The “Got Milk” campaign is funded by the California Milk Processor Board, a marketing organization funded collectively by California dairies. In a recent comment thread, Adam linked to the clip below in which ABC does a segment about the awesomeness of milk. It’s a great example of the way that the news media in not independent of business.
UPDATE! Abby, in the comments thread, linked to another great example:
—————————
Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Comments 16
Abby — August 25, 2009
This one is worse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRZ3LYykpqo
nath — August 25, 2009
Milk sucks! http://www.milksucks.com/index2.asp
Milk and meat are also major climate change factors. See FAO's "Livestock's long shadow".
But what are such mere ethical concerns against the economic machinery of a mega-industry?
Marketing Milk « Economies in Cultural Perspective — August 25, 2009
[...] Jump to Comments On “nature’s wellness drink,” from Contexts: The “Got Milk” campaign is funded by the California Milk Processor Board, a marketing [...]
Jess — August 25, 2009
Drinking milk makes no sense - what other species drinks milk past infancy, let alone the milk of another species?
Jonathan — August 25, 2009
I have CDO (that's OCD with all the letters in the PROPER, alphabetical order). It's not sever enough to require medication, but one of my things is I'm a compulsive reader. I can't leave a book I've started reading unfinished, and I compulsively read everything written around me. This, on the whole, is a positive thing. I tend to read instructions and the fine print. How this relates to this discussion is that I used to read the fine print at the bottom of the posters in elementary school. That's how I know that all the food pyramid posters were sponsored by the American Dairy Association. I always felt suspicious that dairy got it's own food group and the ADA just happened to sponsor the project.
Mac Mintaka — August 26, 2009
When these lobbyists or authors and others got traveling around the country, they send ahead lists of questions the interviewer can ask, ostensibly to make life easier for the interviewer.
The real reason is that the interviewee has memorized the answers to those questions and doesn't need to risk saying something foolish if they actually have to think.
The upshot of this is the interviewers get fooled into being a well prepared straight-man for the interviewees, promoting the product or ideology without seeming to.
CNN: “Is It Getting Too Much Coverage? We Better Cover It to See!” » Sociological Images — August 28, 2009
[...] Lisa posted about the increasing links between news and business and how that can lead to “news stories” that closely resemble ads. We received another [...]
Sugar Information, Inc. » Sociological Images — September 8, 2009
[...] also our recent post on marketing disguised as news. Leave a Comment Tags: capitalism, diet/exercise industry, food, history [...]