Advertising And A Democratic Press

In this provocative book, C. Edwin Baker argues that print advertising seriously distorts the flow of news by creating a powerfully corrupting incentive: the more newspapers depend financially on advertising, the more they favor the interests of advertisers over those of readers. Advertising induces newspapers to compete for a maximum audience with blandly "objective" information, resulting in reduced differentiation among papers and the eventual collapse of competition among dailies. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book examines the relationships between the social problems of the mass age, developments in late twentieth-century capitalism, the growth of a mass media advertising system, and the operation and assumptions of liberal democracy. Advertising must sell, not only goods and services, but also definitions of life and of status, images, hopes and feelings. In turn, the very universality of advertising, and its acceptance as a mode of communication, have forced the political system into the same mould.

A study of propaganda in relation to twentieth-century democracy.

By focusing on the construction and practice of democracy aid, this book shows how democracy aid can reinforce, rather than challenge authoritarian regimes.

Government interventions in media markets are often criticized for preventing audiences from getting the media products they want. A free press is often asserted to be essential for democracy. The first point is incorrect and the second is inadequate as a policy guide. Part I of this book shows that unique aspects of media products prevent markets from providing for audience desires. Part II shows that four prominent, but different, theories of democracy lead to different conceptions of good journalistic practice, media policy, and proper constitutional principles. Part II makes clear that the choice among democratic theories is crucial for understanding what should be meant by free press. Part III explores international free trade in media products. Contrary to the dominant American position, it shows that Parts I and II's economic and democratic theory justify deviations from free trade in media products.

This book examines mass marketing techniques in a political rather than economic context. The authors' thesis remains persuasive: democratic politics, precisely because it requires mass support for its legitimation, increases the need for public opinion to be channelized and focused. This is precisely the task of marketing in the political process.Increasingly, advanced societies are involved in symbolic rather than direct forms of struggle. As a result, management of ideas becomes crucial to both political survival and economic expansion. Romain Laufer and Catherine Paradeise argue that public opinion and media formation is built into the fabric of Western political culture, dating from the Sophists in ancient Greece through Machiavelli in the aristocratic baronies of pre-capitalist Europe. With the rise of the bureaucratic-administrative state in the West, the need for persuasive public opinion analysis became part of the fabric of the advanced Western democratic and capitalist nations.The volume benefits from authors trained and familiar with the traditions of both the United States and Europe. They are able to consider contrasts in marketing styles as well as continuities of contents among advanced nation-states. No simple "how-to" manual, this bracingly different volume discusses its subject with an easy command of the philosophical and cultural literatures, as well as the major classics of economics, sociology, and political science.

The author discusses the role of economic concentration in limiting public access to information and reducing opportunities for public discourse. Picard examines the government policies that have contributed to the erosion of democratic participation and have permitted the growth of large commercial press entities, unobstructed by anti-trust provisions. He relates recent public policy responses to this problem to democratic socialist ideology and develops a social-democratic theory of the press which draws upon ideas and policies found throughout the Western world. Picard provides a democratic framework for understanding the changing nature of media economics and state-press relations and offers proposals for achieving both a democratically functioning press and broader popular participation.

The SAGE Handbook of Political Advertising provides a comprehensive view of the role political advertising plays in democracies around the world. Editors Lynda Lee Kaid and Christina Holtz-Bacha, along with an international group of contributors, examine the differences as well as the similarities of political advertising in established and evolving democratic governments.