Monday, January 07, 2008 Seares: Untruth in advertising By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
TRUTH in advertising is encouraged in print and broadcast industry but who yells and wields the stick when truth, especially about health, is stretched a tad too far?
Not from within, not when ad money is required for payroll, buys paper and ink, pays rent and other bills, and meets sales quota to raise investors’ dividends.
The public doesn’t know or care enough and regulators look the other way.
No one wants to drive away advertisers, not when steady revenue enables the media outlet to keep its head above water and maybe make enough profit to resist pressure of power blocs.
Bloated
One can stand overload of radio commercials, which are mostly for health products. Talk show hosts can save voice and energy for issues that truly matter.
It’s when a product’s prowess is so bloated that amusement turns to disbelief and dismay.
How can one product cure any and all body ailments? Name it, it will be healed: diabetes, prostate cancer, aneurysm, obesity, sexual dysfunction.
The caution that the product has no therapeutic value is absent or glossed over. A private and obscure researcher’s name may be touted but Bfad approval is rarely mentioned.
That omission is unnoticed in a stream of sales pitch that includes (a) the unarguable line that God made the medicine possible and (b) the silly claim that the endorser hasn’t been paid.
Will God issue a disclaimer, say, a bolt of lightning hurled whenever the claim is made?
As to the endorser doing it for free (“masuko pa ko kon ako bayran,” intones one): unbelievable—but not as totally as when the endorser, script in hand, insists it’s not scripted.
