Media+Discussion+2+Emilee

Media Discussion # 2

Stealth techniques are ethical in the same way that justifying breached privacy is. It’s a controversial subject, and for good reason. Basically, there are two sides to the issue; the perspective of the marketers insisting that it’s a necessary measure, and the view of their victims protesting against being deceived. In the same way, people can attempt to defend manufacturing bombs as a “self-defense” measure, just as someone can defend any immoral or questionable action.

On the other side of the issue, consider it this way; how can we consider anything marketers do ethical when these are the same people who stop at nothing in order to sell a product? In the media’s mirror, women become sex objects, men become the pigs who are obsessed with them, lives become hollow reflections of our own, and nothing is sacred—there isn’t anything that can’t be slaughtered, butchered, and sold back to us in tubes. Human expression becomes an act of consumption in order for marketers to brand a product and make cash. Are these really the people we can trust? Do they really have a right to complain?

It would probably be more excusable if the media would just admit to it. They don’t need to justify what they’re up to; we all know it’s really just another excuse that they’re using in order to shift the blame; “we know it’s wrong, but what can we do? They’ve really given us no choice.”

However, the importance of the differentiation between commercials is also controversial. When it’s weaved so seamlessly into your life, does it really matter? Besides the fact that you’d probably feel violated and cheated, the ability to discriminate is actually quite significant. For example, your reality is made up of the people and the experiences around you. If you live your life as though it was a movie, thinking other people’s thoughts and chasing ideals, then you’re not really living. In the same way, when you can’t tell the difference between what is real and what is manufactured, you become blind to truth and the lines (of morality, of ethics, of fantasy and reality) become inexorably blurred.

Or, think about it another way; if you learned that your favourite idol promoting racial rights and protesting against rude injustices was just a promo for foot cream, wouldn’t you feel at least a little disappointed?