Business as Usual

How corporations used mass media to teach Americans that capitalism was natural and patriotic, exposing the porous line between propaganda and public service.

Business as Usual reveals how American capitalism has been promoted through ephemeral materials such as public service announcements, pamphlets, educational films, and games—what Caroline Jack calls "sponsored economic education media." These items, funded by corporations and trade groups aiming to "sell America to Americans," infiltrated communities, classrooms, and workplaces, reaching the airwaves to promote the ideals of "free enterprise" under the disguise of public service and civic education.

These materials offered an idealized vision of US industrial development as a source of patriotic optimism. They framed business management imperatives as economic principles and conflated the privileges granted to corporations by the law with foundational political rights held by individuals. This rhetoric remains dominant, serving as a harbinger of the power of disinformation that persists today.

Jack reveals the processes of funding, production, and distribution that entrench a particular vision of corporate responsibility, which, in turn, marginalised other hierarchies of value and common care.