All the News that Fits
In today’s world it seems as if the news has become a source of entertainment rather than an informative TV program. An individual can no longer watch the news and know that all the information they are receiving is 100% accurate. Sometimes, the individual does not even know if they are getting all the information they should be. The thought of “Am I informed as possible?” may constantly lure in individuals minds, and if it does not, it should be taken into consideration. As Donna Woolfolk Cross states in her article All the News that Fits, “the very name ‘television news show’ reveals its main purpose: to entertain, not to inform.” Rather than the news remaining a serious matter, it has turned into a source of entertainment, promoting the current status quo. Rather than keeping individuals informed, it has turned into an area concerned with the appearance of anchormen/women and distracting viewers from the true meanings of what is going on around the world. The original purpose of the news—to inform—has been lost, leaving individuals with less information than ever.
In All the News that Fits, Cross states that “the news shows promote the messenger above the message”—the network has become more concerned with who the person is delivering the message rather than the actual deliverance of the message. This idea seems to reflect our current society. Today, people are mostly judged upon what they look like and what they wear. People have forgotten about the old saying, “It’s what’s on the inside that counts” and have only guided their attention towards what they look like on the outside. News programs have helped to further this idea—looks are more important than the quality of the individual/information—by hiring those individuals that are considered to be “better looking.” It is very rare that an individual will turn on a news show and see an anchorman/women, weatherman/women, or sports reporter that would be considered “unattractive.” This idea is proven when WABC-TV in New York hired an anchorwoman whose only previous experience was as a California Fashion Model. Statements such as “After that, the news could be emitted from women only if they were unwrinkled. It also helped to be blond and to have a name like Portia or Melanie,” prove how important appearance has become. News programs have become too concerned with the appearance of the individual reporting the news than the quality of the news being reported. In this sense, Americans seem to have lost their individual freedoms to obtain as much information as possible.
Many distractions have been added into news programs to make reported matters less serious than they actually are. The anchormen/women downplay the reported information by making it seem as if everything will be okay. Elements such as music have been added to make the news seem “cheerful”—downplaying the seriousness of reported stories. Aforementioned distraction—appearance of the reporter—speaks for itself. Another distraction, Happy News has also been utilized to decrease anxiety of the individuals watching those stories that may cause them to feel this way. Happy news is considered to be the cheerful interplay between broadcasters in between news stories. Happy news provides entertainment for those individuals watching the news program but causes a loss of quality in translation of information. With this addition of Happy News the individual may forget about the story they previously listened to, which is exactly what the news reporter wants. Donna Woolfolk states, “The Philosophy behind Happy News is to keep the viewer from being too upset by the news reports he is hearing,” proving how much reporters downplay the seriousness of a story. Happy News just provides another distraction to the viewer. It tries to end the news segment on a happy note, giving the idea to viewers that nothing is wrong and everything is going to be okay—which sometimes isn’t always true.
Although we may have access to more information than ever in today’s society, it seems as we are less informed than our country has ever been. We have access to all this information, but still do not have the knowledge we should. Cross states, “Seven out of ten people now get their information about the world exclusively from TV. Yet one recent study revealed that these people can no longer give even one reason to justify their choice of a particular political candidate or policy,” leading one to question, why? Why can we not formulate a reason? Why, with all this information, are we still unable to create justifications? This could be contributed to the fact that we are being denied information that does not fit the news “entertainment standards.” If the story doesn’t have the wiggle, and doesn’t fit the way that the news reporters want it to, then it does not get any attention. If the reporter cannot create a visual, entertainment appeal, then the story is ignored. As stated, “Stories about banks robbing people cannot be made as ‘entertaining’ as shots of people robbing banks.” This proves that although one story may be more serious, if it doesn’t meet the entertainment standard, then it is “lost in translation.” This reveals the idea of how under informed this country actually is. It seems to me as if there is so much information out there that we are not getting and that could be helpful to us. So much thought goes into reporting the story and making it entertaining—with the use of a tease, attention-grabber, hook/incitement, then finally the story with some sort of dramatic conflict, and a snapper closer—that if the story does not fit all these aspects, it is forgotten about. To me, this storytelling use is not news at all. It is just a distracter, a way to calm us and forget about the big picture.
So after all this information and analysis the number one question I want to ask is, how informed are we as a country? Are we getting all the information necessary to broaden our horizons of knowledge? The news has become so concerned with miniature stories such as helping a pet foundation, adopting a dog, local house fires, and other small news stories that they have lost the big picture. We are not being given information on big stories that are important and will influence the future of our country. Those stories are being downplayed to ease the nerves of the audience and make them less likely to change the channel. It seems as if we have lost the informative aspect of the news and it has just turned into another entertainment source.
Virgin Vinyl, Real Counterfeit Diamonds, and Genuine Imitation Leather: With these Worlds I Can Sell You Anything
Imagine this scenario: you’re sitting in front of the TV, have not eaten all day, and suddenly a commercial comes on for McDonald’s making their hamburgers looking better than ever. You immediately being to crave McDonald’s so you get into your car and are on your way. You get to McDonald’s order a #5 and are finally satisfied. Well, that advertisement got exactly what they wanted out of you. Advertisements have become a major source of income for Television networks. As the years continue on television advertising becomes more expensive and television networks make more and more money off them. As William Lutz states, “Of all the media used by advertisers, television remains the most important, the most dominant, the most influential, and the most expensive” proving how influential TV advertisements have become in today’s society.”
Over a life span, an individual will be exposed to millions of advertisements. All of these advertisements have one thing in common—get the customer to buy the product. No matter how alike two products may be, the supplier and advertiser will say/do anything to get the product sold. The use of deceptive words and cliff hangers about the product make the individual more likely to buy the product. Much time and effort is put into advertisements of particular products with their major concern being that of making money. The advertiser seeks to get you in a trance that takes you so much into the product that you could not imagine not having the product. They lure you in with bright appearances and catchy words giving you a sense of what it could feel like if you had the product. Advertising has become a large source of information, proven by eight-twelve year olds who were able to identify more brands of beer rather than presidents of the United States. To me, this seems like a problem, especially the fact that it is beer they more know about than presidents. So much information about new products is obtained through these advertisements and we fail to realize how deceptive these advertisements are being. 64% of teenagers have reported getting information on new products from the Television and 36% of teenagers report buying the product after seeing the advertisement. Once again, the advertisers achieved their goal—get the viewer to buy the product.
Although many people may claim that they are not influenced by advertisements it is quite obvious that a majority of people around the world are. Truth is, if we were not many businesses would probably no longer be running. Advertisers use strategies to attract a customer to their product. Viewers may not realize it, but most of the time advertisers are relaying a message that doesn’t even have a meaning behind it. Advertisers make use of “Weasel Words” in order to act as if they are making a particular claim about a product when in reality they are making no claim at all. Weasel Words are heard in almost every advertisement consisting of those words such as “help,” “virtually,” “new and improved,” “acts,” “works,” “like” and many others. With every single one of these words, the advertiser uses some sort of deception. When the advertiser states a product is “new and improved” the audience is lured into the product thinking it is better than the previous version However, the only thing that happened to make it “new” was that it underwent a material functional change. But how do you know what this change is, and how do you know if it was a good change? This is pure deceit. Also, “improved” doesn’t mean the product was necessarily made better; all it means is that a change was made to make it different from before. Advertisers use these two words to make individuals think the product is going to be better now since it is “new and improved” when it fact, there is no proof that is actually is. The use of these weasel words gets the individual to think about a product in the way the advertiser wants them too.
“Help” is the number one weasel word used in advertisements. The advertiser strategically places the “claim” of the product after using the word help in hopes that the individual will forget they said “help” instead of stop/eliminate and focus only on the so called claim. Until now I did not realize how often the word help was used in advertisements. And now that I know of this weasel word I have realized how much it is used to get a “claim” across. Not until now did I notice the use of help in medicine commercials. Rarely does a commercial promoting medicine use the word stop or eliminate the sickness but always “helps” the sickness. Individuals forget the meaning of “help” when watching advertisements, and this is exactly what the advertiser wants. Having an idea of this weasel word helps to reveal what the ad is truly saying—nothing at all. In fact, advertisements constantly use unfinished words or incomplete statements leaving the individual with no information at all, which is something we as an audience fail to realize. Countless times in car commercials the announcer will state “5 times faster” or “5 times better quality.” But 5 times faster then what? 5 times better quality then what? This leads to the idea that we are left uninformed about particular products for a particular reason—so that we will buy it.
Advertisers use so many tricks and words to advertise a particular product. The use of these tricks and words leads one to imagine that much information we are given is just a lie. The fact that advertisers can do such things and deceive millions of people in order to sell a product is quite baffling. This leads me to question, how much of this information we are given on a product is true? It seems to me that all trust in media advertisements is slowly diminishing.
Fits Articles
This commercial fits the idea of use of Weasel words discussed in William Lutz’s passage. This commercial utilizes two different weasel words. It highlights the words “New & Improved” by having them written within the commercial and also stating them. The commercial also uses “helps” another very common weasel word.
This Dayquil commercial also reflects William Lutz’s discussion of the use of Weasel Words in advertisements. Dayquil uses the statement “help get back your energy” and also the word “relieve” many times. These two words—help and relieve—insinuate that the medicine will relieve symptoms but not necessarily get rid of them. It is also noticed that help is used in areas where it can easily be missed and seems as if it is stated faster than the rest of the commericial.
Strongly affected by
Yaz Birth Control
These two Yaz commercials highlight the Yaz birth control pill before and after FDA involvement due to so many problems that were occurring with this pill. This commercial strongly affected me because being a woman it is essential to know—if you choose to—what pill you are putting into your body. The fact that a commercial had to be re-made to address problems with this pill highlights the idea that not enough information was given to begin with. This ultimately affected me in a positive way for it gave me the knowledge that I cannot only pay attention to commercials for a particular birth control medication and that further research on it may be needed.
Can’t believe they’re on TV commericials
I think this commercial ultimately speaks for itself. I never thought Sleepy’s would advertise a Sealy’s mattress in a way such as this. The fact that this is promoting “just a little lovin’, early in the day” to attract viewers to a mattress, and is aired on TV shocks me. The “Sealy Afterglow” title of this commercial reveals the sexual connotation of this commercial and I’m amazed it is actually on TV.
Once again, this commercial speaks for itself. A play on the word “balls” is used to attract viewer’s attention and make men think that this axe shower gel and detailer will make them irresistible. The use of this outrageous sexual connotation seems to be what would draw the audience into this commercial. However, I am surprised it was even aired on TV.
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