"Truth in news dispensing" laws needed?

Submitted by Merry Whitney (United States), Dec 27, 2005 at 14:15

During the late 1960s, when I worked in a Chicago office of an advertising agency, the head of my department (radio/tv production) who took frequent trips to the agency's New York HQ, took with him on several such trips bottles of a Chicago grocery chain's brand of vegetable oil. This oil was used as "Brand X" for commercials advertising a name brand oil for one of our NY accounts.

It would've been a simple matter to duplicate the inferior Brand X performance by slightly altering the televised 'test' preparation but using any similar oil, even the advertised brand itself. But broadcast network "truth in advertising" stipulations prohibited such subterfuge, even though the agency could honestly state and reproduce legitimate tests with the store brand.

I don't know whether truth in advertising standards have been lowered to the level of truth in news reporting, print and broadcast, but 'caveat emptor' is certainly a phrase one needs to keep in mind when purchasing major newspapers and periodicals or tuning in to network news.

Since that is demonstrably true of major Western news sources, it would be a little hypocritical to demand that Muslim propagandists adhere to a standard of objective reporting the NY Times, et al, ignore.

But it is not just the Muslim world that lacks interest in reliable information. Nor is the Muslim world alone, apparently, in a disposition to believe in conspiracy theories. I don't know what kind of laws might be enacted that could remedy the worst abuses without infringing on First Amendment protections. But I do wish our friends in Congress would look into it, if only so that we could have an honest basis on which to jam signals on al Jazeera & co.

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