"critics" news and stories

According to consumer groups, the beer industry's standards for advertising are not high enough. And they're not talking about their propensity to appeal to the lowest common denominator by showing belching contests and bikini-clad women. The New York Times reports that critics are upset because they do not feel the industry is abiding by their own standards and is still producing ads which are seen by children.

The industry self regulates via the Beer Institute, which creates guidelines and monitors advertising content. Their standard is to only air beer ads when no more than 30 percent of the audience is under the legal drinking age. Steven Rowe, attorney general of Maine and vocal critic, stands firm in his believe that the standard should be lowered to 15 percent. Critics also feel that the Beer Institute's advertising code, which state ads "should not portray beer drinking before or during activities, which for safety reasons, require a high degree of alertness or coordination," is being violated in ads. To support their "unsafe activities" claim, fingers are pointed at the ad aired during the Olympics that showed men drinking beer while pretending to be fixing their roofs, though beer companies stated that commercials obviously meant as parody were exceptions to the "unsafe activities" code, not violating any standards.

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Sometimes restaurant reviews seem to skew towards the negative - so why bother reading them when you can get the gist from the headline? The Seattle Post Intelligencer critic stepped up to try and answer that very question this week. The headlines are only a glimpse of what the review was about and a half dozen words, except in very rare cases, is hardly capable of conveying the full experience that a review offers. Another potentially misleading element of a review is the number of stars or the numerical rating it received. A subjectively determined numerical value will give you even less information than the headline alone because you can't get a sense of the criteria used to justify the rating.

Newspapers tend to review new restaurants, which are more likely to be hit-or-miss on any given day during their infancy than a meal at a long lasting neighborhood favorite. Their kitchen might not be fully synched or perhaps they haven't settled on a menu of their best dishes. Time can change a restaurant for better or worse, and an early review may not tell the whole story.