Knowing the truth is not only morally important, but essential to surviving and thriving in our capitalist society. In Chapter 5 of UnSpun, Jackson and Jamieson display how bad information is prevelant and costly to an unknowing consumer. The price for getting facts wrong is high in all respects of life: medically, economically, personally, etc. The authors expose the "price-equals-quality" fallacy that befalls many products like food and alcohol as well as tuition to universities. They also identify the sad, sick trap of "selling false hope." In addition to playing off emotions and fears, marketers will also play to people's false hopes. They provide desperate people with impossible promises, knowing that their desparation will blind these people from being logical and seeing the truth.
The most interesting section of this chapter concerns a misconception about women's health. Because of the exposure that breat cancer gets, many people believe it is the number one killer of women, but the author's tell us "women are nine times more likely to die of heart disease and more than twice as likely to die from stroke" as they are from breast cancer. (89) This shocks me. I do understand it is important to bring attention to issues like breast cancer, but not at the cost of denying or ignoring the bigger problem.
It's all about perspective, and it all links back to the primary "tricks" outlined in Chapter 2. Since the media provides publicity to breast cancer or showcases ignorant views about teenage sexual activity and drinking, they technically are not telling the truth but rather a half-truth. This leads to a "gap between perception and facts" called pluralistic ignorance. It frightens me to think about all of the facts I am truly ignorant about. How much info was "miscontrued" in my history textbook? It is very eye-opening to consider the power that the press has and the way history and all of ther facts may be manipulated.
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The only comforting thought I can think of to offer you is that, hopefully, your history book probably doesn't contain that much 'misconstrued' info, as history texts and studies are supposed to be objective, and lack the motive of trying to se ll you something or getting you to do something, unlike the ad industry. It's only from sources that have something to gain does skewed info tend to pour out from, such as advertising, news, etc.
ReplyDeleteIt is upsetting to know that "truth" can only be described as relative. Especially in reference to being a consumer. Who knows what kind of manipulative advertising goes on? Well thanks to this book we have a peak into the minds of the advertiser and can see where he or she might try to manipulate us into believing their truth. Even where a consumer may think he or she has the truth about something there is always another source that proves it wrong. Validity and reliability of a product is hard to gage when a consumer is trying to research a product. There are always so many opposing facts.
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