MICHAEL SCHUDSON

If there are signs that Americans bow to the gods of advertising, there are equally indications that people find the gods ridiculous. It is part of the popular culture that advertisements are silly.

American advertisers rely on 'essentially illogical' approaches to determine their advertising budgets.

Sales may lead to advertising as much as advertising leads to sales.

If advertising is not an official or state art, it is nonetheless clearly art.

The effectiveness of advertising depends on the amount and kind of product information available to consumers... advertising will be more successful the more impoverished the consumer's information environment.

Buy me and you will overcome the anxieties I have just reminded you of.

Chances are that neither the client nor the agency will ever know very much about what role the ad has played in sales or profits of the client, either short-term or long-term.

The story of journalism, on a day-to-day basis, is the story of the interaction of reporters and officials

Advertisements ordinarily work their wonders, to the extent that they work at all, on an inattentive public.

The power of ads rests more in the repetition of obvious exhortations than in the subtle transmission of values.

If advertising is not an official or state art, it is nonetheless clearly art.

Sales may lead to advertising as much as advertising leads to sales.

Buy me and you will overcome the anxieties I have just reminded you of.

Advertisements ordinarily work their wonders, to the extent that they work at all, on an inattentive public.

The power of ads rests more in the repetition of obvious exhortations than in the subtle transmission of values.

If there are signs that Americans bow to the gods of advertising, there are equally indications that people find the gods ridiculous. It is part of the popular culture that advertisements are silly.

Most criticism of advertising is written in ignorance of what actually happens inside these agencies.

It is very likely that many firms spend more on advertising than, for their own best interests, they should.

The effectiveness of advertising depends on the amount and kind of product information available to consumers... advertising will be more successful the more impoverished the consumer's information environment.

Chances are that neither the client nor the agency will ever know very much about what role the ad has played in sales or profits of the client, either short-term or long-term.

Advertising generally works to reinforce consumer trends rather than to initiate them.

American advertisers rely on 'essentially illogical' approaches to determine their advertising budgets.

Expensive, well-executed, and familiar ads convince the investors, as nothing in the black and white tables of assets and debits can, that the company is important and prosperous.

Even if, as is generally the case, everything that the ad says about the product is scrupulously honest, or at any rate scrupulously avoids outright dishonesty, the implication of the direct address of most commercials - that the announcer speaks with the viewer's welfare at heart - is fraudulent.

It should be apparent that the belief in objectivity in journalism, as in other professions, is not just a claim about what kind of knowledge is reliable. It is also a moral philosophy, a declaration of what kind of thinking one should engage in, in making moral decisions. It is, moreover, a political commitment, for it provides a guide to what groups one should acknowledge as relevant audiences for judging one's own thoughts and acts.

The story of journalism, on a day-to-day basis, is the story of the interaction of reporters and officials

Objectivity, in this sense, means that a person's statements about the world can be trusted if they are submitted to established rules deemed legitimate by a professional community. Facts here are not aspects of the world, but consensually validated statements about it.

Different groups are differentially vulnerable to advertising; and their vulnerability varies not so much with the character or quantity of advertisements as with the informational resources they can claim by age, education, station in life, and government guarantees of consumer protection.

Advertising is much less powerful than advertisers and critics of advertising claim, and advertising agencies are stabbing in the dark much more than they are practicing precision microsurgery on the public consciousness.