Advertising and Deception in the Media

             Image is an important part of our lives today. Image drives our actions, reactions, goals, and accomplishments. One fundamental part of image in today's society is commercialism and advertising. These two driving forces portray their own image, which is sometimes truthful, sometimes not. Several industries in the U.S. have adopted a deceitful and irresponsible campaign structure to promote their goods and services. Two such industries are producers of alcoholic beverages and weight reduction products. While in actuality, these are two strong industries in the U.S. economy. They flourish, however, because of their deceitful and irresponsible advertising campaigns, and the willingness of our culture to believe the advertiser's promises.
             The alcoholic beverage industry in the U.S. is a multi-billion dollar a year industry, providing jobs for thousands of U.S. residents. It also provides millions of dollars to the advertising industry, creating hours of television airtime each day. In all of which, an image of youthfulness, playfulness, and carelessness is portrayed. While the alcoholic beverage industry has made many strives in the last decade to improve responsibility among drinkers, its overall goal continues to be to sell the image that alcohol is glamorous, well-accepted and a safe getaway from the problems that plague the modern world. Not only is this deceitful, but it is irresponsible as well. An alcohol-related accident occurs every six minutes. On television, a couple sits on the beach, away from all their troubles, drinking an alcoholic beverage, while another person dies at the hand of the same beverage. This information that advertisers of the alcoholic beverage industry tend to leave out can mislead the public to thinking that alcohol is safe and glamorous, when in all actuality, alcoholic is unsafe and damaging, exactly opposite of the way it is portrayed in television advertising.
             Another deceitful tactic used by adv...

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