Explosive mixture of media
Noteworthy: With «infomercials» and «advertainment,» the industry has so far only discredited itself. «Infoganda,» on the other hand, could undermine our entire democratic political system.
Column With "infomercials" and "advertainment", the industry has so far only discredited itself. "Recently, I received a concerned letter from the sales management of a respected major German media outlet about the increasingly pestilential mixing of editorial content with advertising and PR. Surprisingly, the knowledgeable practitioners of commercial communication are not only concerned about their own profession; they are also worrying about their journalistic colleagues. And rightly so, because the situation is indeed alarming: on the one hand, the writers point to a technical development that has rarely been discussed to date. With the help of hard disk recorders, television viewers will soon be able to fade out commercial breaks at will. The consequence, according to our colleagues, will be that "the clients or their agencies will set themselves up to write scripts and take over the director's chairs". If advertising, fenced into blocks, is no longer taken note of, advertising will simply have to be sunk into the content itself.
As long as it's only about which make of car the heroes of the soul dramas on air drive, you might not care. But if reports are also financed by sponsors in the near future, all objectivity will be lost. It's not just the financially weaker special interest channels that are already asking with every new broadcasting concept: "And who pays for the films?"
Would it be acceptable if reporting on healthcare reform was financed by the pharmaceutical industry, documentary films about wind turbines by Greenpeace and reports from Afghanistan by Pentagon agencies? But this is precisely the acute danger for the most basic of all journalistic resources, called credibility. Accordingly, public television broadcasters also regularly come under fire for unfair sponsorship in the form of product placement and other surreptitious advertising methods.
Unfortunately, we have become accustomed to the fact that car and food critics are occasionally - but not always - all too closely associated with their test objects. But what if the omnipresent and constantly growing PR industry is increasingly manipulating the political information processes that are vital for democracies? In any case, the American agency Rudder-Finn has, according to its own statements, performed brilliant propaganda work for Bosnia's ex-president Izetbegovic. The Serbian and Croatian heads of state were also well advised. And the American government now employs so many agency professionals that they outnumber the Washington correspondents. What if government-affiliated broadcasters soon (also) broadcast mainly the ready-made video packages from agencies for cost reasons? As "infoganda" with first-class image material?
In addition, my sources write: "We have recently experienced that some marketing managers of German blue chip companies declare classic advertising obsolete and demand 'cooperation' from all media indiscriminately." In other words: The usual, hitherto reasonably harmless and hardly replaceable financing of media via advertising is in danger of suppressing the free flow of critical communication. If this development is not stopped quickly and decisively, then God have mercy on us. Because ultimately, only critical media consumers will be able to prevent the corruption of the fourth power in the state.
> Peter Glotz is Professor of Media and Communication Management at the University of St. Gallen and a SonntagsBlick columnist.
As long as it's only about which make of car the heroes of the soul dramas on air drive, you might not care. But if reports are also financed by sponsors in the near future, all objectivity will be lost. It's not just the financially weaker special interest channels that are already asking with every new broadcasting concept: "And who pays for the films?"
Would it be acceptable if reporting on healthcare reform was financed by the pharmaceutical industry, documentary films about wind turbines by Greenpeace and reports from Afghanistan by Pentagon agencies? But this is precisely the acute danger for the most basic of all journalistic resources, called credibility. Accordingly, public television broadcasters also regularly come under fire for unfair sponsorship in the form of product placement and other surreptitious advertising methods.
Unfortunately, we have become accustomed to the fact that car and food critics are occasionally - but not always - all too closely associated with their test objects. But what if the omnipresent and constantly growing PR industry is increasingly manipulating the political information processes that are vital for democracies? In any case, the American agency Rudder-Finn has, according to its own statements, performed brilliant propaganda work for Bosnia's ex-president Izetbegovic. The Serbian and Croatian heads of state were also well advised. And the American government now employs so many agency professionals that they outnumber the Washington correspondents. What if government-affiliated broadcasters soon (also) broadcast mainly the ready-made video packages from agencies for cost reasons? As "infoganda" with first-class image material?
In addition, my sources write: "We have recently experienced that some marketing managers of German blue chip companies declare classic advertising obsolete and demand 'cooperation' from all media indiscriminately." In other words: The usual, hitherto reasonably harmless and hardly replaceable financing of media via advertising is in danger of suppressing the free flow of critical communication. If this development is not stopped quickly and decisively, then God have mercy on us. Because ultimately, only critical media consumers will be able to prevent the corruption of the fourth power in the state.
> Peter Glotz is Professor of Media and Communication Management at the University of St. Gallen and a SonntagsBlick columnist.
