IELTS Writing Task 2 Media and advertising Essay Topics

Position

Agree for adverts that sit inside programmes made for young children. Disagree with a ban so wide that it covers a bus-stop poster a child happens to walk past.

Body paragraph 1

Point

A child watching cartoons cannot reliably tell a story from a sales pitch placed in the break.

Explanation

The advert uses the same voices and colours as the programme. The child asks for the cereal because it was in the room, not because they compared prices. Parents can refuse, and they still pay for the argument at every shop. The ban that fits is the one on that slot.

Example

A five-year-old who can sing the slogan and cannot say what the product costs, after a break in a programme scheduled before school.

Body paragraph 2

Point

A total ban is a blur. Children see adult media, shop fronts and sport, and a rule that tries to remove every glance becomes a rule about all advertising.

Explanation

That larger ban is a different policy, with costs to ordinary commercial speech, and it is not required by the cartoon problem. A watershed, a ban on characters from the show selling the food, and no direct exhortation to the child are narrower and checkable.

Example

A code that forbids the programme’s own hero from holding the snack, while leaving a supermarket’s evening advert for adults alone.

Conclusion

Ban the pitch that is built to be mistaken for the cartoon. Do not pretend every public image a child might see is the same act.

Position

Keep the government away from the decision to publish. False reports are a problem for corrections, courts and competing outlets, not for a minister with a list.

Body paragraph 1

Point

A government that can stop a report will stop the one that embarrasses it, and will call that report false.

Explanation

The power does not arrive labelled "for lies only". The official who signs it is the subject of the story often enough that the incentive is obvious. Supporters of control are right that lies spread. They are wrong about who should be trusted with the off switch.

Example

A health-contract story held back because a ministry office marked it "unverified", with no date for the hold to expire.

Body paragraph 2

Point

Outlets can be required to correct, promptly and in the same place, without anyone needing permission to publish the first time.

Explanation

A named correction, a right of reply, and a court that can hear a serious harm after publication deal with falsehood without a pre-clearance desk. Pre-clearance is where true and awkward pieces die, because waiting is a kind of stopping.

Example

A front page that had to carry the correction in the same column size as the original claim, the next day, with no minister involved.

Conclusion

Freedom from control is the safer default. Build the penalty and the correction after the fact, not a licence before it.

Position

Platform money keeps reporters employed after print advertising left, and it bends coverage towards pieces the platform’s screen rewards.

Body paragraph 1

Point

A grant can pay for a correspondent a local paper could no longer afford from the newsagent.

Explanation

Investigations are slow. Display adverts no longer cover them. A fund that buys two years of a court reporter is a real advantage if the contract does not name the verdicts. Jobs saved are not a metaphor. They are people at the hearing.

Example

A regional paper that reopened its court desk with a two-year grant after the print edition’s advertising had paid for nothing but the sport page.

Body paragraph 2

Point

The funder’s product is attention, so editors learn to pitch stories that travel on that product.

Explanation

A long inquiry into a water contract travels badly in a square video. A row between celebrities travels well. Even a well-meant fund trains the newsroom in what gets renewed. The disadvantage is the taste of the screen, not a cartoon of a tycoon dictating a paragraph.

Example

A newsroom that cut a three-week investigation to hire a second producer for short clips, because the renewal form asked for watch-time.

Conclusion

Take the money when the contract buys a desk and names no story. Refuse it when the metric is the platform’s clock.

Position

The cause is design: adverts use the same type, the same byline style, and the same feed slot as reports. The fix is a label that is ugly enough to see, in the same place, every time.

Body paragraph 1

Point

Publishers and platforms earn more when the reader does not feel the gear change into a sale.

Explanation

A banner at the side is easy to ignore and easy to block. A "partner story" in the column, set in the same font as the news, is paid at a higher rate precisely because it borrows trust. The cause is that borrowed trust, not a sudden decline in intelligence.

Example

A page where the third item was a hotel feature written by the hotel’s agency and set under the same headline style as the city report above it.

Body paragraph 2

Point

Require the word "Advertisement" in plain type at the top, on the same background, and fine the outlet when a paid piece omits it.

Explanation

A pale grey hashtag is a design choice in favour of the payer. A standard the reader can learn — one word, one place, no slogan beside it — is teachable. Schools can then point at a real mark rather than at a mood called "media literacy".

Example

A rule that rejected a campaign because the label was in the brand colour and below the first screen on a phone.

Conclusion

Readers mix the two because the page was built to mix them. A dull, identical label is the solution that matches that cause.

Position

Firms choose it because a face the follower already trusts is cheaper than a slot everyone knows is an advert. Followers should be told, in the first line, every time.

Body paragraph 1

Point

A celebrity post arrives inside a diary of meals and holidays, so the product looks recommended rather than bought.

Explanation

The firm is paying for that confusion. A magazine page is framed as selling. A personal account is framed as a life. The method persists because the frame converts better, and because the audience assembled itself for free.

Example

A drink placed on a breakfast table in a post that otherwise showed a school run, with the contract nowhere on the picture.

Body paragraph 2

Point

The first line should say paid-for, before the picture, in words a teenager does not have to decode.

Explanation

A disclosure in the twentieth hashtag is a way of complying without telling. Clear notice will reduce the value of the method, which is the point of the objection, not a side effect. People can still enjoy the diary. They should know which sentence was invoiced.

Example

A post that began "Paid partnership" in the same size as the caption, rather than "ad" in a list of thirty tags.

Conclusion

Firms buy the diary frame. The frame is acceptable only when the invoice is the first thing a follower reads.

Position

Positive for readers who already live on a phone and for papers that were printing at a loss, and negative for people who used the printed paper as their only edited briefing.

Body paragraph 1

Point

Print is a lorry, a newsagent and a deadline that digital distribution does not have to pay.

Explanation

A paper that was spending the cover price on paper and diesel can keep the reporters if it stops the round. For a commuter who already reads on a phone, the edition is not missed. The development matches the way that reader actually receives news.

Example

A city paper that kept its council reporter and dropped the dawn delivery, after the print run had fallen below the cost of the ink.

Body paragraph 2

Point

The printed bundle was how some readers met stories they had not chosen, including corrections and the unfashionable page.

Explanation

An online front can be a feed that never shows the council piece. Older readers who will not manage a login lose the object itself. A negative development is not "change". It is a specific audience left with television and a rumour in the shop.

Example

A reader in her seventies who had used the morning paper for the deaths, the court list and one leading article, and who had no email account to move to.

Conclusion

Closing print is positive when the reporting survives and the audience can follow. It is negative when the only edited daily object in a town simply vanishes.