It's Okay to Fib a Little, Right?

Bailey Kormick
bk399015@ohio.edu


TRUTH IN ADVERTISING

"When consumers see or hear an advertisement, whether it's on the Internet, radio or television or anywhere else, federal law says that ad must be truthful, not misleading" according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) when outlining it's rules on truth in advertising. It can be noted by this blurb from the FTC that truth in advertising is extremely important. By monitoring advertisements the FTC's goal is to protect the consumers. However, what happens when an advertisement doesn't tell a lie but also doesn't tell the whole truth? Is it wrong or is it okay?

WHEN THE WHOLE TRUTH MATTERS

There is one section of advertisements when scooting around the truth is unacceptable. That area is health. Advertisements involving medication, healthcare or medical procedures. If a consumer's life is at stake because of a certain product, method or procedure than the entire truth needs to be presented upfront and in a clear and easy way to understand. The American Medical Association has made steps to ensure the safety of the public when it comes to medical advertisements, "The AMA Truth in Advertising Campaign is designed to ensure health care providers clearly and honestly state their level of training, education and licensing. Patients desire to have this information when in face-to-face encounters as well as when they read health care providers' advertising, marketing and other communication materials."

Video provided by YouTube

THE RISK OF FIBBING

When it comes to telling a little fib to prove a point or make a product more interesting there is a fine line between stretching the truth and being misleading. Companies need to be wary of fibbing in their advertisements because if they cross the line than it could cost them consumers and the company. Stretching the truth is an exaggeration but a misleading advertisement is purposefully manipulating people. 

Video provided by YouTube

In the video above there are six examples of companies claiming to stretch the truth however, the line was crossed because they essentially just manipulated and completely lied to their consumers. Many of the companies were sued because of their falsehood which caused them to lose consumers, money and trust. It is up to companies who much they say or don't say in commercials and depending on what they choose to share can cost them greatly.

DO WE CARE?

It is a big ethical dilemma that companies face when stretching the truth in advertisements. So when they do manage to fib without crossing the line of evident manipulation, do consumers care? If fast food restaurants don't share their products calories in the ad but still provide the information if someone searched for it, does it matter that they weren't upfront about the facts? If a pizza place swears they'll deliver in less than 10 minutes every time, does it matter to consumers if they are actually there within the 10 minute window? To many, it is acceptable to exaggerate or to not be completely forward with all the information as long as it is there somewhere. Should companies care about the number of consumers that do care about that type of fibbing though? Is being a little unethical just as wrong as being completely unethical? 

Truth in Advertising

Dominic Massa
dm968315@ohio.edu

There have been countless controversies related to advertising throughout the advancement of technology.  Whether it be a radio commercial from two decades ago, or a television commercial broadcast today, advertising plays a vital role in forming society's ideas and opinions on specific topics.  A critical issue that exists today is false advertising, the advertising of untrue information.

In 2010, Kellogg's agreed to pay $5 million for false immunity claims (Photo via www.nutraingredients-usa.com)

Lawsuits

Of course, the overall goal of a company is to make a profit.  In order to do that, they typically engage in advertising to a specific group of people, or a target audience.  Although this has proven to be an effective strategy, it can also sometimes backfire, particularly due to false advertising.

Because companies try to target an audience, they also strive to make their product the most recognizable, or the "stand-out" product of its kind.  Attempting to gain more recognition, a company may choose a specific slogan to use when advertising its product.  This was the case for Red Bull GmbH, the distributor of the energy drink Red Bull.  An organization known for targeting a rather young generation, Red Bull GmbH ran advertisements in which its slogan, "Red Bull gives you wings!" was utilized to positively publicize the drink.  This had been a slogan used by the company for years, until a lawsuit arose in 2014.  Although rather unlikely, Benjamin Careathers sued Red Bull GmbH for false advertising.  He argued that after drinking Red Bull for over ten years, he still did not have wings, nor did he gain any additional athletic or intellectual ability.  Fearing an expensive and long-lasting trial, the company instead settled the case outside of court, electing to refund $10 to any customer who purchased the drink after 2002 and agreed to amend future advertising.  In total, however, Red Bull GmbH was forced to pay $13 million to settle the suit, half of which would go to an estimated 1.4 million consumers.  Despite the company's effort to positively publicize the drink, they instead experienced a major difficulty due to false advertising.

Other Legal Instances

Other companies have also been culprits of false advertising.  For instance, consider the case of Dannon, the distributor of Activia yogurt.  In 2010, Dannon was attempting to promote its yogurt to consumers, claiming Activia was both "clinically" and "scientifically" proven to regulate digestion and improve immune systems.  However, a Cleveland judge ordered Dannon to pay consumers up to $45 million in damages under the terms of a class action settlement.  In addition, the agreement reached forced Dannon to change its health claims for Activia.  This instance has been common in advertising before, as companies claim to have a product that is somehow dominant or innovative over another in hopes that more people will purchase the product.

Conclusion

Although attempts have certainly been made to end false advertising, it is almost inevitable that the phenomenon will continue.  There are definitely ways to avoid it, and many companies have figured out alternatives to promote their product.  Ultimately, the consequences of using false advertising are far more critical to the company than the minor benefits they may bring.

Ethics and Advertising

Mackenzie Kane
mk931915@ohio.edu


With the rise of social media, there has also been a significant rise in advertisement fraud. Ad fraud affects not only the advertisers who are ultimately forced to pay for it, but also the consumer of media.

If you or your friend is online and sees an ad for a website that has had a lot of traffic, now it's not enough to look at the views or clicks a link has gotten, because that could be the doing of bots.

As consumers of media, we've all been harassed by countless ads when trying to get to a website or watch a video. But we don't realize the amount of ads we see daily that are hidden in plain sight. Product placement has become a large way for advertisers to reach media consumers in an effective and foolproof way.

A blogpost written in 2015 listed four pros of product placement:

• Revenue: It allows for film companies to pay for the content. By taking money from sponsors and featuring their product in a film or television show, they're able to make the best content for their audience while also allowing for subtle (or not-so-subtle) advertising.
• Viewing experience: When product placement is done well, it puts an idea of the product in question into the viewers head and could result in them purchasing the product next time the opportunity arises. Although if it is not done well, viewers could experience an awkward mini-commercial while trying to enjoy a film.
• Increases profit margin: The amount of money used to create a film or television show is greatly reduced with product placement. However much money a company spends on product placement comes out of the price it took to film the movie, and the company only needs to make the difference at the box office to break even. The more money spent on product placement, the less money the film will have to bring in once it is released to theaters. 
• Awareness: If a moviegoer leaves a movie they have just seen happily, they are more likely to associate the products they saw in that movie in a more positive way.

Video courtesy Youtube

Product placement is one of the few ways advertisers know where their money is going. In a graphic posted on A Medium Corporation, it was said that 75% of clicks on 300x600 ad units are fraudulent. As an advertiser, why would you risk spending money on ad traffic when you know that you will end up paying a high price for false numbers? 

As a regular consumer of many media, I personally am a fan of the earned media approach to advertising. I would much rather see products in films and tv shows than having to sit through a 30-60 second ad about something the robot in my computer thinks I would like. 

Spot the Difference

by: Anna Wise
aw138915@ohio.edu

Native Ads Taking Over

There is no doubt that online and social media advertising have become a major way that advertisers and marketers are reaching consumers. However, the question of when these advertisements go too far within journalism has been raised and disputed as to whether or not consumers and online users can tell what is and is not sponsored content.

Can You Spot the Difference?

Many publications have made the effort to clearly label and call out sponsored content within their stories, but it still may be difficult to tell what exactly is native content and what is not. I think that native content is a little easier to identify on social media because a lot of times, especially with influencers, their posts and captions stand out much more and they are clearly holding a product that's branded and visible. Many of them also tag the brands and companies within their posts and will include "#ad" at the beginning or end of their caption.

Personally, I think that even when these things are not explicitly added to the posts, it is still pretty easy to tell what posts are sponsored and by who. However, as a strategic communication major I would consider myself pretty media literate and able to decipher this information pretty easily. Someone who does not know much about how advertising works or how sponsored content can appear within their feeds may not be as inclined to notice.

Native Ads in Journalism

When it comes to native ads within editorials and journalism in general, I agree that there should be some type of regulation in place because the ads can look more like actual stories than advertising content. A lot of times, the ads will look and feel similar to the content that is normally on the news site, and that can be deceptive to readers if there is not something clearly pointing out that the content is paid for.

Source: blogflicker.com

I think this differs from social media posts and influencers because they are not representing entire publications, and journalists are meant to inform the public. Influencers' ads are also, in my opinion, more compact and easy to avoid (I can easily skip through a celebrity's instagram story of them promoting a product) but a lot of times if I am reading what I think is a story by a news source I trust, I may not realize that what I am reading is actually sponsored content.

Looking to the various codes created to help journalists remain ethical, I think that in the interest of transparency publications need to be seriously careful when dealing with native ads. I think that if they had some sort of guidelines in place to disclose when content is coming from advertisers and brands, there would be more trust within journalism, which is needed now more than ever. Journalists need to be able to stand up to interference with their publications and take responsibility for when they choose to deal with advertisers. I think the public is owed that honesty.

Media and Advertising Consumption

Ally Lanasa
al887715@ohio.edu

As students studying journalism and public relations, we understand the need for advertising to finance media outlets and TV shows. However, we are not immune to the frustration of seeing pop-up ads while reading articles online or the constant ad breaks while trying to binge-watch a show on Hulu. People are tired of being sold to. As Emily Nussbaum writes in a 2015 article for The New Yorker, "Advertising is TV's original sin." At the core of TV is commercialism. Advertising controlled the length of programming in the early days of TV. Originally six minutes of ads were permitted per hour. Now, it has increased to about 14 minutes.

According to a 2014 article by The Guardian, an average child sees 16,000 commercials on TV a year. Advertising to children raises an ethical dilemma. One problem that arises from targeting children is training them to choose products associated with celebrities. The focus is less about the product's value. Children need to be taught how to be cynical and critical about the media messages they receive daily, but it is not realistic to rely solely on media literacy training.

It is also often hard to decipher whether product placement in TV shows is paid or not. One example Nussbaum mentions in The New Yorker article is how a character on "The Fosters" promoted the Kindle Paperwhite e-reader by name and listed its features.  There is good and bad integration. Good integration is subtler and by people we trust. Why do we feel we can trust certain celebrities more than others? How have they established a rapport with us?

Courtesy of Product Placement Blog

The lines are murkier when it comes to online advertising, especially Facebook advertising. On Facebook, the ads are integrated into the Facebook News Feed, appearing as "organic content," or posts from friends we are connected to on the social media site. Mobile phones have been the primary reason for this integration because there is only a single column of space. Thus, the organic content and the advertisements get blurred together. In the new ad system, Facebook made the ads a central feature in the News Feed on the mobile screen in response to the screen limitations. The ad system also tracks geographic locations, personal interests, characters, behavior and other information Facebook users share digitally. Facebook allows advertisers to serve pages into the News Feeds of people they are not connected with, targeting the interests of users it has collected through the users' activity on the social media platform. When the pages appear in the News Feed, users can react to them the same way they react to other posts.

Will the separation between advertisements and organic content become clearer? As media outlets transition to digital platforms, will media consumers continue to feel sold to due to online advertising? Will social media platforms adopt stricter advertising policies to avoid targeting children? Are Ad blockers the best solution to solving the issue of excessive and fraudulent advertisements? There is not a clear, ethical solution for the issues of untruthful advertising, and it is unclear what the future of advertising will be.

Journalists and Sources

Hunter Graffice
hg551416@ohio.edu

When Jim Rutenberg discussed coverage of the #MeToo Movement and Harvey Weinstein, one of the most prevalent ethical issues was how to protect sources.

In the first instance, The New York Times received a report from a lawyer claiming to have sources who were harassed by Roger Ailes, a television executive for Fox News. Rutenberg said the lawyer gave them six hours to publish, but some of the sources were anonymous. With a rush to publish and anonymous sources, they decided not to publish it and lost the story. However, this correlates with the SPJ Code of Ethics, which urges journalists to think about anonymous sources and their reason for being anonymous. The New York Times had a hard decision to make and it did cost them the story, but they did the best to evaluate the sources and the potential repercussions.

Photo courtesy of The Express Tribune

In regard to Weinstein, Rutenberg and others at The New York Times made sure to listen to sources extensively. They reassured their sources and encouraged them to seek justice, but also were careful in protecting them and making sure they weren't being exploited.

The debate wrestled over the idea of public interest vs sources privacy. Obviously, the public should know about the horrific actions of Weinstein, but the team had to report it delicately in order to protect their sources. The individuals could be harassed, threatened or worse once their names were public. 

Rutenberg said that this likely played a factor in the recent Kavanaugh hearings. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate, but in the end, Kavanaugh was confirmed. Rutenberg said this was likely due to the fact that there wasn't enough time to completely analyze the sources. Dr. Ford was able to testify, but there was not enough time for a complete investigation. The other source, Deborah Ramirez, claimed to have also been sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh. However, Rutenberg said that there were things in her past that undermined her credibility and made her accounts less trustworthy. The rushed confirmation couldn't explore these accusations and the allegations were never proven true or false. Yet, Dr. Ford and the other accusers will certainly face, and have already faced, enormous amounts of backlash, harassment, and hatred toward them. 

Photo courtesy of USA Today

As journalists, it is our responsibility to make sure our sources are accurate before reporting the story. There also is an obligation to weigh their right to privacy vs the public interest and help protect them as much as possible. Finally, you need to build a trust with your sources so that they don't become panicked or feel exploited as your story is going out. Rutenberg suggested meeting sources in person to help build a confidence between reporter and source that makes them feel comforted and safe. Once that trust is built, the source will be much more willing to help with the story and you will both feel better about the story overall. 

To help our sources, we must weigh their personal privacy against public interest, provide them with comfort and safety and make sure we understand where they are coming from as a source. If we do all of these things, our stories will be significantly improved and could make the difference in huge issues for our country.

Beautifully Broken Takeaways

Julia Cogliano
jc493114@ohio.edu

Movie Overview. 
Beautifully Broken, a movie that is based off of true events, focuses on real life scenarios. The movie starts off with three families; one in the United States, along with two families in Rwanda, where a genocide took place in the 1990s. We watch these families connect and evolve over time. This movie has twists and turns that make viewers think about things that may not have been brought up recently.

One Planet, Two Different Worlds.
Although this movie focuses on families who both struggled in different ways, where they lived determined the lifestyle that they had. It was very eye opening and sad to see how in the blink of an eye a Tutsi father named William's life changed, and life on the other side of the world was not changed by these serious events. With the genocide beginning immediately after the Hutu president's plane was shot down, this father is forced to protect his family in ways that he may not have ever thought that he would have to. This is something that although may have saddened Americans, from my understanding, it was not a huge topic of conversation. William had to move his family in a rush from place to place to avoid the Hutu extremists, to keep his family away from a certain death. The comparison of different events going on at the same time all around the world made me realize that life is a privilege and that things can change at any time, therefore life should not be taken for granted.

Everyone Struggles. 
In one scene of this movie, when William's daughter, Aimee, is talking to her father, she claims that the teenage girl from Nashville, Andrea, has "never struggled in her life."  As viewers of the movie, we had learned over time that in fact, this statement was not true. Andrea had struggled very badly with something traumatizing that she did not feel comfortable sharing with anyone else. William humbly reminded Aimee how everyone has struggled, even if we think that they have not. This is something that I feel our society as a whole commonly forgets about in everyday life. Sometimes it is easy to assume that the person who looks like they have it all, may not actually have it all. Life can be deceiving, and appearances are not always what they seem to be. My take away from this point is that you should always be kind to everyone no matter what. I also want to continue to remember that although it may not be obvious that someone has struggled in the past, or is currently struggling with something, that chances are every person has been through something that has effected them negatively. Therefore, you should always be kind and considerate to each persons feelings.


History. 
This movie had some great hidden messages about staying humble and kind that I feel as if should are important to keep in mind in everyday life to help make the world a better place. However, there is also a reminder in this movie that a huge tragedy took place in the world less than 25 years ago. This genocide began in 1990, and I find it important to be educated on our worlds history. Attached is a link about the Rwandan Genocide that I found informative, and educating.