Two recent cases highlight the problem of misleading advertising. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has dismissed an appeal by POM Wonderful about health claims for their juice…
While we think of junk food marketing as something that happens during television commercial breaks or on massive billboard signs, supermarkets are yet another advertising frontier for food companies…
Body image may be the western world’s ugliest export. Images of thin, toned women and hyper-muscular men are conveyed via television, magazines, movies and the internet to the global market. The ideal…
The success of House Husbands, the Australian drama featuring four hands-on dads may be a signal that today’s fathers really want more involvement in their children’s lives than did previous generations…
Channel Nine is a station of two tales. The first is the positive story its viewers see: smiling in-house celebrities, reliable newsreaders, and blockbuster programs such as House Husbands, The Voice…
People around the world are worrying about their carbon footprint. But what about their furry friends’ carbon pawprints? Consider the numbers: there are currently around 1 billion pet cats and dogs worldwide…
With 5,459 attempted boat arrivals to Australia in the first half of 2012, an increase of 894 since last year, it is no wonder the prime minister is desperate to demonstrate she is combating people smuggling…
Imagine a world in which advertising companies were held directly accountable for the vision of the world their ads portrayed. Accountability could range from simple things like why deodorants don’t immediately…
Welcome to Some Sports Economics, a six-part video series explaining economic concepts through sport, by La Trobe University senior lecturer, Liam Lenten. In the fifth part of this series, Liam looks at…
Journalists have never been particularly fond of advertising or advertisers – to most journalists, advertising was space and time taken away from good stories and advertisers were commercial interests…
After languishing in an archive box at Melbourne University for more than 20 years, an astonishing piece of Australian political history has recently been dusted off and digitised. The university has unearthed…
My central problem with branded clothing is my reluctance to actually be branded. Why on earth would I pay to advertise someone? When a Kiwi can make a motza from auctioning her buttock flesh to a strip…
The impact of junk food advertising on childhood obesity is a topic often debated in the media. One side calls for banning junk food advertising during children’s television viewing times while the other…
There’s no evidence that industry self-regulation works to restrict junk food advertising to children. That’s the unsurprising finding of the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) long-awaited…
The final sitting of federal parliament last week lacked no drama, ending with the sudden induction of Peter Slipper as speaker. It was also a mammoth week for health legislation, with the passing of the…
A recent complaint to the Advertising Standards Board by the Obesity Policy Coalition about a Smarties online colouring-in competition aimed at three- to ten-year-olds, and a bill introduced by Greens…
MEDIA & DEMOCRACY: In the latest instalment of The Conversation’s week-long series on how the media influences the way our representatives develop policy, Marian Sawer examines the need to regulate…
MEDIA & DEMOCRACY: In the latest instalment of The Conversation’s week-long series on how the media influences the way our representatives develop policy, Andrew Norton says there’s no need to regulate…