Ideology masked as scientific truth: the debate about advertising and children
Dr. John C. Luik
INTRODUCTION
Ever since the publication of Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders, it has been de rigueuramong the “right-thinking” to dismiss both the advertising industry and its patrons as moral myopics at best and at worst moral outlaws unworthy of consideration in a civilized society. For many in the policy-making establishment, it has become an ideological “fact” that advertising, except in the service of state-sanctioned causes, is an evil that even democracies with constitutional safeguards for commercial speech would be better without....