To Propagate or To Not: The Media’s Take on Ads
By Nayelis Vargas
Propaganda within the media has always been an everlasting constant. Its been used to get ideas and thoughts across to people via journalists as well as non-journalists all for the sake of business. Whether it’s for nefarious purposes, an activist movement to evoke change, or maybe even to simply get people to buy a can of Pepsi, it’s always been there.
For me there haven’t really been any changes in as to who and how uses propaganda to get their messages across. The only real change that so far I have seen and I will acknowledge is the fact that by law, some of the things people and business would like to advertise have to be kept specifically for a certain audience.
For instance, you won’t catch a commercial for Jack Daniels, or even that popular commercial with Sarah Jessica Parker advertising the fanciful Stella Artois drink on Disney Channel or PBS. It just isn’t ethical.
You see, there are strategies that these people and businesses use in order to capture the people’s attention. They can either go about it by latching on to a certain popular trend, maybe even using the latest “it” person to portray what they want them to.
And in some cases, play up on our biggest fears and ignorance. Another example would be how Journalism and Society, the concept of popular websites such as Buzzfeed get paid to advertise and even, in fact, promote certain shows on their pages, just for their shows to get more viewers and whatnot.
Or even take how Edward Bernays, considered to be the “father” of Public relations, writings on public relations alone were so popular that the Third Reich Nazis began to use his work as guidance.
Propaganda has a lot of power. Its ability to move and to sway their audiences into believing that something is good, or much better, be it in regards to ideas or products speaks a lot about the power that the media has when combined with all these ads and commercials released on to our viewers.
Thank God for the concept of ethics and the laws that have to be followed in regards to propaganda, because it at least helps keep some control as to what gets out. And while we are a country that prides itself on our rights to freedom of speech, I think that sometimes even that can transform into the negative aspects of what people choose to propagate.
