Ed Whitacre's TV commercials

Reader comment on: Read It Here First

Submitted by J. Johnson (United States), Apr 26, 2010 09:46

In addition to his piece in the Wall Street Journal and lots of print advertisements, Mr. Whitacre and GM are also spending big bucks to run ads on TV bragging about what they've done. Every time I see one of those TV ads, I wonder about the stations that air them and the stations' responsibilities to see if the ads they run are true, especially ads like Whitacre's. It is one thing for a vacuum cleaner manufacturer to say his new model is the best one on the market. This is standard hype and not really a threat to anything because every viewer already knows it's crap. In the case of the Whitacre TV commercials, viewers have, I believe, a right to expect that he is telling the truth and that there is no information readily available to the TV station to the contrary. I do not expect that TV stations will spend time and money to verify the truth of every statement in every commercial, but I do expect that the public interest obligations which apply to each and every TV licensee make them responsible for examining ads such as Whitacre's and rejecting them if they are deceptive, as Whitacre's clearly is.

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