The Consequences of Ads

Advertising is by far the major funding source of most newspapers and most mainstream media, but consider the consequences of this. First, advertising money is a sort of corporate bankrolling of the press, with unspoken strings attached, much like our political campaign finance system.

Ad funding can make a newspaper cheap or free for the reader, but this bargain is an illusion. The money that businesses pay for ads is passed on to the price of the goods and services that consumers buy, so the consumer always pays for ads in the end. Ads also encourage increasing consumption, which has many negative consequences for our planet.

There are also labor effects of advertising. The advertising industry is a kind of warped, privatized, make-work program which forces many artists to compose corporate mottos, shoot corporate photos, and design corporate logos in order to earn a living, at the national expense of millions of trees worth of paper (check out your Sunday paper: probably two-thirds of its weight is advertisements).

There is a better way to get information to people. It's called subscriber support. It's what this paper operates on. Noncommercial journalism needs your support more than ever. Subscribe to the Washington Free Press (see the subscription form on page 3 or on our website home page).

Doug Collins