“Why Wouldn’t I Use It?”: Purdue Pharmaceutical’s Push of Pills

Throughout the early 1940’s to mid 1960’s, the popular habit of smoking cigarettes was not only condoned, but advertised by doctors and lawmakers. With the support of medical professionals and non-restrictive advertisement laws, the widespread use of this deadly product exploded. The ‘Big Tobacco’ industry and the federal government made enormous amounts in profit and tax revenue. Numerous similarities can be found between the advertising of cigarettes and the prescription opioid, OxyContin. ‘Big Tobacco’ and the producer of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma (Hoffman and Williams Walsh), employed incredibly similar tactics to encourage the public to use their lethal products. By controlling the narrative about the potential dangers, and the addictive properties through their use of advertisements, both “Big Tobacco” and Purdue Pharmaceuticals accomplished their goals of inspiring the “why wouldn’t I use it” question in the consumers’ minds

Multi-platform media: how newspapers are adapting to the digital era

No abstract available

Financial news journalism: a post-Enron analysis of approaches towards economic and financial news production in the UK

The collapse of Enron and other corporate scandals have raised concerns about the efficacy of financial journalism. Based on research on where reporters get their ideas for stories and how they approach their work, this article explores the particular circumstances in which production of financial and economic news takes place. The author argues that, while reporters are generally highly sceptical about ‘spin’ and strongly inclined towards highlighting instances of corporate underperformance and mismanagement, the circumstances and constraints they work within nonetheless make it unlikely that financial irregularities obscured within company accounts will be detected on a routine or consistent basis. Moreover, the way in which the commercial sector is organized (with in-depth analysis generally confined to specialist media whose audiences are already financially literate) means that the task of facilitating a sound public grasp over the significance of financial and economic news developments is largely being neglected

Audiovisual economics: Audiovisual markets in the European Union

Focusing on economic aspects of audiovisual industries, this article analyses some of the key EU policy initiatives affecting the sector –the AVMS Directive; the MEDIA Programme; competition and state aid for PSB; and also media ownership and pluralism– in the context of changing technologies and changing markets in Europe. It is notable that the policy ambitions surrounding audiovisual media are varied and do not always pull in the same direction. This article examines the threats and opportunities caused by digitisation and new value chain configurations but argues that conflicting agendas remain a substantive challenge for policy-making at EU lev