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We are getting fatter, more depressed, and more in debt as every second races us to the finish line. Sixty percent of American adults are now overweight, with the number of fat children catching up. Pharmaceutical companies compete to market the next great antidepressants: will it beat Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft? Perhaps to soothe our worries about not winning the thin game or the happy game, we win the spending game. We are bombarded with visual communications that comfort us, telling us that everything will be okay if we just buy their product. Further, television and movies work to entertain us so we will have the time to sit and gain weight. And then there is the news-real people, real problems, real death-but do we really care, or are we just simply satisfying the need to be constantly visually entertained? As Dennis L. Wilcox et al. (2003) explain in Public Relations: Strategies and Tactics: "The enormous impact of television on daily life was largely responsible for an increased visual orientation" (p.240). Indeed, television and other visual communications pound images into our heads day after day, determining how we learn and what we value.
In fact, this emphasis on visual communications means that public relations professionals must learn as much about the paint brush as the pen. Video news releases and eye-catching images may be surpassing quality writing in deciding what makes it past the cutting room floor: News editors have suggested that "weaker stories with strong visuals outperform strong stories with weak art" (Amberg, January 1995, p.14). Producing the desired outcome from a campaign may be depended on "more visuals, more graphics and less writing" (Amberg, January 1995, p. 14). Yet how do photographs and strong images aid in creating positive relationships between a company and its publics? And aside from a few extra pounds, do publics gain company knowledge or learn an organization's value?
In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman discusses how the print-to-television shift changed what we value: "Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education, and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business" (1985, p.2). Show business tells us that we do not have to listen to candidates, just look at them. Are they fat and bald? Well they must...