In recent times, the noble objectives of Mass media - to inform, educate and entertain, have been reduced to one single objective - to ‘sell’ news and programs. Commercial interests often decide the content and format of the programs and advertisements, without bothering to consider how such presentation would impact the values, ethos and health of the viewers -especially children who do not have the emotional or cognitive tools to evaluate what's being sold to them. There are codes of ethics that are guidelines for the advertisements. But these codes are often violated for the purpose of ‘selling’. This paper attempts to analyze some of the ethical violations in TV advertisements in India using content analysis methodology.
Television, advertisements, codes of ethics, ethical violations
