An Internet hub for moderates, centrists, and independents, with domestic and international news, analysis, original reporting, and popular features from the left, center, and right

« Why so few female science professors?

When A Good Mother Sails From This World »

Subliminal Advertising For John McCain On Fox News?

Posted by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief in Politics.
May 11th, 2008 | Comments

The blog Hypnosis Control has this You Tube goodie that purports to show subliminal advertising for presumptive GOP nominee John McCain on a Fox News broadcast.

Is it real? Imagined? Intentional sublimal? Unintentional picture placement? A doctored video put on You Tube? Who knows (and if Fox denied it some people would say don’t believe them anyway). We embed, you decide…

FOOTNOTE: I could never understand all the fuss about subliminal advertising, despite the research. If subliminal advertising (intentional or otherwise) truly worked, we’d have heard a lot of it by now and banned or otherwise the government (any government) would use it to influence and manipulate the population.

It’s like expecting that people who listen to Rush Limbaugh would ever follow Rush if he suggested, for example, that voters should vote in Democratic primaries or change their party registrations to vote in and sandbag the primaries. ~~It’s as SILLY an idea as that!~~ (Never mind…)

Ads by Project Wonderful! Your ad here, right now: $0

daveinboca

Hilarious that Gandelman doesn't notice the full-time open and uncritical Obamania reigning on the three ancient broadcast networks [now second, third, and fourth in total eyeballs to the newcomer Fox Network].

Biggest evidence of immoderation on this misnomer blog yet.

joegandelman

Dave, my friend,. Unless I missed something this post is dealing with an attention grabbing You Tube video, and is not a big critique of the networks objectivity. And I'm very sorry that the 20 something writers of varying professions and viewpoints on this site don't measure up to your definition of moderation, which appears to mean being decidedly anti-Obama (which doesn't fit the polls since independents, centrists and moderates are not monolithic on any issue or in support of any one candidate). I would love to see if you think this is a real or fake newscast or not, that's the point of the post. If I wanted to do a long critique on network news, I would have done it but I in case you didn't notice, that wasn't the topic of my post. If you have a You Tube that shows purported subliminal political advertising at CNN, NBC, CBS, BBC or Cartoon Network, do send it to me.

JWF

That's beyond silly. On the Fox 5 News 10 pm broadcast they show a montage of people in the news at the beginning of the program.

That's all it is.

runasim

I'm going to take this opportunity to vent about advertising in general.
It's everywhere--- to the point that I expect soon the air I breathe to be infused with product messages.

Regardsless of what the truth is about this on FOX, the fact that it's possible is bad enough. I don't think for a minute that a suggestion to do something like this would make all the executieves at news channels horrified. Some would definitely stroke their shins and wonder about the great possibilites it oculd lead to.
.

GeorgeSorwell

Something about this post makes me want to refresh my browser window...repeatedly.

Michael Merritt

Having studied television production for six years, and done switcher and directing for a live newscast, seems to me that the more likely explanation was that the keying on the switcher was poorly set up over a paused video tape recorder, or that they went to a key source where they meant to go to a VTR or fileserver source. It'd be worth investigating if the newscast on that day played video of McCain for some news package.

By the way, my only criticism of this post is that the title makes it seem like the actual Fox News Channel was playing this, when it's an affiliate, not the national network. It'd be like saying CBS was showing subliminal advertising for Obama in its opening, when in reality it was my local CBS affiliate, WFSB.

RememberNovember

I think it's just a truncated opening, that may have the unintended effect of being "subliiminal" -chalk up to lazy producers/editors.

blog comments powered by Disqus