by The USA press have a reputation as being one of the more ruthless newspaper organisations in the world. The recent phone hacking scandal only highlighted the lengths they will go to in order to secure a scoop.
The recent swirl of publicity regarding payday loan websites and their use of pages to target specific parts of the socioeconomic climate, particularly students, marks a slow week for the guys in the press room – without their handy celeb voice mails to fall back on should they be short of a story or two. The almost semi-sarcastic story, considering the presses misdemeanors over the past 12 months, of feigned outrage actually made me chuckle into my cornflakes. Is this really that bad? The whole point of these pages were to pick up those typing into Google ‘student payday loans’ so they were already looking in this direction anyway. Or maybe I’ve missed the point.
What is the point?
Well it would appear that this group are a defense less and exploitable part of society that are particularly vulnerable from payday loan websites that they go looking for. Of course everyone should be dismayed at such underhand tactics, however, what is being missed is the fact that these students have to actually type in student payday loans to be returned that page. Very clever of the payday loan websites.
A storm in a tea cup is how I would sum it up, but typical of the hypocritical press that will pounce on anything they can for a story. This is how newspapers here work and is by no means a new thing. You just have to look at the stories they run of celebrities and their lifestyles when half of the USA media carry on the same way.
So should students take out payday loans?
Uh no… More’s to the point should anyone take out payday loans? This is again debatable, however, it is only in the minority of cases that they will be the best solution. The simple fact about students is however that they should not be approved by payday lenders unless they have a income over a certain amount. If certain lenders are approving customers without this then that is another question and one that should be investigated by regulators.
To obtain a payday loan with this website for example the applicant must be in employment, preferably full-time, and the figure they receive will reflect how much (if they are approved) they will be approved for.
