Media – Page 3 – Zombies Uncensored

Stock Photos: The “Ad Agencinem” Fallacy

In the Ad Agencinem fallacy – If an actor or model is used in a political ad, the political message itself is false by association. The underlying argument is if the everyday people in the photos aren’t people who’ve actually said they are against an issue, then there aren’t any everyday people opposed the issue.

If there was a disclosure requirement every time an actor or stock photo is used in advertising, then virtually every advertisement would require a disclaimer. As-seen-on-TV commercials would need an explanation that the anguished looks on the actors’ faces were put-on, just to make sure no one thought the people weren’t acting.

It is a given people in advertisements have been paid for the use of their likeness. Not pointing out that a person was paid to have their picture used in an ad is not a political deception.

For an example of the Ad Agencinem fallacy see ThinkProgress piece on American Petroleum Institute Uses Stock Photos Of ‘Americans’ To Defend Oil Subsidies

Big Oil is using fake “Americans” to defend billions in tax subsidies. The American Petroleum Institute is running full-page ads in Politico and Roll Call that attack Congress for “new energy taxes”:

The target of this ad is the Obama administration’s effort to remove $36 billion in loopholes and subsidies for the oil industry. As it turns out, the “Americans” presented in the ad are stock photos from Getty Images:

As one commenter on ThinkProgress put it:

pakaal says: API used an ad agency to make an ad for them. The ad agency used stock photos, as all ad agencies do. There is nothing newsworthy in that, and anyone who has worked in an ad agency would agree.

The use of stock images is not anything new. Here is an article about the same stock photos being used multiple times for different companies. Washington Street Journal – When Marketers See Double

The ad from Key Bank portrayed a heart-warming family moment: a dad pointing out something on his laptop to his smiling young daughter as she leans over his shoulder. In fact, the scene may have been a little too charming. The same image appears in a recent marketing brochure — from Bank of America.

Both banks say they bought the image from a photo agency that deals in stock pictures, not realizing the other was making the same selection. “We try not to use the same images as other competitors … if it happened, it happened,” says Joan Peloso, marketing services director for Cleveland-based KeyCorp, the bank-based financial services company

No one can tell from a photo if the people are Americans. You can tell they represent what Americans look like. If the ad agency had drawn pictures of typical Americans, there wouldn’t be an issue. There is no misrepresentation in the ad, because those photos are what Americans look like.

For a real example of misrepresentation in advertising, all you need to do is look at this ad right next to the article on ThinkProgress.

Clicking on the I lost my stomach in 4 weeks ad takes you to an Acai Berry Diet page. The ad has “Julia from News 6” volunteering to go on the diet.

To get started, I volunteered to be the guinea pig. I applied for a bottle of the Acai Optimum. While there are ton’s of Acai berry ads online, Acai Optimum is one of the most credible and trustworthy suppliers on the market. It included the free* trial of the product and it did not try to fool me into agreeing to additional hidden offers.

The person pictured as “Julia from News 6”–as everyone on Fark knows–is actually Mélissa Theuriau, French journalist and news anchor.

SPLC: Where is the map of propaganda groups?

After seeing this Dylan Ratigan video from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which grouped ‘Patriot’ groups with hate groups, I decided to look into how these groups are defined.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhKjlItVhJY

From the Southern Poverty Law Center – definition of ‘Patriot’ groups:

Generally, Patriot groups define themselves as opposed to the “New World Order,” engage in groundless conspiracy theorizing, or advocate or adhere to extreme anti-government doctrines. Listing here does not imply that the groups themselves advocate or engage in violence or other criminal activities, or are racist. The list was compiled from field reports, Patriot publications, the Internet, law enforcement sources and news reports. Groups are identified by the city, county or region where they are located.

The list doesn’t imply theses groups advocate or engage in violence or other criminal activities, or are racist, but Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center does imply these groups advocate violence in this video.

The kinds of things we’ve seen in the last year are for instance the murder of six law enforcement officials by people, members of the radical right. We have seen plots to murder Obama, we have seen plots to murder black people, to murder jews and so on. I think these are all prompted by the rise of Obama to power. These real changes that are happening around us, people are really angry and hurting out there and many of them feel quite ready to take action.

The terms hate groups and radical right and patriot groups were used throughout this video from Southern Poverty Law Center. I can’t tell exactly which group Potok means in referring to violence, because all these organizations have become an amalgam of one group to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

But what they (Oath Keepers) are really about is the idea that Americans are about to be herded into concentration camps that martial law is going to be imposed, that foreign troops are going to be on American soil, putting Americans done and so on. If what the Oath Keepers did was merely plead one more time to defend the Constitution there would be nothing remotely bad about it.

I can’t say if Americans are about to be herded into concentration camps, but Americans were herded into concentration camp during WWII, so it’s not delusional to believe it could happen.

What is really worrying about a group like the Oath Keepers is this is a group of people who are armed by the rest of society. And in the case of police officers these are people who sometimes have the power of life and death over you or me, and what that means if these men and women are animated by ideas that are completely false, completely paranoid and groundless, you’ve got to worry about who they are going to see as the real enemy and what kinds of decisions they make in stressful situation.

Not everyone knows about the Readiness Exercise of 1984, the plan by the US to test their ability to detain large numbers of American citizens in case of civil unrest. Calling these fears completely false, completely paranoid and groundless is worrisome and inaccurate.

Whether the tea party movement becomes something more like the patriot group, more radical yet, or whether it becomes something else is something we don’t know yet.

So worrying over what the Tea Party movement might become isn’t paranoia, but worrying about what the government has done in the past being repeated is paranoia? The underlying argument is that Mark Potok’s paranoia about ‘Patriot’ groups is the good kind of paranoia and the concerns of ‘Patriot’ groups is the bad kind of paranoia.

Summing up the SPLC position on patriot groups: It’s OK to verbally defend the Constitution, but citizens possessing anything other than harsh words to defend the Constitution are dangerous.

The SPLC has a map of hate groups on their site.

Where is the map of propaganda groups?

I’m Retarded but I’m not Braindead

The debate over using the R-word leaves me wondering why it is politically correct to call others braindead. Why is it politically incorrect to call someone slow, while calling someone mindless OK?

Retarded means slow, as in slow to learn or grasp a concept, but still has a brain and can learn. In political discussions those with opposing views are often labeled as mindless, braindead, or zombies. They don’t always come right out and call you stupid for disagreeing, but thats the implication.

Examples:

I was surprised because I was sure that she was a thinking person’s Republican, a moderate suburbanite not captured by the tea bagger set.

And it’s triply amazing, of course, because as every right-thinking person knows, Barack Obama is soft on terrorism and wants America to fail.

You have the vote of every thinking person.

I will not dwell on that, but any thinking person should recognize the difference and not blur the discussion.

Each of these basically states is you disagree with the views presented you don’t think, you have no mind. I’m retarded, as in being slow, because I don’t always catch being labeled a braindead zombie at first glance. As every slow thinking person knows: I’m retarded but I’m not braindead, because I know when I’m being insulted for disagreeing.

Ron Paul and Shameless Media Bias

Here is Ron Paul on CNN’s Broken Us Government with Jack Cafferty

The shameless bias is near the end when Cafferty tells Paul that he wishes he’d run again….and I loved every minute of it.

Cable News – Boundaries? We Don’t Need No Stinking Boundaries.

I’m a firm believer that the institutions of society should be independent from one another; each institution that becomes too entwined with another isn’t doing justice to its primary role. Watching the Sunday morning news shows, I discovered another example of the damage caused by lack of this independence.

I was watching Alex Witt on MSNBC News Live Sunday morning and the next story up was another report about the Olympics. I flipped over to CNN because I’ve been getting annoyed with MSNBC pimping NBC’s coverage of the Olympics on their news channel.

Over on CNN’s Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz, the subject was about FOX News crossing boundaries. FOX had covered Glenn Beck‘s speech at CPAC live on their network. Since I had just flipped from MSNBC pimping one of their shows, I thought here is another example of a cable network (FOX) pimping one of their shows (Glenn Beck).

I watch the rest of Reliable Sources until State of the Union with Candy Crowley comes on. Candy Crowley starts the show out by holding an upcoming cover of Time magazine. The Time cover was the subject for State of the Union. CNN and Time magazine are both owned by Time Warner. In other words, here is CNN pimping Time magazine.

Twenty minutes of channel flipping really brought home all the complaints I’ve heard for years about cable news being too corporate. They all claim to be impartial and unbiased, but boundaries of independent reporting are gone and their shows have turned into commercials for other arms of their corporation.

I don’t want to search the internet for each story cable news reports on to find out what connection the channel has to the subject they are reporting on. If there is anyone out there willing to start a completely independent cable news channel, you got at least one customer who will tune in to watch.

Cable News – Boundaries? We Don’t Need No Stinking Boundaries.

Would a Politician Mind Being Slimed?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QbhfbLUtQs

On You Can’t do That on Television, slime was poured whenever someone said, “I don’t know.”

Politicians have no qualms about modifying citizens’ behavior, so it would only be fair to treat them likewise. There should be a political talk show along these same lines as YCDTOTV, but with these rules for when the slime flows:

Accuse opponents of being hypocrites.
Ignores questions to repeat the same talking points they’ve already spouted.
Make appeals to popularity.
Villainize those with differing opinions.
Preach about being a better parent, citizen, student, or spouse.

Saying, “I don’t know” would be perfectly safe on the show, because it’s refreshing when politicians admit they don’t have an answer for everything.

Penn Jillette on Red Eye discussing Obama

Last week Jillette wrote an article on Obama’s ‘stupid’ jab at Vegas and discussed the President on Red Eye last night. Here is Penn Jillette defending Las Vegas in response to President Obama telling people not to spend money there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XPZwQpe9IM

Presidential Obama seems to be unaware of the damage that can be done from the bully pulpit. Its a shame the insurance industry, police officers, overweight people, banking industry, Wall Street, talk radio, and doctors don’t have someone as funny and thoughtful as Penn Jillette to defend them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG-yhcSGGuo

TEA Party Convention Circa 1957

The Republican Party had done enough damage by globing on to every TEA Party protest, and Sarah Palin comes along to bury what was left. What started out for some as honest revulsion to uncontrolled taxing and spending has been fully transformed into marketing endless wars.

Sarah Palin has done more damage to the TEA Party than all the media’s straw man attacks and FoxNews promotion combined. The lesson learned: any group that starts to threaten established political power will be attacked from all from all angles.

Here is a clip from A Face in the Crowd (1957) that sums up what Palin’s performance turned the TEA Party into.

Full version of A Face in the Crowd available on YouTube

Ed Schultz and Sean Hannity team up to keep each other in the news

I’m wearing my tinfoil hat today; I’m starting to believe the cable news channels are part of a conspiracy.

This video from Ed Schultz “Psycho Talk” – 02/04/10 calls out Sean Hannity for being intellectually dishonest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RBo3cXZfTw

At some point you’ll see Sean Hannity talk about President Bush giving up golfing in 2003 to be “in solidarity” with the families of soldiers who were dying in Iraq. Hannity will then call Schultz intellectually dishonest because the clips were prior to Bush’s statement. Hannity might even call out Schultz while Schultz is on Hannity’s show.

In the media, they say to each other, “good for you, good for me.” Controversies are good for both sides in the media, as when Sarah Palin was on Oprah Winfrey’s show. Palin sold books and Oprah had good ratings, so it was a win-win for both.

I think both Schultz and Hannity are intellectually dishonest and wouldn’t be surprised to find out this back and forth is as staged as a wrestling match.

Don’t politicians generate enough intellectually dishonest controversies on their own? Are these two just tired of sharing the BS limelight with real politicians and have cut out the middleman?

As evidenced by the ratings for Hannity and Schultz, there is a market for political theater, but I think you should be a politician to play a part in the play.