Truth be Untold

Here’s the thing you will have noted about the advertising on which journalism has traditionally depended. The messages of the twin enterprises often pull in different directions, leaving the reader confused about how to proceed.

In those free magazines that people occasionally leaf through in doctors’ offices, for example, the articles unanimously agree that breast-feeding is best for babies.

The glossy, full-colour adds accompanying the articles and advice columns, meanwhile, extol the virtues of commercial iron-fortified breast-milk substitutes.

News reports about aging often stress that living independently in the comfort of their homes as long as possible is the best thing for seniors. The accompanying ads promote assisted-living facilities and retirement communities.

This raises an interesting question: What, exactly, is the reader supposed to believe?

Well, as Hal Holbrook (playing Deep Throat, later revealed to be FBI associate director Mark Felt) theatrically implored Robert Redford (playing Bob Woodward) in the movie All the President’s Men: “Just follow the money.”

The perpetual push-and-pull arises because journalism has a complicated relationship with advertising. Journalism needs advertising in order to exist, and advertising needs journalism in order to provide a respectable environment in which to sell you things you did not know you needed.

Nobody wants to buy a miracle wrinkle cream from a website called “GUY WHO KNOWS A GUY.COM.” But put the same cream next to an article titled “Seven Evidence-Based Ways to Age Gracefully,” and suddenly it has credibility.

The cream may contain approximately three molecules of whatever ingredient is supposedly responsible for rejuvenation, but it has been photographed against a white background suggesting someone in a lab coat, so clearly science is involved.

This arrangement also produces some fascinating editorial gymnastics.

Suppose a magazine publishes an article explaining that excessive consumption of luxury goods contributes to financial anxiety.

Excellent journalism. The article is researched, sober and responsible.

Unfortunately, it appears on page 34, directly opposite a two-page advertisement for a watch costing approximately the annual income of a small island nation.

The watch is worn by a man standing beside a sports car. He appears relaxed. You are not relaxed.

You have just read an article explaining why you should stop spending money on things you don’t need. You are now wondering whether you need the watch.

This is how advertising works.

It doesn’t necessarily tell you that you need something. It merely introduces the possibility that you have been living incorrectly.

Perhaps your mattress is wrong.

Perhaps your car is wrong.

Perhaps your kitchen is wrong.

Perhaps, as Tom Waits has suggested, it’s time to turn into a nine-year-old Hindu boy and get rid of your wife.

But more than likely, your face is wrong.

Your face is particularly vulnerable.

You can spend an entire lifetime with the same face, making friends with it, trusting it, allowing it to accompany you through weddings, funerals, illnesses, tax returns and various photographs in which you were hoping to look normal.

Then you open a magazine and discover that your face has been a catastrophe. Damn it! You just knew it.

Fortunately, there is a serum. There is always a serum. The serum will apparently restore your face to the condition it enjoyed before you had the misfortune of being born.

(Possible side effects include phantom limbs, a fully functional tail, hearing your own fingernails grow, vampirism, wrinkly palms and soles after bathing, nipples too big, nipples too small, nasal labial folds and autoerotic asphyxiation in a lonely hotel room just a hundred yards from Mary Ann’s. If any of these symptoms occur, head for the nearest ER, stat, and remember to bring white shorts from home.)

The magazine will helpfully explain all of this while maintaining the highest possible journalistic standards.

This is why the advertising-supported publication is such a magnificent institution. It can tell you, with a straight face, that materialism is making you unhappy, that consumerism is destroying the planet and that your self-worth should not depend upon your appearance.

Then it can offer you a handbag for $4,800.

The handbag is “timeless.”

This is important because you will need the bag for many years in order to amortize the cost.

Of course, by the time you have finished paying for it, fashion will have changed, the planet will have warmed another three degrees, and the magazine will be running an article titled: THE NEW MINIMALISM: WHY OWNING THINGS IS MAKING YOU MISERABLE.

The article will contain useful tips for simplifying your life. One of them will be to get rid of unnecessary possessions. The accompanying advertisement will be for a storage facility for unnecessary possessions that could become de rigueur again in three years or less.

At this point, the reader begins to understand the true genius of the system. The magazine does not merely inform you about your problems. It manufactures a complete ecosystem in which every problem has a sponsor.

Are you overweight?

There is a diet.

Are you underweight?

There is a supplement.

Are you stressed?

There is a wellness retreat.

Are you relaxed?

There is an app to monitor whether you are relaxing correctly.

Are you lonely?

There is a dating service.

Are you happily married?

There is a luxury cruise.

Are you broke?

There is a financial-planning service.

Are you financially secure?

There is a luxury cruise.

Eventually you reach the final page of the magazine and encounter an advertisement for a funeral home. The people in the advertisement are smiling. Everyone is wearing tasteful clothing. There are flowers.

The headline says something reassuring about planning ahead (to avoid earning the eternal enmity of the loved ones who will have to do the work if you put off dealing with this unpleasant but inevitable task). So maybe not so reassuring, after all.

And suddenly you realize that this publication has been preparing you for your entire life. It has advised you on what to eat, how to sleep, how to exercise, how to raise your children, how to grow old, how to spend your money, how to look younger and, finally, how to die.

All of this information has been brought to you by companies that would very much like you to purchase something.

You close the magazine.

For a moment, you feel free. Then you notice the advertisement on the back cover. It is for a subscription to the magazine. The subscription will save you 40 per cent.

You sign up immediately.

Of course, the fact that you’ve made it this far illustrates that you’re part of a rapidly shrinking demographic prone to leafing through magazines in a doctor’s office in an increasingly post-literate society. You are part of a dying breed, just as the ad at the back of the magazine suggests.

With everyone else (save for ideologically motivated wackos on the Far Left and Far Right) now getting their medical information from “influencer” shills who say whatever Big Pharma pays them to say, the cognitive dissonance we older folk grew up with is fast becoming an ailment of the past.

Soon everyone will be on the same page. Except there won’t be a page. Just misinformation and a healthy cost to an ignorant and thoroughly gulled society.

Oh, and by the way, we can do something about those unsightly cankles of yours that could be an early warning sign of crotch biscuits. Before proceeding further, please enter the three-digit code on the back of your credit card here ___.

Just follow your money. We are.