Plenty of magazines these days focus on healthy lifestyles, green shopping, and the idea of moral buying. England's "Ethical Consumer" is a perfect example of this. You can browse their website at www.ethicalconsumer.org. Here they describe their magazine as "the truth behind the products we buy and the companies we buy them from, with detailed buyer's guides, news, in-depth features, opinion and comment, boycott updates, readers' letters, and much more." They also claim their motto is "challenging corporate power since 1989." I find this fascinating because since this is a print magazine, and it's funding must still come from subscribers, advertisements, and newsstand purchasers, it is considered a media outlet. There is no possible exemption from corporate involvement or corporate standing, and to claim such a thing is false advertising.
The magazine's website has a section devoted to "Why buy ethically?" so we can better understand the weight of our dollar. It lays out what kind of vote we cast if we buy sweatshop products, factory farmed meat, and own large SUV like vehicles (specifically reprimanding inhabitants of cities for such an act). Pretty much, in 500 words or less Ethical Consumer summarizes the importance of shopping with intention and even states "four kinds of ethical buying: positive buying, negative purchasing, company-based purchasing, and fully-screened approach." For the purpose of this blog post I will focus on their advising of shopping ethically in regards to clothing.
On the first page of this section you presented with opportunities to purchase the company's "Research Reports" on the ethical nature of certain clothing companies their audience is likely to shop at. This alone costs three pounds. So before the magazine can even tell you where to buy your clothes, you have to buy something. While I'm sure this cost is partially to offset the cost of the study itself, we are still being constantly presented with ways to spend our money. They do have free buyers reports to browse, so I clicked on a few
Under the clothing heading, the website devotes a whole section to "Urban Fashion." They describe this as following: "Popular urban streetwear brands of jeans, t-shirts and hoodies are often associated through lavish advertising and sponsorship with extreme sports, surfwear, workwear or 'independence of spirit'. " On the stop of their list they noted brands such as "Equop" and "Gossypium", nearer to the bottom they listed "H&M". All the descriptions of the companies seemed like almost an advertisement for the top few, which made me wonder if the magazine didn't receive funding like advertising space or contributions for the high mention. It would be very interesting to see their financial report of the year, however it cannot be found on their website. I'm not sure how "ethical" the actually company of Ethical Consumer is itself, but we can see that they advertise to us and sell products just the way most media (and corporate) outlets do.
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