Assignment 4: Food reviewers fired after scathing article on hipster café

Fabrication is the action or process of manufacturing or inventing something in other words it is a lie. We have all told little lies from time to time but it becomes more disturbing when it comes from a “trusted” news source. That’s why I decided to look into an article about a little restaurant called the West End Deli.

The story starts off with a bad review from Kelly Ramsay and Chloe James, former contestants on Australian reality television show My Kitchen Rules and food reviewers for The Sunday Times magazine STM, in Western Australia. These two ladies were apparently having “twitter beef” with the owner of West End Deli months before they decided to review their food. You 

In the review they stated, “Poorly executed flavors, soggy cheese, and overripe watermelon and under ripe tomatoes were amongst the criticisms in the review. Ramsay said she left a large quantity of food on her plate due to the poor quality”.

Come to find out majority of the review was trash. Why you ask? Well a list of these reasons can be found in a response letter that the restaurant posted on Facebook to everyone. Firstly the review was done by both women but both women didn’t attend the restaurant only one did and that was Ramsey with her fiancé. She added in her review that she left her plate almost full but that wasn’t the case the restaurant owner stated that their plates were basically licked clean.

Second the hipster restaurant only uses produce that is in season so some of the items that she mentioned in her review couldn’t have possibly been on her plate at that time. So she didn’t actually reflect their menu at the time.

Thirdly, after cleaning their plates and getting the bill Ramsey handed over her credit card but of course it was declined. She left with promises to come back the next day to pay it which she never did. The owner called her over a two month span until she finally (not happily) pay the $260 bill.

So, even after ditching on the bill the ladies still decided to give the restaurant a bad review it was obvious that this woman was looking to get a free meal for her and her man but when it didn’t come out her way she tried to fire back by trashing this restaurants name but all it did was backfire on them with the loss of their jobs.

http://mashable.com/2016/02/24/restaurant-reviewers-fired/#Ljy26ugX.Oq6 

Assignment 3: Deceptive Advertising

Deceptive advertising, also known as false advertising, refers to a manufacturer's use of confusing, misleading, or blatantly untrue statements when promoting a product. Advertising law will protect consumers from deceptive advertising through the enforcement of specific legislation. Many companies in America to this and get away with it all the time, but the ones that get caught are the one that blatantly lie to our faces. The only way to spot this is to be critical of what people are trying to sell you and investigate all claims before making your decision in purchasing a product or partaking in some kind of event.

Erectile dysfunction affects 1 out of 4 men in the U.S. today and although it’s a touchy subject many companies have tried to come out with a product to battle against this certain problem. Which brings me to the product known as ExtenZe. The makers say that these pills are natural male enhancement pills that are guaranteed to really increase your penis girth and penis size in just a few short weeks of taking these medically formulated enhancement pills! They openly claim that their product will, Enlarge the penile erection and penis size, Way more larger and frequent erections, More intense orgasms, The penile erection is quicker to obtain and more reliably as well as much more. If all these claims are true then why did the company just settle in court to pay 6 million dollars due to false advertising? Because of course the pills don’t work. ExtenZe claimed that its product had been clinically tested, no credible scientific evidence was ever presented for this male-enhancement product.  Their claims outraged many people in need of a solution. They even had ads that featured testimonial about their product from “real people” that were also shown to be false. In the commercial the “real people” would state that over a billion tablets were sold which was also seen to be false. While advertising the company literally made up names of ingredients that were supposed to be included in the product names such as ambesium labidrol" and "aunctus philtrum. Crazy I know! They eventually even offered full refunds to customers but made it extremely difficult for customers to get them. But as they went to court they were ordered to give back partial refund to customers as well as make a donation to the Prostate Cancer Foundation.  Not only were they lying but they were potentially putting people’s lives in danger with all of their lying of the ingredient the product contained. Now Extenze no longer claims to do much of anything. On its web site, it makes some vague statements about “male enhancement” and “enhanced sexual pleasure”. This is just one example of how blatantly deceiving a company can be while trying to sell you a product, but this goes for all companies. Not all are caught either most just slip right past the radar so it’s up to us to make a conscious decision about the product we buy.

Assignment 2: Tabloid

A tabloid is a newspaper having pages half the size of those of a standard newspaper, typically popular in style and dominated by headlines, photographs, and sensational stories. Well that’s the definition that the dictionary would give you but if you pick a tabloid magazine from your local store I’m pretty sure the stories would be far from sensational. If that's the case how do they keep the magazines on the shelf, how do they keep people interested? I decided to take a look into People magazine. When I first visited the site the first thing that I saw was some family controversy and a light bulb went off in my head. DUH! That's what keeps these magazines up and running, controversy but not from us normal people it's from the people we love and admire the most, the rich and famous. On the People magazine website there were all kinds of stories of rebel teens and of course the Bill Cosby and that was only the front page. The only story I read and considered to be “real news” was a story of a young girl who jumped from a burning building to save her life but sadly that didn’t even make it to the first page.

On the website they had tabs from videos to the royal family. As I searched the site there were no other stories of real news only stories of stars without makeup and picture of actors with baby bumps. As far as I could tell People magazine had used good ethical values when posting stories. Nothing was too jaw dropping the where they could possibly face a lawsuit. I believe that the only reason these tabloids are still on the shelf is because we are generally curious about the rich and famous.