Edip Yuksel and Yahya Yuksel

What a duck or gecko lizard have to do with Car Insurance? What about athletic skills and beer? What about being priceless and credit cards? Attractive women with detergent? If you have not transformed your brain to a mashed potato, your answer will be an obvious "no connection." But, everyday we have been bombarded by zillions of commercials associating the unrelated things or concepts to each other. The big corporations that dish out billions of dollars for advertisements and commercials expect us to prefer their services or products just because their fictional lizard is cute, their duck quacks loud, or because they have zoo-full other silly and stupid reasons.

You are expected to buy a particular brand of beer since their commercials show it in the hands of champion athletes. Unfortunately many, including highly educated ones, fall into these silly branding games. Our brains are bombarded and ultimately branded like a sheep, by cunning advertising agencies hired by corporations. Learning the terms of insurance after having an accident, we may end up saying "ouch" instead of quacking like a duck or "talking" like a gecko. Instead of running and jumping like a champion, it is more likely that a beer drinker will receive a traffic ticket or get handicapped for driving drunk.

According to TNS Media Intelligence, as reported by AdAge.com, in 2005 alone, American corporations spent 25.1 billion (with letter b) dollars on Newspaper ads, 22.4 billions on Network TV, 21.7 billions on Consumer magazines, and 15.9 billions on Cable TV networks, and several more billions on other media, totaling to 143.3 billion dollars! This is approximately 500 dollars spent on each person, child and adult, homeless and homeowner! Those who justify the business of advertising, claim that advertising informs us about new or better products. Though we may never hear about many good products because their producers cannot afford advertising them, I concede that indeed advertising has some merits. Indeed some ads inform us about new products and services, however, the harms of advertising far exceed its benefits.

The major harms of commercials can be listed as follows

• 1. Commercials may misinform about products through exaggeration and false association;
2. Commercials may hide information pertinent to the service and product. If advertisers are required by law to state certain harms or side effects, they usually publish them in fine print or in hastily uttered words;
3. Commercials may promote consumerism and contribute to waste and environmental pollution;
4. Commercials may lure kids to force their parents to purchase certain products;
5. Commercial billboards may create ugly scenes in our cities;
6. All commercials increase the price of products;
7. Commercials may give too much leverage to corporations that want to control or suppress vital information.

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Imagine a time in the near future when the truthfulness of the news is as good as a quacking duck. This will happen at a rapidly increasing rate if advertisers are not stopped! Advertisers are controlling more and more of the news, especially relating to their product or service, and altering the facts to promote their objectives. It is a fact many corporations have threatened magazines such as Newsweek, Times, and many newspapers to give the corporation a copy of every article before it is published just to make sure it doesn't hurt their company in any way. And if the media doesn't comply with the terms then the corporation will not use that newspaper for its commercials, which is a very big portion of the income for media.

So is it really worthy for a society to have advertising at the cost of losing the free press? Here is a sample of what a corporation does to control the editors of magazines, there are many other aggressive corporations that are much more threatening that the public does not know about.

"In an effort to avoid potential conflicts, it is required that Chrysler Corporation be alerted in advance of any and all editorial content that encompasses sexual, political, social issues or any editorial that might be construed as provocative or offensive. Each and every issue that carries Chrysler advertising requires a written summary outlining major theme/articles appearing in upcoming issues. These summaries are to be forwarded to PentaCom prior to closing in order to give Chrysler ample time to review and reschedule if desired . . . As acknowledgement of this letter we ask that you or a representative from the publication sign below and return to us no later than February 15." - From a letter sent by Chrysler's ad agency, PentaCom, a division of BBDO North America, to at least fifty magazines.

Even though advertising is very crucial in our daily lives for picking "trustworthy" and 'reliable" products, we must ask whether there is a point where we, the consumers, should draw a line and stop advertisers to influence the content of magazines, TV and radio broadcasting? We hold the power to change what we want as a unified community. Should we wait around and let corporations peddle their advertising with impunity so that they influence and control every portion of our lives and control our decision?

I wonder how much auto-censorship is being practiced by mass media, which is dependant on ad revenues. I wonder why we do not hear much about the robbery practices of banks that employ tricky computer programs to give unsolicited small credits on debit card to charge hefty of overdraft fees, even if the lent amount is a little as a penny. I wonder why we do not hear much about the contribution of the auto industry on the messy state of our mass transportation. I wonder why we do not hear loud enough about big corporations in construction, oil and weapon industries that make billions of dollars out of unnecessary wars that were declared through their influence on our government.

I hope we all start asking these and similar questions and find a way to free the press from the hegemony of big corporations, which have successfully accomplished their mission of hostile takeover of our government. Next time when you watch an athletic guy gulps alcoholic beverage, a gecko cracks jokes, or a duck quacks, you should also think about the news that were gulped, cracked, quacked.