PerthNorg

Free Advertising for Crime and Tradgedy

Everywhere you look bad things are happening, and thanks to news we are very well aware of the sinister, the dangerous and uncomfortable. The way mainstream news is presented contributes to the construction of what composes society. We receive the information according to patterns of distribution from different media, which means we immerse ourselves in articles from newspapers, television, radio and internet. We do not just watch the news, these mediums are host to a number of other information types, advertising, entertainment, statistics, games etc. but for the purpose of this article I will compare the news and advertising in order to analyse whether or not we are advertising bad news.

News is the reporting of events of current interest broadcast via media such as newspapers and television. It is the quintessential pulse of the adult world, keeping us informed about the world at large and our place in it. Because the news is so important, there is a set of ethical codes regarding journalism, the profession which supplies the news, in order to present unadulterated, unbiased, legal information to preserve the integrity of the information being presented to so many. The news is a source of liberty to many nations who protect the freedom of press in law. Advertising on the other hand is one of the most unethical information types on any media.

Advertising takes advantage of us. Advertisers find out our weaknesses, our desires and then build a presentation which exploits them in order to make money out of it. It means they literally are the lowest of the low, at best adverts profane meaning simply to stoop you into buying into their message and therefore the product. The advertising industry combines a wonderful selection of logical fallacies which we are so willing to believe because it means our desires, wants and needs are addressed in some form. In the same way the news constructs society and reality, by reinforcing the same message and sentiment over and over we become addicted to the choices made available to us by advertisers. Our social perceptions can be heavily influenced by advertisements.

The news can be guilty of acting like advertisements. If we consider the elements of advertising repetition, theme, product, opinion, objective, brand then we analyse to see if the news behaves like advertising, if not intentionally, at least through circumstance. Consider repetition; on the news every night we are guilty of getting the same social opinions: perspectives are constantly re-enforced about themes such as crime, money, war and politics, because of the news and the type of news being reported we can draw logically fallacious conclusions similar to those we derive from advertisements. Crime is senseless, money is power, war is good vs evil and politics is corrupt. It is difficult to escape these perceptions because we are bombarded with them and re-enforce them.

The news can run deeper than generalities and we can draw vastly inferior conclusions based on our perceptions that news is a tallying of statistics, rather than a presentation of new and current events. The way a protest is reported in the news in China is much different to the way a protest is reported in the news in our own country. We condemn the most heinous of unknown people to their punishments, without context and we are happy to have made a statistic out of another (villain) risk to our society. Advertising the news through circumstance extends beyond misjudgement and repetition however, it also includes the types of stories that make news, the opportunity cost of the news.

For assumed economic reasons, a news organisation will choose a burned down house over a rescued cat, they'll choose the house in which someone was killed out of the possible burning houses, and they will choose the house in which arson was suspected over the house in which it was not. This process repeats itself in other news areas such as crime, money and politics. We are exposed to the grim, the most gruesome and enduring of events because it is considered a better option than an alternative. Excessively though it is only the most 'newsworthy' of stories which make it to the most prevalent media. In years to come 'newsworthy' will be found in a thesaurus next to the words macabre, grim, dooming and aggressive.

Even more intriguing is how these choices are re-enforced to the point where we will consider some things news and some things not news, without really evaluating their importance or relativity. Acts of charity are lower on the list than burglary, a successful and important decision in the business world is unknown next to the slip ups and criminal ventures of executives, and the noble criminal, acting for the benefit of the poor and the weak is now just as guilty as the one that is taking advantage of social weaknesses. We cannot report these things because it jeopardises what we perceive as news and the conventional social practices of the community. The news, the grim and bad news we receive advertises itself, it protects itself and propagates itself and because of this I wonder, is it responsible for the continuance of these negative acts?

If we continue to endear stories about paedophilia, graffiti, domestic abuse, home invasion, car theft, extortion, etc, are we not promoting these things according to the generic conventions of advertising? The problem with these stories is that they do not grow, evolve or provide new information about what is actually going on. We cannot help but form and promote types of opinions, without properly assessing what it is we are receiving (except for the same old rhetoric regarding the negative). In this regard we are guilty of promoting the negative side of society through repetition, theme, product, opinion, objective, brand all of which are provided for us in the news. So are we guilty of giving bad news free advertising? I think so.