It was public outrage stemming from the fact that an already wealthy celebrity would use child labor to further acquire wealth that caused Ms. Gifford to react. It was a very highly publicized case, and in a journal article appearing in a 1998 edition of Afterimage, journalist Rebecca Schreiber commented this way:

Every so often, an event like the Kathy Lee Gifford scandal uncovers the whole line of production, bringing down public scrutiny on each of the links in the chain."(23) the tactical struggle waged through publicity and public relations is a significant site of image politics in the clothing industry, which is fundamentally driven by the production of images, the social value of style and signifying practices of fashion. Visibility is a form of publicity, the precondition to generating political identification, garnering attention and directing public discourse. Such image-based strategies, always partial and supplementary, are continually negotiated and contingent...
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