Advertising has been the focus of attack by media critics, philosophers, literary critics and the defenders of high culture for almost as long as there has been advertising. Taking a look through the quotations on he right, pulled more or less at random from the books lying around me, you can see that the criticisms of advertising amount to:
- Advertising is manipulative and therefore morally reprehensible
- Advertising is immensely expensive and therefore wasteful
- Advertising diverts our attention from the fundamental problems of a free society, e.g. class divisions and inequality, and instils in us values which are inimical to democracy
- Advertising heavily influences the way the media operate
- Advertising is responsible for social unrest
