True Enough and Advertising

                I was most interested in the last chapter of True Enough about “Truthiness”.  It was eye opening to think about how consumerism has affected our lives so much.  In this chapter of the book Manjoo talks about how news stories can be tainted by endorsements.  In stories presented on the news, many times the anchors find ways to casually embed product endorsements in the news.  The first example presented in the chapter was about Robin Raskin’s crusade of telling everyone about how video iPods are dangerous for children to own because she claimed that they would be a gateway for children to watch porn, or as she put it, “a pedophile’s playground” (183). 

                Raskin continued to bash video iPods and her views were expressed on several news stations.  In her news story, she suggested several “kid friendly” tech products better suited for children.  Suddenly her anti-iPod campaign became less about children pornography and more about endorsing products for other companies.  In approaching news stations to run her story, she had the goal of finding more outlets to promote the products of her sponsors.  What was most concerning to me was that Raskin wasn’t even hiding her endorsements.  She herself said “I actually joked with my own colleagues that, ‘Hey, I’m off to go do Whore TV’…I was fully aware that that’s what it was.  And yet it’s such a commonplace thing.  I mean, there are people hawking drugs, guns, war.  The worst that could happen to someone watching my segment is that you might buy a game you don’t like” (188).  Although by reading True Enough we have learned a lot about how it is impossible to be totally unbiased and that people naturally (and sometimes by choice) perceive things differently, but the fact that the media has taken a step further to shove advertisement in our faces just seems so disconcerting to me.  Already, we are constantly surrounded by advertisements and companies are trying to find more ways to reach consumers.  Allowing advertisements to be finagled into the news adds more bias to the information we are receiving. 

                Incorporating advertisements into the news is making information even more biased and takes away from the important information and focuses it on the endorsements.  Manjoo also talks about how the government uses money to sway people’s opinions as well.  He talks about how people were paid off to promote No Child Left Behind and a platform focusing on strengthening American marriages during the Bush administration.  By paying people to promote these ideals, the promotion becomes a conflict of interest and it is hard to trust that the person endorsing the idea; because all they care about is making money, not supporting an idea they strongly believe in. 

                Although it is important to have a critical eye when evaluating the credibility of information, it is apparent that there is another thing we should keep our eyes open for: advertisement.  Our society has become too focused on spending and making money, and this is evident in the fact that when watching the news and trying to learn about what is going around in the world we cannot escape advertisements sneakily telling us to buy stuff.