Advertising-funded media gravitate toward the lowest common denominator, limiting representational change.

Evidence

Needless to say, we should be wary of believing too much in the promise of any one medium, particularly a medium shaped by advertising dollars and therefore governed by the unyielding pull of the lowest common denominator. The problem of legitimizing the denial of rights to any group of people is larger than the question of representations. We are not even close to resolving terrorist threats to the United States by Muslim extremists; the impact of U.S. foreign policies on Muslim lives around the world, perceived by many outside the United States as a different, and unacknowledged, form of terrorism; racism directed toward Arabs and Muslims under the guise of national security and a feminist imperative; or violence against women around the globe. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 1419

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the standing library theme that media shaped by commercial incentives structurally undermine independent thought and change capacity. — connects to: Advertising-saturated media itself demonstrates the flattening of critical thought. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 101