Commercial speech has always been somewhat of a problematic topic around the world. The fact that the main goal behind commercial speech is persuasive, it makes the sheer thought of commercial speech intimidating. Large corporations with the power to put words and images in front of millions of viewers that are not always necessarily truthful, and there is nothing that we can do to stop it. Except for maybe throw our phones and computers in a lake and close our eyes and ears ever time we go into a public space. It is referenced in the reading that "Alexander Meiklejohn, argued that commercial speech is less deserving of constitutional protection than is political speech, because "mere advertising" is not essential to self-government" (Tedford and Herbeck, Pg. 212) This comes as no surprise, as the history of commercial speech is not the greatest.
Fairly recently, commercial speech has taken another low blow. A large automobile manufacture, Volkswagen has been in the news for none of the right reasons. In 2015, Volkswagen planted "defeat devices" in many of their diesel automobiles, in order to avoid scrutiny for the Environmental Protection Agency. These devices falsified the real emission results, making them look much better than they actually were. The environment is obviously something that many countries around the world care about, and false commercial speech does not help us in any way. This scandal lead to the recall of over 10 million Volkswagen cars between the US, UK, Europe and Germany. Not only were the environmental effects of this scandal detrimental, but the economic effect was a heavy burden as well. This lead to over 10 million people without cars for at least some period of time. It just goes to show how harmful commercial speech can be and how careful we need to be when consuming media.
Hotten, Russell. “Volkswagen: The Scandal Explained.” BBC News, BBC, 10 Dec. 2015, www.bbc.com/news/business-34324772.
Fairly recently, commercial speech has taken another low blow. A large automobile manufacture, Volkswagen has been in the news for none of the right reasons. In 2015, Volkswagen planted "defeat devices" in many of their diesel automobiles, in order to avoid scrutiny for the Environmental Protection Agency. These devices falsified the real emission results, making them look much better than they actually were. The environment is obviously something that many countries around the world care about, and false commercial speech does not help us in any way. This scandal lead to the recall of over 10 million Volkswagen cars between the US, UK, Europe and Germany. Not only were the environmental effects of this scandal detrimental, but the economic effect was a heavy burden as well. This lead to over 10 million people without cars for at least some period of time. It just goes to show how harmful commercial speech can be and how careful we need to be when consuming media.
Hotten, Russell. “Volkswagen: The Scandal Explained.” BBC News, BBC, 10 Dec. 2015, www.bbc.com/news/business-34324772.
I think commercial speech was part of VW's issue. The company definitely misled consumers, people probably bought the car assuming it met the Clean Air Act's emission standard-- which it did not. But the larger issue is that the purpose of these defeat devices was to hide that these cars violated the law. The defeat devices were used to circumvent regulation. The device would detect when the EPA was conducting emissions tests and would lower the car's emissions so it did not exceed the limit, but once people were actually driving them the emission level exceeded the limit, apparently to improve acceleration and torque according to the New York TImes. So, I think this was less of an issue about commercial speech as it was just an illegal practice.
ReplyDeleteIf VW had advertised these diesel cars as meeting, or emitting less, than the EPA's limit-- if they had made that the car's selling point-- then I think commercial speech would be even more relevant to this situation. But I think commercial speech is an interesting way to look at this scandal, as it is a perspective that was not really explored.
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/business/international/vw-diesel-emissions-scandal-explained.html
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ReplyDeleteI agree that commercial speech is something that we need to be careful about when consuming it in the media. It isn't completely protected to the degree of other speech under the First Amendment, because it isn't really serving the greater good of the people. Instead, its serving the greater good of large corporations. They can essentially, twist words or try to lie in their advertising, all of this in order for people to buy their products.
ReplyDeleteVolkswagen lied in the media in order to sell their cars. This is why commercial speech isn't protected as much under the First Amendment, because it is tricking consumers. Volkswagen lied in order to sell more cars and make more money, regardless if it was dishonoring the EPA rules. It even made emission well over the EPA limit, which is very toxic for the environment and nonetheless, illegal(Guess). It is scary to believe that there are a lot of companies our there doing similar things like lying to the general public because they want to sell more products, especially when that has a lot of negative consequences. I agree that commercial speech should not be protected as much under the First Amendment, because lying would become much more acceptable if it was.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/09/volkswagens-emissions-cheating-scandal-has-a-long-complicated-history/