Arbitration & Mediation

Framing as an Act of Ethical Significance: "Consumers" Against Retail Discrimination

By Victoria Pynchon

I see that the Forbes Blog Network is running a political ad on my blog this week. It's that ad up there that says BIG GOVERNMENT blah blah blah . . .

I'm always suspicious of groups purporting to represent the interests of consumers while opposing the regulation of an industry. 

So I googled who's behind consumers of retail discrimination. 

This is what  found.

The Consumers Against Retail Discrimination Alliance or "CARD Alliance" is a project of the Electronic Payments Coalition, whose members include Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, U.S. Bank, Citi and virtually every banking association. The group purports to be concerned about consumers paying fees on purchases when they use debit cards. The financial industry created the "group" in response to an item in a regulatory reform bill that would protect consumers by allowing the federal government to limit on debit card acceptance fees for retailers. The "CARD Alliance" casts this effort as "retail discrimination" and says the measure would force people "to have to carry around cash at all times." The group uses the slogan, "Tell Congress: Hands off My Wallet" (Similar to the "hands off my health care" slogan of Americans for Prosperity in the health care debate.) The Washington Post exposed the CARD Alliance as a front group in an article published on May 25, 2010.^[1][2]

Last week I linked to a New York Times article about the power of anchoring and framing and the opinion of at least one academic that framing an issue is so powerful that it is an "act of ethical significance."  Here we have a "front" for the credit card industry posing as a group of concerned consumers.  I'm not taking issue with the opinions expressed by this group - about which I know virtually nothing other than what I read on the site linked to the banner ad and what I read at the Source Watch site on this group.  What I take issue with is deceptive advertising.  Instead of asking Forbes to remove this banner ad from my post, I'm asking my readers to think critically about the source of political advertising; to check the source (as easily as I did in my google search here); and, to question the bona fides of opinions promulgated by an industry that feels it necessary to cloak its identity to sell its agenda.

These misleading political campaigns may well be legal but they are not ethical.

Caveat Emptor!

UPDATE:  How fast was that?  It appears that the ad was pulled either from my site or the network within minutes of posting this.  Minutes?  I assume it wasn't my post that caused the change - I'm assuming some other blogger complained before me.  Sure would like to know.

Here's the Washington Post article about this media campaign.

Full post as published by Settle It Now Negotiation Blog on June 06, 2010 (boomark / email).