Scenes of free speech

The first rule of Adcult, Twitchell says, is “Speech is never free.” For example:

“In 1986 the [ Reader’s ] Digest turned town an advertising supplement on heart disease and cigarette smoking prepared by the American Heart Association.” The Digest had never printed cigarette ads, but they turned down the supplement because “The RJR Nabisco and Philip Morris companies not only make cigarettes, they also package food stuffs through their Del Monte, Nabisco, General Foods, and Kraft subsidiaries. Those foodstuffs are a major source of the Digest ‘s advertising revenue.”

Or, “ABC gave kindest treatment to Ross Perot during the 1992 presidential campaign. It was the softest network on Perot’s remarkable imitation of a dolt on 60 Minutes . Was there any connection between this and ABC’s receipt of $11.3 million for running Perot’s infomercials, whereas CBS ran $4 mllion-worth and NBC ran $4.5 mllion-worth?”

Or, “Mercedes Benz, through its ad agency Scale, McCabe, Sloves, sent a letter to magazine publishers insisting that they run Mercedes ads ‘only in a proper editorial environment.’ This meant no anti-German stories. ‘An issue containing editorials denigrating to Mercedes-Benz . . . or containing material that may lead to a negative bias toward German products, should not carry a Mercedes-Benz advertisement. Failure to comply would result in non-payment. The agency asked publishers to return a signed copy of the letter to indicate agreement.”

All this in support of what Twitchell calls “the hoary bromide” of British journalism: “Freedom of the press in Britain is freedom to print such of the proprietor’s prejudices as the advertisers don’t object to.”