The portrayal of violence in Mexico City’s sensationalist tabloids has reached harmful boundaries for a society. They show in their front covers explicit images of dead people, and next to the deceased a half or completely nude woman with gossip about her sexual life. The text inside these newspapers doesn’t have any news value.

The aim of this project is to raise awareness of how unethical it is to produce and consume these materials, with the support of a considerable amount of research about the ethics of the visual journalists. The first step was to investigate the effects of the mass media over people. Several studies and experiments were reviewed, and it has been proved that the media have certain influence over people’s attitudes and are capable of emphasising characteristics of the individual. The second research was on the language that the tabloids in Latin America use to approach the working class, the repetition of violent topics is supposed to represent their lifestyles. The speech and the definitions of gender roles legitimise men’s power over women whose bodies are presented as consumable.

The chosen Design approach for the project was Culture Jamming because it defies the original media with “anti-ads” using the same visual language to attract the viewers by tricking them at first sight into thinking it is the real publicity but it is a critic, questioning the ethics of what it is being consumed. The final decision was to create a tabloid called El Sádico (The Sadistic) anti advertising El Gráfico (The Graphic) one of the most violent tabloids in Mexico City. Inside it, a comic and some articles explain the unethical reasons behind the portrayal and consumption of violence, the objectification of women and its consequences for the individual and society.