. I'm not asking advertisers to change; they're doing their job. My job is (if I care about it) to read the labels myself and come to a personal decision of whether to drink/eat.
Frankly, we're all adults here (or have adults responsible for us); we can either be responsible for ourselves, and tell others to do the same, or we can sit around whining about how the devil made us do it. If you want to
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