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The Ethical Challenge for Advertisers:
To Do the Right, Not "Just" Know It!
...to know the right is not necessarily to
do it. Socrates gave us only half the truth when
he said that to know the good is to do the good.
St. Paul gave us the other half when he said, "The
good that I would do, that I do not do. The evil
that I would not do, that I do." Knowledge of
the good is clearly a necessary condition for
doing it, but it is equally clearly, not sufficient.
Thomas Lickona[1]
America has always had something of a "love-hate" relationship
with advertising. In his recently published book on advertising law, for
example, Fueroghne states that "while some consumers have expressed a fear
of--and others have indicated a hope for--the demise of advertising, it
is...integral to our market environment."[2] Others suggest that American
society and advertising are uniquely interdependent in that the United States
"provided one important precondition for advertising; abundance."[3] It is
argued that:
It is when potential supply outstrips
demand--that is when abundance prevails--that
advertising begins to fulfill a really essential
function. In this situation the producer knows
that the limitation upon his operations and upon
his growth no longer lies, as it lay historically,
in his productive capacity, for he can always
produce as much as the market will absorb; the
limitation has shifted to the market, and it is
selling capacity which controls his growth.[4]
This dependence upon--and distrust of--advertising has created
something approaching schizophrenia not only among the general public, but
within the advertising community itself. Many men and women active in
advertising want to operate in an ethical manner, but are concerned that by
doing so they will be placing themselves at a competitive disadvantage. While
they might prefer, for example, to avoid stereotyping individuals and groups,
too many are likely to respond to criticism that they do so by saying, "Gee, I'd
really like to avoid these stereotypes, but I've got to use them to survive."[5]
Students in advertising sequences at the undergraduate level face
these same competing pressures--at least at an emotional and intellectual level.
On one hand they are told emphatically that "bad ethics is bad for business."[6]
At the same time they are besieged with examples of questionable advertising
practices. They worry about getting "that first job" and too frequently begin
to believe that while being concerned about ethics is fine in the confines of
the classroom, a more "realistic" attitude is demanded in the give and take of
that "real world" they will enter after graduation.
This, it must be emphasized, is not to "preach doom and gloom."
Progress in raising the ethical consciousness of many persons in advertising has
undoubtedly been realized. Enlightened advertisers have come to believe that
"advertising provides a valuable service to the seller, the buyer, and the
public and serves the spirit of trade only so long as it remains truthful and
honest (emphasis added)."[7]
Significant as such progress may be, there remains a critically
important corollary consideration that has been too frequently ignored. There
may well be an at least implicit assumption that many of the ethical problems
confronting advertising men and women will be surmounted once a majority of
persons active in the field are motivated to acknowledge that serious ethical
issues confront them. Once that occurs, at least so the theory goes,
advertising men and women can be "educated" to recognize what would be an
appropriate--ethical--response to a particular moral dilemma.
One must, of course, have some knowledge of what it means to be
ethical before one can act ethically. That knowledge, however, does not
necessarily translate into ethical behavior. As the introductory quote by
Lickona at the beginning of this paper suggests, "to know the right is not
necessarily to do it." The advertiser fearful of not achieving a projected
market share if he or she acts in an ethical manner may have a very clear
understanding as to what is the proper course of action to take under a given
set of circumstances. That person may not, however, be willing to pay the price
for, in fact, acting ethically.
A concern for advertising ethics will be of little relevancy to
either those active in the field or the general public, however, if that concern
is not translated into something more than an intellectual appreciation of what
it means to be ethical. Fagothey correctly notes that "the subject matter of
ethics is human conduct, those actions which a man performs consciously and
willfully, and for which he is held accountable."[8] He adds:
The aspect or point of view from which ethics
studies human conduct is that of its rightness or
wrongness, its oughtness, if we may manufacture a
noun corresponding to the ethical verb ought, which
is the real verb in every ethical judgment. Ethics
is not interested in what a man does, except to
compare it with what he ought to do. We call those
actions right which a man ought to do, and those
actions wrong which a man ought not to do. Ethical
writers of almost all shades of opinion agree that
the investigation of the ought is the distinctive
feature of ethics, the one that separates it from
every other study.[9]
If those teaching advertising courses with significant ethics
components are concerned about having a genuine--as opposed to cosmetic--impact
on how their students translate what is taught in the classroom to the "real
world," they must focus on the idea of oughtness. Because oughtness suggests a
concern for behavior--particularly in those circumstances where the rightness of
a particular action may not be in one's self-interest--the question really
becomes one of will. More specifically, one must ask, what can instructors in
advertising courses do--if anything--to motivate students to willing act more
ethically once they move beyond the confines of the classroom, to do what
ethically ought to be done when faced with a particular ethical dilemma?
This, it should be noted, is not to suggest that instructors in
advertising courses do the thinking for students, that courses in advertising
ethics begin to approximate efforts of indoctrination. Callahan insists that
"the purpose of an ethics course...would be begged by a preestablished blueprint
of what will count as acceptable moral behavior."[10] Lickona is even more
explicit when he declares that "ethics courses cannot try to teach particular
moral behaviors; that would be indoctrination."[11]
Rather than indoctrinating students, the advertising instructor
must find ways to motivate them to develop what has been called "a sense of
moral obligation."[12] Students must be provided "with those ingredients of
ethical analysis and self-criticism, such that...(they) would, if the analysis
seemed to require it, both recognize the importance of changing behavior, and be
prepared to change....It is not change per se that should be the goal, but the
potentiality for change as a result of ethical analysis and judgment."[13] The
instructor helps provide students with the tools to make an intelligent ethical
appraisal of a particular situation. The special concern of this paper,
however, is that they also have the will to act correctly--perhaps
courageously--in response to their appraisal of that situation.
In short why, one needs to ask, have advertising students study
ethics at all if they don't become ethical advertising men and women? What good
is it if a student gets "A" letter grades in advertising courses with a
significant ethical component if that student does not carry that "learning"
into the job market upon graduation. One might suggest that:
...if students learned to "do ethics" and
didn't become better people, if they merely
learned to talk a good game in the confines of
a course, if their human relations, their work,
their stance in the world remained untouched,
would not the whole huge effort to teach ethics
in our colleges and professional schools be
judged a cruelly disappointing failure, deepening
intolerably the already prevailing cynicism about
the gap between what people say and what they
do?...if the movement to teach ethics is serious
about developing not only the capacity to think
ethically but also the commitment to act
ethically, then it will have to find ways to fire
the will as well as the intellect, to engage the
heart as deeply as the mind, and to put will,
intellect, and feeling to the test of behavior.[14]
The question is now to transfer the "theory" of the classroom
into the "reality" of behavior in the field. In that light, three suggestions
are presented in this paper that the teacher might wish to consider in his/her
efforts to achieve such a goal. They are:
1. The first task for the instructor may well be to demonstrate
to students the relevancy of ethics to their "everyday" lives--quite apart from
a specific focus on advertising.
2. Students must understand that ethics deals with one's
relationships with others. Students will never "appreciate" the "marriage" of
ethics and advertising if they fail to view consumers and the general public as
persons to whom they have obligations.
3. It is essential students recognize that ethical behavior in
advertising does not occur in a vacuum. That is, ethical advertisers are first
ethical people generally and the only way to motivate the will to act ethically
professionally is to develop the will to act ethically habitually and generally.
Bringing the Issue of Ethics "Home"
Too frequently undergraduates in all ethics classes bring with
them a notion that ethics is about something "out there." They approach the
study of ethics like they do any other "academic" subject. That is, they view
it as a body of material that must be mastered in order to pass an exam that
will allow them to complete this particular "hurdle" on their way to getting a
degree.
It is critically important that the instructor in an ethics
course in a professional school demonstrate to students that ethics is intrinsic
to what professional people do. One way to do this is to first encourage
students to acknowledge that ethical decision making is something that confronts
an individual in a variety of work and social settings. One might suggest that
"before students can appreciate how the writings of a Plato or a Kant can
provide insight into future decisions they make...(in advertising), it is
necessary to show how ethical decision making impacts upon their present
situations."[15]
The importance of this became forever fixed in my mind several
years ago when I was teaching a course that touched upon ethics only
briefly.[16] I was discussing problems that develop when communicators lie--a
rather elementary subject. A student in the back of the room raised her hand.
Little did I realize at the time that her question would become one that I would
cite in every ethics class I would teach from that point on.
The student said she worked in a shoe store. Apparently the
quality of shoes sold in this particular store was something well short of high.
If a customer inquired about quality, however, she said she would tell them that
they were a quality product. She asked if I thought she was lying to the
customers and whether I thought her conduct was unethical.
Later the full impact of her question began to hit home. Here I
was talking about complex ethical dilemmas that may impact on professional
communicators and this student had to ask whether it was unethical to lie to
customers in a shoe store. How, one feels compelled to ask, can a student
empathize at all with the ethical quandaries that will impact on him/her in the
"real professional world" of advertising, if he/she does not know if lying to a
customer in a shoe store is unethical in the "world" of part-time employment?
Over the years whenever I cite this example, several students
invariably identify with this student's "plight." "If she tells the customer
the truth," students will argue, "then the customer won't buy the shoes and that
will put her job in jeopardy. If she loses her job she may not be able to stay
in school. Besides, people going to a low-priced shoe store understand that the
quality of shoes is not the same as at Macy's."
Admittedly discussing questions related to lying to customers
about shoes is not ordinarily the material of best selling case study books in
advertising. But is this example that far removed--at least in theoretical
construct--from that which impacts on advertisers in the "real world?"
Certainly the magnitude is different, but the decision making process is nearly
identical. Does the individual, whether a student working part-time in a shoe
store or a seasoned veteran for a major advertising agency, have the will to do
what he/she ought to do when faced with a particular ethical dilemma?
Further, if students do not have the will or do not understand
why one does not lie to a customer "even" in a part-time job, there is little
likelihood they will be magically transformed into ethical professionals upon
fulfilling the requirements the university sets down for awarding an
undergraduate degree. One might suggest that for many students there is first
"a need to cultivate an `ethics of the everyday,' a morality of minor affairs
that translates respect for persons into small deeds of kindness, honesty, and
decency."[17] Advertising students need to be encouraged to put ethics "on the
daily agenda."[18] Put another way, bringing ethical questions to a level to
which advertising students can relate should assist in "stimulating the moral
imagination"[19] of those students--a necessary step in the successful
"teaching" of ethical decision making:
A course in ethics can be nothing other than
an abstract intellectual exercise, unless a student's
feelings and imagination are stimulated. Students
must be provoked to understand that there is a `moral
point of view'..., that human beings live their lives
in a web of moral relationships, that a consequence
of moral theories and rules can be either suffering
or happiness (or usually, some combination of both),
that the moral dimensions of life are as often hidden
as visible, and that moral choices are inevitable
and often difficult.[20]
Black and Whitney note that "there would probably be no need for
ethics if there were no dilemmas, no choices to make."[21] Webster's New World
Dictionary defines a dilemma as a "situation requiring a choice between
unpleasant alternatives (emphasis added)."[22] Before advertisers develop the
will to make the difficult--but correct--choice they must have the ethical
insight to recognize those situations in which such a dilemma confronts them.
The development of this insight can begin at the undergraduate level. An
important factor in such development may rest on the instructor's ability to
bring ethical issues "home"--to a level to which students can readily relate.
Ethics and Significant Others
A second necessary step in building the will to act ethically
rests in coming to appreciate the fact that ethical acts must not be viewed in
isolation of one's relations with others--and obligations to them.
Undergraduates wishing to someday be ethical advertisers need to understand why
other people--and society as a whole--must be viewed as more than ends to
increased "bottom-line" profitability. Schindler speaks to this point when he
states:
In our relationship with others...we cannot
be satisfied simply to say that we have not
harmed someone, that we have not violated another's
rights; nor can we be content to restrict our
responsibility to those areas where others have
a juridical claim on us....We bear responsibility
for the human flourishing of others; and it is
only as we address that responsibility that our
own life flourishes.[23]
This issue is of particular importance to advertising students
because by its very nature advertising is in the persuasion business. There are
those, of course, who would suggest that one is employing an oxymoron by
advancing the phrase "ethical persuasion"--somewhat equivalent to speaking about
"jumbo scrimp!" More thoughtful persons, however, would argue that "it cannot
be seriously maintained that all persuasion is bad or undesirable."[24] For the
advertiser--and advertising students--the question, therefore, must center
around making judgments as to which types and methods of persuasion are ethical
and which are not.
Students need to understand that the key to making such judgments
ethically rests in the advertiser placing the concerns of his/her intended
audience at the same level as his/her own and those of the client or employer.
The advertiser has ethical obligations to those to whom his/her messages are
directed, obligations to provide "truthful, relevant information that makes
rational, significant choice possible."[25] The advertiser must view those whom
he/she is attempting to persuade "as capable of making rational choices, rather
than either as manipulatable `tools' of the persuader for personal gain or as
objects of paternalistic concern."[26]
In this regard advertising students can be introduced to the work
of Kenneth Andersen who defines persuasion as "a communication activity that
unites people--yet it also permits maximum individual choice. It recognizes
that people have a right and responsibility for their choices."[27] Commenting
on Andersen's work, Jaksa and Pritchard suggest that a key is Andersen's
emphasis on "the importance of voluntary change in the person being
persuaded...(which) distinguishes persuasion from indoctrination and coercion,
which do not allow significant choice....it also suggests that ethically
acceptable modes of persuasion do not rely on deceptive manipulative
tactics."[28]
That is not to say students in advertising must be taught that
only those advertising efforts providing "sterile" and "cold" facts which can be
tested by some scientific formula will be judged ethical from the perspective of
significant others. The issue, again, is providing that information necessary
that allows significant choice:
Not all choices can, or even should, be
based on evidence as proof. Rational argument
is not the only morally acceptable form of
persuasion. However, even when evidence or
proof is not available, those capable of
rational choice are respected only if
manipulative and deceptive tactics are
avoided. For example, one might be persuaded
to buy a car not because it can be proved to
be the "best" car on the market, but because
it is aesthetically pleasing. While not
necessarily interested in having the "best"
car on the market, the buyer would, nevertheless,
be upset to learn that the car gets only 14 miles
per gallon when it was advertising as getting 30
miles per gallon.[29]
Perhaps the key to building some sense of ethical obligation in
advertising students rests in moving them beyond assuming that ethical decisions
making can be defined in terms of self-interest--even that form commonly known
as the "enlightened" variety.[30] Too often students--and advertising people in
general--speak about doing good because doing good "pays". Hospers notes:
The most usual answer, and the most popular
answer to the question "Why should we do right
acts?" is "Because it pays to do so--because it
will later if not immediately, turn out to be to
our interest to do so." This motive is appealed to
so constantly that we are hardly aware of it. We
are told to be honest, but not because honesty is
a good thing: we are told that "Honesty pays" and
"Honesty is the best policy"--the best policy, of
course, being the one that most benefits us in the
long run.[31]
Such an attitude is equivalent to saying " `Drive safely--the
life you save may be your own'--the implication being that if the life you save
were not your own you need not be so anxious to drive safely."[32] No, driving
recklessly--or not respecting significantly others in advertising campaigns--is
wrong (unethical) because to do so violates basic moral precepts and this--of
and in itself--is wrong. Decisions as to whether particular actions the
advertiser might take are right or wrong must be based "on considerations of
universal human rights and respect for human dignity."[33] Other persons must
be considered and, therefore, "not be treated merely as a means to an end; they
are to be respected as ends in themselves."[34]
"Developing" the Will
Having established that ethical issues in advertising must be
placed to a context to which students can relate and that students must
understand that ethics deals with obligations to others, the central question
remains--how does one develop the will to, in fact, act ethically? While it is
true that one must first recognize the ethical issue and develop a sense of
obligation, one could remain unwilling to do that which is right because one
lacked either the conviction or courage--or both--to do so.
The key to "right conduct" has already been touched upon in the
previous reference to Lickona's admonition to "cultivate an `ethics of the
everyday,' a morality of minor affairs that translates respect for persons into
small deeds of kindness, honesty, and decency." Lickona suggests that one must
"build" the will to act ethically when he states that "decency and integrity in
our everyday encounters are both important in themselves and likely to be
important in strengthening our disposition to be moral when we face the big
decisions. If we do not nurture ethics on the small scale, we may not get it on
the grand scale either."[35]
What Lickona is speaking of, in terms more familiar to those
trained in traditional moral philosophy, is the habitual motivation of the will
to do that which is right--more specifically the development of virtuous
behavior. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, a "habit means a disposition
according to which that which is disposed is either well or ill disposed, and
either in itself or with reference to something else."[36] Fagothey insists
that "the only way of assuring ourselves that our acts will be morally good is
by turning them into a habit. Virtue and vice are only names for morally good
and morally bad habits."[37] He argues:
The good life does not consist of unrelated
good acts. The acts lead into one another, rein-
force one another, and form chains of good conduct.
The good life would be harrowingly difficult if
each good act had to be done on its own without
any influence from one's past behavior.
...Virtue testifies to good acts done, for
there is no other way of acquiring a virtue, but
it is also and chiefly the spring of further and
better moral acts in the future. Virtue stands
somewhere between a single good deed and a whole
good life.[38]
Advertisers--and therefore advertising students--will never be
able to meet the challenge to act ethically when faced with a difficult ethical
dilemma if they are not virtuous in their "everyday" life--both in the office
and outside it.
Jeb Stuart Magruder--who gained "fame" during the Watergate
hearings that eventually lead to Richard Nixon's resignation--spoke directly to
this reality when he said, "It's a question of slippage....Each act you take
leads you to the next act, and eventually you end up with a Watergate. It's
very typical in a large corporation."[39] Magruder had not developed the
habit--virtue--of acting ethically and when "push came to shove" he went along,
or in his words, "I followed instructions and did things I did not agree with
because it was important for my personal success."[40] Like many others, he
enjoyed his job, had children to feed and educate, and he wasn't rich. He found
that "as he cooperated, he discovered that it became easier to lie, to break the
law, to participate in the cover-up...A subtle, gradual erosion of his moral
character occurred."[41] Earlier Eugene Exman spoke to this same point:
"Can the conscious calculated output of
untruths, half-truths and misleading irrelevancies,"
writes a friend, "be continued for a long period
without an ever-mounting cost in the currency of
character? Can playing fast with the truth and
sincerity yield peace of mind? It's touching to
note how inadequately a man's hard-won cynicism
covers the gap between the shirt of respectability
and the pants of expediency. I know men to whom
the urgency of truth dawned in their middle years,
when they were shackled to commerical falsehood
by loyalty, by affection, by pride and by habit.
Such a man suffers. To regain his soul would
cost him his whole world."[42]
The advertiser who habitually motivates the will to respond to
all "ordinary" matters in an ethical manner will more likely respond to the
difficult dilemma that confronts him/her with the requisite
fortitude--courage--because that virtue has become intrinsically part and parcel
of how that advertiser defines his/her very being. That individual defines
him/herself as an ethical person and could not imagine practicing his/her craft
in any other manner.
But--and this is critical where students are concerned--it must
be emphasized that "no one is born with virtues, and they do not come to one by
chance but only by long and arduous training."[43] While it is true that one is
"born with a nature endowed with certain powers of acting...(and that) habit
does not give...(one) the power to do something...(habit does enable one) to do
something more easily and readily."[44] One might argue that:
If the habit is good, it turns our originally
fitful and clumsy efforts into quick, smooth, and
masterful action. If the habit is bad, it makes
us fall more easily and readily into the undesirable
course. Habit has therefore been called a "second
nature," for just as nature is the principle of
action itself, so habit is the source of facility
in action. The habit comes from the acts, and the
acts come from the habit, but in different ways:
by acting repeatedly we acquire the habit, and
the habit now acquired tends to manifest itself
in habitual acts.[45]
Can the instructor have any impact in this regard at the
undergraduate level? Rest argues that one can at least "sensitize students to
the ethical problems that they will inevitably face in their jobs."[46] He says
that at the undergraduate level this can be accomplished while at the same time
giving students "opportunities to gain experience and strategies in solving
these problems (in the benign environment of school)."[47] He also responds to
those who contend, parenthetically, that perhaps by the time an individual
enters college it may already be too late to change values. He contends that
"this argument assumes a form of development determinism that psychological
research does not support....Deliberate educational attempts to influence
awareness of moral problems and to influence the reasoning process are shown to
be effective....Moreover, studies link test scores...with actual, real-life
behavior."[48]
That is not to say the advertising instructor can devise some
"magic wand" that can be waived and in an instant eliminate all the ethical
problems that have plagued advertising and those active in the field. If ethics
were only a matter of classroom learning, the before mentioned Jeb Stuart
Magruder would never have become involved in the Watergate scandal. Magruder had
taken an ethics course from William Sloane Coffin, who later became a well known
figure in the field. In fact, Magruder said he saw Coffin as more than a
teacher. He said he "related very well to Bill. He seemed to understand."[49]
There are also those, unfortunately, who believe that the study
of professional ethics should not have a major place in the undergraduate
professional school curriculum. In their eyes, instruction should focus on
providing students with the training necessary to entry level employment. Are
faculty not taking a risk in spending time teaching ethics, time that would be
better spent preparing students for the "realities" of the job market?
Along with Macklin, one might reply that "it is better to take
the risk. Where laudable goals or worthwhile ideals exist in human endeavor, it
is better to strive to achieve them and fall short then never to seek these
goals at all."[50]
Conclusions
There are many persons--including some in advertising--who have
little regard for either the ethics of the advertising industry or its
commitment to genuinely serving the public interest. Howard Luck Gossage, for
example, argued:
I cannot recall the time when our industry
has taken a public stand on anything that anybody
gave two whoops in hell about. Oh, we come out
foursquare for schools and against forest fires,
but that's about as far as it goes. Do we ever
do anything except mumble piously about the all
too evident abuses within advertising--abuses
inflicted on every man, woman, and child in this
country? No, we content ourselves with such bold
ventures as Advertising Recognition Week, as though
anyone could help recognizing it.[51]
Surely, however, advertisers--and students in advertising
sequences in our colleges and universities--can do better. In the landmark 1976
Supreme Court case Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens'
Consumer Council, Inc.[52]--which gave at least limited First Amendment
protection to purely commercial advertising--Justice Harry Blackmun wrote that
advertising can be "tasteless and excessive." Nevertheless, he stated, that "so
long as we preserve a predominantly free enterprise economy, the allocation of
our resources in large measure will be made through numerous private economic
decisions. It is a matter of public interest that those decisions in the
aggregate be intelligent and well informed."
In short--and as noted earlier--advertising is part of "the
system" and "if we are going to live in the kind of system we have created, then
advertising plays an important and positive role. If we want to create and live
in a different kind of system, then advertising may become unneeded,
superfluous."[53] That does not mean, however, that if one accepts "the
system," one need not be concerned that unethical advertising and unethical
advertisers have too frequently played what amounts to a dysfunctional role in
regards to informing the public. Baran and Sweezy see yet another problem:
The greatest damage done by advertising is
precisely that it incessantly demonstrates the
prostitution of men and women who lend their
intellects, their voices, their artistic skills
to purposes in which they themselves do not
believe and that it teaches the essential
meaninglessness of all creations of the mind:
words, images and ideas. The real danger from
advertising is that it helps to shatter and
ultimately destroy our most precious non-
material possessions: the confidence in the
existence of meaningful purposes of human
activity and respect for the integrity of man.[54]
Those are harsh words--and words with which many in advertising
will strongly disagree. That they are enunciated at all, however, stands as
testimony to the need to raise the ethical consciousness of those active--and
potentially active--in the field. As this paper argues, however, raising that
ethical consciousness is not sufficient. In the end, advertising and
advertising people will be judged on their conduct. Advertising will be looked
at with suspicion by the general public so long as the pious rhetoric which
Gossage spoke of is not translated into real world action. Certainly men and
women active in advertising will not be "living a moral life...(if they form)
convictions about what...(is) the right thing to do, and simply...(ignore) those
convictions when it...(comes) to actual behavior."[55]
It must be understood, of course, that motivating the will to do
that which is ethical when confronted with a difficult--and potentially
costly--dilemma will never be an experience free of anxiety even for the
advertiser fervently determined to do that which is right. One who is virtuous
is not a robot or a superman. The virtuous person may be very anxious--even
afraid--but, nevertheless, will behave well because he/she will not allow that
fear to control his/her actions.
The difference between an ethical and unethical advertiser in
many cases is not the presence or absence of anxiety or fear when it comes to
doing that which is right in difficult situations. Assuming there is a desire
to do the ethical thing, the difference is one of will. An advertiser may want
to be ethical, but if he/she is not willing to act on that desire, he/she must
stand accused, in moral terms, as a coward. To paraphrase MacIntyre, one might
state, "This is not to say that...(an advertiser) cannot genuinely care and also
be a coward. It is in part to say that...(an advertiser) who genuinely cares
and has not the capacity for risking harm or danger has to define himself, both
to himself and to others, as a coward."[56]
Perhaps that is too uncharitable an indictment--and it is well to
remember that in all discussions of ethics one should distinguish between the
objective ideal which must not be compromised and the reality of fallible human
nature. Nevertheless, one must caution that there is a very high price to
pay--both for society and the individual--if the conscientious advertiser fails
to act in accord with the dictates of his/her conscience.
Endnotes
[1] Thomas Lickona, "What Does Moral Psychology Have to Say to
the Teacher of Ethics?" In Ethics Teaching in Higher Education edited by Daniel
Callahan and Sissela Bok (New York: Plenum Press, 1980), p. 130.
[2] Dean K. Fueroghne, Law & Advertising (Chicago: The Copy
Workshop, 1995), p. viii.
[3] Melvin L. DeFleur and Everette E. Dennis, Understanding
Mass Communication, 5th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), p. 324.
[4] David Potter quoted in DeFleur and Dennis, Understanding
Mass Communication, p. 324.
[5] "Advertising Stereotypes," Washington Post, December 13,
1983, and quoted in DeFleur and Dennis, Understanding Mass Communication, p.
347.
[6] Robert L. Dilenschneider, Power and Influence: Mastering
the Art of Persuasion (Englewood Cliffs, NY: Prentice Hall, 1990), p. 34.
[7] Fueroghne, Law & Advertising, p. viii.
[8] Austin Fagothey, S.J., Right and Reason: Ethics in Theory
and Practice, 6th ed. (St. Louis: C.V. Mosby, 1976), p. 3.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Daniel Callahan, "Goals in the Teaching of Ethics." In
Ethics Teaching in Higher Education, p. 70.
[11] Lickona, "What Does Moral Psychology...," p. 132.
[12] Callahan, "Goals in the Teaching...," p. 66.
[13] Ibid, p. 70.
[14] Lickona, "What Does Moral Psychology...," p. 131-132.
[15] David L. Martinson, "Getting Students Interested in
Ethics," Community College Journalist, Winter 1987, p. 6.
[16] For an earlier discussion of this incident, please see the
article cited in Endnote 15 directly above--pages 5-7.
[17] Lickona, "What Does Moral Psychology...," p. 131.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Callahan, "Goals in the Teaching...," p. 64.
[20] Ibid., p. 64-65.
[21] Jay Black and Frederick C. Whitney, Introduction to Mass
Communication (Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown, 1983), p. 415.
[22] Webster's New World Dictionary (New York: Popular
Library, 1975), p. 173.
[23] Thomas F. Schindler, S.S., Ethics: The Social Dimension
(Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1989), p. 103.
[24] James A. Jaksa and Michael S. Pritchard, Communication
Ethics: Methods of Analysis, 2nd ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994), p. 76.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Kenneth Andersen, Persuasion: Theory and Practice and
quoted in Jaksa and Pritchard, Communications Ethics..., p. 77.
[28] Jaksa and Pritchard, Communication Ethics..., p. 76.
[29] Ibid., p. 77.
[30] David L. Martinson, "Enlightened Self-Interest Fails as an
Ethical Baseline in Public Relations," Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Vol. 9, No.
2, 1994), p. 100-108.
[31] John Hospers, Human Conduct: An Introduction to the
Problems of Ethics (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961), p. 175.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Jaksa and Pritchard, Communication Ethics..., p. 96.
[34] Ibid., p. 128.
[35] Lickona, "What Does Moral Psychology...," p. 131.
[36] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica and quoted in
Fagothey, Right and Reason, p. 168.
[37] Fagothey, Right and Reason, p. 168.
[38] Ibid.
[39] Jeb Stuart Magruder quoted in Studs Terkel, "Reflections
on a Course in Ethics: Jeb Stuart Magruder and a Question of Slippage,
Harper's, October 1973 and reprinted in Jaksa and Pritchard, Communication
Ethics, p. 192.
[40] Ibid.
[41] Jaksa and Pritchard, Communication Ethics, p. 197.
[42] Eugene Exman, "What is the Right Thing?" In Integrity and
Compromise edited by Robert M. MacIver (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries
Press, 1972), p. 114.
[43] Fagothey, Right and Reason, p. 178.
[44] Ibid., p. 168-169.
[45] Ibid., p. 169.
[46] James R. Rest, "Teaching Ethics at the University," Focus
on Teaching and Learning, Fall 1988, p. 1. (A publication of the Office of
Educational Development Programs at the University of Minnesota.)
[47] Ibid.
[48] Ibid., p. 3.
[49] Jaksa and Pritchard, Communication Ethics, p. 188.
[50] Ruth Macklin, "Problems in the Teaching of Ethics:
Pluralism and Indoctrination." In Ethics Teaching in Higher Education, p. 101.
[51] Howard Luck Gossage, Is There Any Hope for Advertising?
edited by Kim Rotzoll, Jarlath Graham and Barrows Mussey (Urbana, IL:
University of Illinois Press, 1986), p. 14.
[52] Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens'
Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U.S. 748 (1976).
[53] Don R. Pember, Mass Media in America, 6th ed. (New York:
Macmillan, 1992), p. 396.
[54] Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, "Theses on Advertising,"
Science and Society, Winter 1964, and quoted in Pember, Mass Media in America,
p. 397.
[55] James Gaffney, Newness of Life (New York: Paulist Press,
1979), p. 113.
[56] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. 179.
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