If there are signs that Americans bow to the gods of advertising, there are equally indications that people find the gods ridiculous. It is part of the popular culture that advertisements are silly.

Sales may lead to advertising as much as advertising leads to sales.

Objectivity, in this sense, means that a person's statements about the world can be trusted if they are submitted to established rules deemed legitimate by a professional community. Facts here are not aspects of the world, but consensually validated statements about it.

Advertisements ordinarily work their wonders, to the extent that they work at all, on an inattentive public.

American advertisers rely on 'essentially illogical' approaches to determine their advertising budgets.

Different groups are differentially vulnerable to advertising; and their vulnerability varies not so much with the character or quantity of advertisements as with the informational resources they can claim by age, education, station in life, and government guarantees of consumer protection.

It should be apparent that the belief in objectivity in journalism, as in other professions, is not just a claim about what kind of knowledge is reliable. It is also a moral philosophy, a declaration of what kind of thinking one should engage in, in making moral decisions. It is, moreover, a political commitment, for it provides a guide to what groups one should acknowledge as relevant audiences for judging one's own thoughts and acts.