All I want for Christmas is truth!

Slow news week, but that doesn't mean Social Media still isn't full of easily debunkable memes.  Remember folks:  Just because it's written in white text overlain a relevant picture and shared by your well-meaning relative, doesn't mean it's true.  And with that, let's get going!  What meme are we debunking today?

OK, so before we do anything that can be called research, let's do some analysis: Just look at this image and see what sticks out.  First, what is this a picture of?  I see a glass table with what might be a laptop on it, a TV display like you'd find in any electronic store, a person wearing a jacket looking at the camera (or perhaps slightly to the side).  4 of the 6 TVs are showing the same image.  Also, there's some text in the lower right of the screen ("AFP"), where we might expect to see a channel designation.  So maybe it's...... one huge screen showing 6 screens on it.  The image itself seems to have a lot of water on it, or maybe the lens is cracked?  I really couldn't tell you.

Everything else in the image is black.  There's no good sense of where this picture was taken.  In fact, you can't even see the person's legs beneath the table.  The top of the image cites a website, www.unbelievablefactsblog.com.  So, whatever research we will do should begin there.  However, my alarm bells are already ringing that this picture is a little weird, and certainly not particularly related to the text, except that the person in the picture looks Asian.

Now, to the text itself.  Not all shows are 45 minutes.  What about news?  Do they even have 24 hour news there?  I'm sure they do.  What about movies?  The 45 minute bit seems oddly specific...

I can't find a less glib way to say this:  Before even investigating things further - but just by analysis - things already seem shaky.

OK, to the investigation!  First stop, unbelievablefactsblog.com.  I don't know quite what I was expecting - I think I expected to see a mess of a website.  Long rambling blog posts espousing the virtue of the "unbelievable facts" without actually proving why we should, actually, believe them.  A blog thrown together by college students who are frustrated that the world doesn't live up to their standards, and who are unrealistic in their expectations.  Goodness is good.  But goodness can be slow.  Not because evil forces hold it back, but rather it is always easier to do nothing.  Apathy is a greater enemy to humanity than evil.

However, what I saw was so unhelpful I refreshed the page a few times just to make sure.  I accessed the site on 12/27/2015.  I'm certain in the future it will change.  But here is what I saw:

It was basically the same image - identical!  But just when I almost gave up, I saw a small bit of text lower down on the page that said "source."  So I clicked it.  If you click on it, you'll indeed see a news story.  From the BBC.  Showing the government did limit TV advertisements.  In 2011.

But we got something!  It is true!  But it was also from several years ago.  Can we follow up on this?

Eh, not really.  All my research attempts turned up nothing (I'm certain if I knew Chinese I could find more information, but alas, I do not).  So while this is a true fact, it's relevance to us is not yet obvious.  Why were advertisements limited?  Did it work?  Are those limits still in effect?  Without answering those questions, this fact is just trivia.

However, by reading that BBC article, we can see there were already detractors.  In brief, here were the points against:

• TV networks will become more reliant on the government for funding.
• Revenue from advertising, if put at the end of a show where it is more easily avoidable, is considerably less.  This makes the TV stations more dependent on government funds, since advertising is the financial backbone of almost every media outlet.  This is a more obvious problem for news channels, whom viewers want to be as independent as possible.  Certainly being more dependent on the government is not desirable.
• Quote: "Radio and television are a mouthpiece of the party and the people - an important propaganda front in cultural thought," read the SARFT [State Administration of Radio, Film and Television] statement.
• A [SARFT] spokesman told Xinhua, the state-run news agency, that the aim was to make TV shows confirm to "public interests and aspiration."
• The advertisements are not likely going away.  Perhaps the products will be written into the script (Product placement).

These two points are important - they get to the core of why advertising, however frustrating it may be, is not bad.  Because right now we've been assuming TV advertisements are bad, and limiting them is good.  That's why this meme is being shared after all.  "Wouldn't it be great if our government did this, too."  But let's not jump on that bandwagon too fast.  What are the consequences?

Sponsors have a positive effect on media.  They significantly reduce the cost.  In return, the media outlet runs advertisements on their behalf.  The net effect is we, consumers, have to play much less than we otherwise would (and, in some cases, the product is given to us free!).  This makes it easy to gain listeners/viewers, and more viewers helps both the media and the sponsors.  There's little downside, outside of ads being annoying.

Sponsors also give viewers control over content they otherwise wouldn't have.  When Rush Linbaugh called Sandra Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute," people contacted his sponsors, and asked (Well, demanded.  They probably weren't very polite about it) them to stop supporting his show.  And many of them did.  And this forced him to publicly apologize for his comments - a rare feat!  This would have been impossible without the pressure from sponsors.  Rush, of all people, is used to receiving hate, and he is fueled by it.  But to have that hate lead to reduction in dollars...  That stings a lot more.

Reducing TV networks ability to raise funds from multiple sources makes them more dependent on the Chinese government.  So guess who now gets a big say in what TV shows will get supported?  I'm not sure what Chinese word got translated as "propaganda" above - it may not be a fair translation - but certainly the Chinese government has cultural desires for its people, and now it has more power to act on those desires.  And the TV stations have less leverage to use against it.  They'll either conform to the demands or go out of business.

As for product placement, this is a bigger problem than it may seem.  I can't tell if this is sincere or just excellent satire, but this is a great explanation of one of the bigger problems of product placement.  Your favorite TV character always orders Diet Coke?  Like James Bond?  These product placements are easier to see, though they can still get in your head.  But advertorials (advertisements hidden as editorials) appear in newspapers and on news sites.  We don't expect them there, and many of them are quite well hidden.  Is it sneaky?  Sure!  But we didn't like those banner ads.  So the media outlet complied.  And the advertisement evolved.  And now, instead of being sold products in a way we recognize as being sold a product (Thus we can be on our guard, while also watching the content), we're being sold products in less overt ways, in ways specifically designed to trick us.  This is hugely problematic for resisting their efforts to get us to pay money for things we don't need until they tell us we need them.

So advertisements are annoying.  But they also give us control over our media in a way simply complaining does not (Hate clicks are still clicks).  So they're good.  And annoying.  My view is they are good as long as we know what they are.  When we can't tell ads from the rest of the world, we're in trouble.

But what about a world without ads?  What if money wasn't a limit, and people could do what they wanted without needing to please corporations?  Well, the worst case scenario is Donald Trump, who has repeatedly insisted his best political strength is his financial independence:  "I am self-funding my campaign and therefore I will not be controlled by the donors, special interests and lobbyists who have corrupted our politics and politicians for far too long."

This is a similar position taken by Bernie Sanders, on the Democratic side, who has also disavowed special interests and lobbyists, for basically the same reason.  The two candidates, though, could hardly be more different - but they are instructive here.

A world without ads (Donors and special interests are the sponsors of the political world) can either be supremely egalitarian (as Sanders promises), or it can be incredibly self-serving (Trump can say whatever he wants, and when people are angry, they're just "complaining," and he can ignore them (And in fact use them to galvanize those who support him)).  Ads are, essentially, the a check-and-balance that keep us in sane, familiar territory.  It may not be great, and it may in fact have limits we despise (Broad blandness is preferred over boldness that may fail or offend), but it also prevents us from collapsing into demagogue free fall.  Any other presidential candidate would have been financially cut off and fallen into oblivion for saying what Trump has said.  But Trump (and Sanders) are immune to such limits.  It will be interesting to see how things play out for them.  The main difference is Trump can lose all his individual donors and still run a robust (or at least loud) campaign.  Sanders' success depends on keeping his base energized, from whom he gets a lot of individual contributions.

I've gone way off topic.  Let's wrap things up quickly.

So:  The meme is accurate (though I still couldn't find any information about the 45 minutes.  Are shorter/longer shows subject to different rules?  From what I found, it seems as though all commercials are shown at the end of shows, but I'm inferring that, I didn't explicitly read that anywhere, so I can't be certain.)

But:  The fact is 4 years old.  The meme also ignores objections raised at the time.  I'd like to see some follow up.  What is the current state of TV advertising in China?

Advertisements are annoying, but they serve several important purposes.  They keep the cost of media down, and they are a check-and-balance against those with a large platform saying outrageous things.  While I certainly was incorrect about this meme being inaccurate, I hope I've got you thinking about advertisements in a more nuanced way.  Simply removing them from is not an inherent good.  Our media costs money.  If not ads, how will the content get funded?  We have choices, but we need to consider them thoroughly...