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CounterPunch
October
28, 2002
Advertising Deregulated:
The Inalienable
Right to Mislead Millions
by CAROL NORRIS
Just a few years ago, the practice of advertising
prescription drugs to us common folk was considered unethical.
Now days you can hardly watch TV for five minutes without some
commercial promising to cure the affliction it encourages you
to be worried about. And as the drug companies spend billions
each year on advertising, the formerly unethical is now acceptable,
ubiquitous.
I have a Master's degree in Mass Communication
with a specialization in Advertising from what is considered
to be one of the best communication schools in the country.
(Not a shred of pride here, believe me.) There we learned that
the job of networks is not to entertain people, but to deliver
credit card-carrying eyeballs to advertisers. TV shows and
their stars are merely the means of transportation. We also
discussed the American culture's fear of aging, the need of
people to belong, and how the things of consumerism are attempts
to fill the void so many of us feel. And while not cited on
the syllabus, there was no mistaking that we were to make the
most of those fears and those needs - not to mention actually
helping to create them - persuading people to buy things they
don't need, convincing them Brand X Wrinkle Cream is something
they have no hope of living happily without it.
After graduating, I worked as a creative
concept developer and copywriter, whoring my writing skills
as I helped pimp products to the masses. But as unapologetically
manipulative as my job sometimes was, there was always a line
drawn in the advertising sand. There were guidelines to strain
against, but ultimately follow. And there was an ethic, in
my agency at least, of thou shalt not distort the facts beyond
recognition and thou shalt be able to look yourself in the mirror
after an ad campaign. But that was way back in 1989. And just
as ChemLawn renames itself TruGreen: the times, they are a'
changing.
The FDA, absolutely, positively, cross-my-heart-hope-to-die
not a special interest lackey, whose job it is to police the
food, drug and cosmetics industries, says it is committed to
reducing false or misleading advertising. But somehow, there
seems to be a disconnect between what it says it wants and
what it is doing. This year it sent out 60% fewer warning letters
than last year to advertisers regarding misleading or distorted
facts. Representative Waxman from California notes that, "there
has been a dramatic drop in enforcement actions." These
warning letters are the first step in the FDA's policing tactics.
Maybe there were 60% fewer infractions, you argue. As drug ads
are burgeoning, drug sales are booming and the pharmaceutical
companies have ever-growing political clout, this is highly
unlikely. In addition, those in the industry most assuredly
know that at this very moment the FDA is actively considering
relaxing the advertising rules that govern them. How hard it
must be to follow what you know might soon be outdated rules.
And even if the FDA was handing out warning
letters as fast as they could print them out, the Bush administration
is preparing to relax regulations for these ads even further,
potentially tying the hands of the FDA. The administration
reportedly plans to argue that drug manufacturers and their
ads are protected under free speech. (Robert McNamara, the Secretary
of Defense in 1965 said the bombing raids north of Saigon that
killed 2 million civilians were a form of communication. Dear
God, please don't tell Bush's handlers and speechwriters that.
Because before you know it, they'll have him spouting out that
bombing the smithereens out of Iraq is a form of free speech
and assassination of evil foreign leaders is just a little constitutionally
protected chat with their governments.)
Last time I checked, the Constitution
is supposed to protect the Homo sapiens, you say. You better
check again. Corporations are in the process of getting the
same rights as humans. And if people really understood what
giving corporations personhood status meant, they'd be scared
and angry and calling their Congressperson. But most don't and
most won't because who is going to tell them? Certainly not
the corporate media. And except for a conscience-guided few
- and we have one less now with the death of Paul Wellstone
- politicians aren't going to be the ones who mention it on
the campaign trail. And neither the Democrats nor the Republicans
can spare a finger to point at their fellow congressperson in
their hallowed halls because their hands are too busy counting
out corporate campaign contributions.
Granting corporate personhood implies,
among a great many other things, that just like you can tell
a little white lie by distorting or omitting facts to your kid
or your boss, perhaps in the name of the greater good, corporations
may distort and omit, too - in the name of their greater good.
And in CorporateSpeak, the greatest good is maximum profits
for shareholders.
The difference between you and a corporation
is that the information corporations might distort is in newspapers,
magazines, on the sides of buses, and on national TV. The great
majority of people take what's in these ads as undisputed fact
because we can't bear to believe companies might just blatantly
misrepresent themselves or we trust there are laws and watchdog
agencies making sure advertisers tell the truth.
If the FDA continues loosening enforcement
and the administration pushes deregulation this will, no doubt,
pave the way for advertisers of all stripes to do the same.
Political ads, car ads, baby food ads all may follow in the
path of the drug ads, if they haven't already. And so begins
the dangerous, slippery slope, starting from the right (of
those with enough money) to advertise their goods and services
sliding on down to the right to mislead millions under the protective
umbrella of the Constitution.
And corporate advertisements could very
well and quite legally run amok:
60 Second Spot: Our Product Cures Everything!!
EXT. PARK - DAY
We see women, dogs, Latinos, Asians,
elderly, adolescents, butterflies, those with mental illness,
skinny, stout, blind, beautiful, wheelchair users, gays, transgenders
and newborns - a veritable cross section of America plays,
laughs, and picnics in a park resplendent with flowers and green
grass and never-ending joy.
VOICEOVER
(woman's voice, warm and encouraging)
It is a good time to be alive because
finally, the day has come: there is a little periwinkle pill
that cures everything. Fighting a cold? Throw away your tissue.
Got breast cancer? We cure breast cancer in 44% of our patients.
Got a deviated septum? Not to worry! Can't breathe? Now you
will able to breathe a sigh of relief as you take your periwinkle
pill just once a day. And there are no side effects worth mentioning!
DISCLAIMER (in 4-point type at bottom
of screen, flashed for 3 seconds): We cannot substantiate the
above claims. Furthermore, we do not have to substantiate any
of the above claims. But we included this disclaimer at the
behest of our yipping attorneys - just to be safe. But remember
we don't have to tell you that of those 44% of people whose
breast cancer we cured, 95% then died from uterine cancer as
a result of using our product. It's not a lie, really. It's
just a little omission. And we didn't say our product can fix
your deviated septum, we just said you shouldn't worry about
it. And about those side effects that aren't worth mentioning:
some of us have suggested to the FDA that they get rid of the
requirement of mentioning side effects altogether. We know if
you understood the risks from the side effects, or how little
we've actually tested this product; you wouldn't beg your doctor
to prescribe it in the first place. So, it sure isn't worth
mentioning - to us anyway. No lie. Just a different way of looking
at it.
All this distorting and omitting may
not get us into heaven, but it's kosher down here on earth.
It's a guaranteed right, for us at least. You dissenter types
who are against us and not with us, your free speech rights
are, well... sorta free. You can say whatever you want. Go ahead.
But, you run the risk of getting detained at airports and spied
on and things like that (Our little chartreuse pill cures dissent
- and diarrhea and toenail fungus - by the way.) Unlike you,
we're betting that our CEOs and their advertising agencies
will never get stopped at airports for exercising their right
to free speech in their misleading ads.
When Bush comes to town to give a speech,
you human people who want to express your dissenting views get
cordoned off and watched over at the little designated 'Free
Speech' area - far, far from Bush and the cameras. But for us
corporate 'people,' the world is our Free Speech Area - and
our Free Enterprise Area, too. This privilege is extended to
all our big business brothers (not too many sisters) from every
sector of corporate America.
In fact, our amalgamating corporate plutocracy
can all but do whatever it wants. We can pollute where we want.
(The guys over at the EPA tell us that the Bush administration
is in the process of further easing the enforcement of industrial
air pollution regulation. So, I guess we'll just have to make
more pills to mask the symptoms of asthma and the other diseases
the pollution causes.) We can buy off politicians when we want
and influence commissions that are supposed to investigate our
transgressions. We contributed to the campaign funds of many
of their members, you see. We were planning ahead. Some of them
even used to work for us or served on our boards. We helped
make them rich. They like us. Come to think of it, in many cases
they are we. And we are they. We can union bust when we want.
(The government, God love it, likes to help us out on that one.)
We can get you to think it is really cool to pay us incredibly
inflated prices to wear our clothes and then walk around and
advertise our brand logos all over you. We can misrepresent
our earnings when we want; allow our CEOs to earn more than
400x what our average worker makes (often helping those workers
lose their life savings while we CEOs skip off to our vacations
with our multi-million dollar bonuses with hardly a slap on
the wrist). We can exploit foreign workers when we want (regularly
buying off those delightfully obliging foreign leaders to do
so). We can despoil the cultural and environmental diversity
of the Earth. We can put mom and pop stores out of business,
replacing them with multi-national superstores, corroding local
economies and their sense of community, thus putting the wealth
and power into the hands of but a very few. We can put our money
in offshore accounts to avoid taxes when we want. We can distort
and omit facts in our ads like this one when we want. Whew,
that's a lot. And we know it. We are downright giddy, drunk
from our power and our freedom. We're dancin' the Corporate
Jig all the way to our foreign bank accounts. And there's no
end in sight! God, it is good to be us.
Thank you George Bush.
Thank you to former administrations,
too.
Thank you Congress.
And most of all, thank you American people
for your blind devotion and your unquestioning willingness to
go into debt for our profit.
WE LOVE YOU.
FADE TO BLACK
Carol Norris
is a reformed advertising copywriter, psychotherapist and freelance
writer. She can be contacted at writingforjustice@hotmail.com.
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October 26
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