Yes­ter­day, 11th of April, Wel­ling­ton’s Domin­ion Post – and the NZ Her­ald – pub­lished an advert­ise­ment that ruffled my feath­ers. Now this was not a ruffle like the tuss­ling of a child’s hair or that of an orna­ment­al lace about one’s wrists, but more of a scuffle of dis­be­lief, anger and con­fu­sion – not too dis­sim­il­ar to how I feel now that Wel­ling­ton has returned to its weather‑y won­drous­ness.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know that this is allowed. The Domin­ion Post is allowed to print advert­ise­ments much in the same way that Wel­ling­ton is allowed to have miserly wind and rain. In fact it’s expec­ted! Wel­ling­ton would­n’t be Wel­ling­ton if it did­n’t have that wind and rain and the Domin­ion Post would­n’t exist if it did­n’t have advert­ise­ments.

The advert that the Dominion Post (and NZ Herald) were paid to publish.
The advert that the Domin­ion Post (and NZ Her­ald) were paid to pub­lish.

How­ever the advert­ise­ment in ques­tion was one that encour­aged people to vis­it a web­site and tick two boxes that stated they would not vote for any MP who sup­ports the Mar­riage (Defin­i­tion of Mar­riage) Amend­ment Bill (the Bill) or any party whose lead­er sup­ports the Bill.

I will now clearly state my bias – I sup­port the Mar­riage (Defin­i­tion of Mar­riage) Amend­ment Bill as I believe cur­rent laws are dis­crim­in­at­ory and that the Bill pro­motes equal­ity.

This advert does a num­ber of things:

It shows that there are people will­ing to pay a large amount of money to pro­mote dis­crim­in­a­tion and that the Domin­ion Post is will­ing to take this money and ignore the con­tent of the ad.

It feeds on fear and encour­ages ignor­ance through its hyper­bol­ic nature and inac­cur­ate state­ments.

When an advert such as this is prin­ted ques­tions should be asked.

Firstly: How does an advert­ise­ment like this get pub­lished?

Well it boils down to money. Who­ever it was that paid for this ad paid a lot for it. Like I said above – without adverts the Domin­ion Post would­n’t exist, they would­n’t have a busi­ness mod­el that could pos­sibly allow them to print papers and provide them to over 230,000 people every day. So the Domin­ion Post hold out their hands get paid a lot of money and ignores the fact that this ad plays on the fear that ‘one of the worst acts of cul­tur­al van­dal­ism’ will occur if the Bill is passed. The Domin­ion Post has pub­lished an advert­ise­ment that incites act­iv­ism through fear in order to make a quick buck.

Secondly: Does this advert, des­pite ruff­ling my feath­ers and the feath­ers of oth­er like minded indi­vidu­als, meet the stand­ards that are required in New Zea­l­and?

The answer is: No. No it does not. The Advert­ising Stand­ards Author­ity (ASA) has a num­ber of rules that advert­ise­ments must meet. This advert, in my opin­ion, breaches four of these rules and rather than just com­plain to friends about this and what the ad stands for,  I took it upon myself to use offi­cial chan­nels and place a com­plaint to ASA.

My Com­plaint:

“I believe this advert­ise­ment in the Domin­ion Post, dated 11/04/2013, does not meet the advert­ising stand­ards on the fol­low­ing grounds:

Rule 1 – Iden­ti­fic­a­tion

While this advert­ise­ment does have the word ‘Advert­ise­ment’ in the top right hand corner the styl­ing of the advert to look like offi­cial vot­ing inform­a­tion, sim­il­ar to what was pub­lished in the run up to the last gen­er­al elec­tion means this is not “read­ily recog­nised as an advert­ise­ment” and is argu­ably not “clearly dis­tin­guish­able as such”.

Rule 2 – Truth­ful present­a­tion.

The ad con­tains a num­ber of false­hoods, such as: “The politi­cians have ignored thou­sands of sub­mis­sions,” and “They are ram­ming this bill through without giv­ing it the due con­sid­er­a­tion and debate it deserves.” In fact, par­lia­ment­ary pro­cess has been fol­lowed: over 21,000 sub­mis­sions were received, 220 of which were heard and the bill will receive three read­ings, as is the reg­u­lar pro­cess for Mem­ber­’s Bills.
The advert also states that politi­cians have ignored the “con­sciences of cel­eb­rants, regis­trars, churches host­ing wed­dings, and oth­ers in the wed­ding industry” when in fact these groups, along with every­one else who was inclined, were able to send a writ­ten sub­mis­sion to the Select Com­mit­tee, as over 21,000 people or organ­isa­tions did.

Rule 6 – Fear

Be labelling the passing of this Bill “one of the worst acts of cul­tur­al van­dal­ism” and stat­ing that “Mar­riage, in the pro­cess, will become mean­ing­less” the advert­iser uses fear to pro­mote action. This advert­ise­ment
“without jus­ti­fi­able reas­on, play[s] on fear” and as such does not meet advert­ising stand­ards.

Rule 11 – Advocacy Advert­ising

It is not clear who “My Mar­riage Pledge” is; wheth­er they are affil­i­ated with the church or the state, who has paid for the advert­ise­ment, or how to con­tact them. With an advert­ise­ment such as this, they should be more account­able. The code states: “The iden­tity of an advert­iser in mat­ters of pub­lic interest or polit­ic­al issue should be clear,” and it is not in this case. This rule also states that “opin­ion should be clearly dis­tin­guish­able from fac­tu­al inform­a­tion” but as stated above, the num­ber of false­hoods dis­played as truth are actu­ally opin­ions and there­fore do not meet NZ advert­ising stand­ards.”*

I invite you to file a com­plaint also. Use my text or make your own. But say some­thing, because both the Domin­ion Post and this mys­ter­i­ous ‘My Mar­riage Pledge’ group should be held account­able for the pub­lic­a­tion of an advert­ise­ment that breaches New Zea­l­and Stand­ards and encour­ages dis­crim­in­a­tion.

 

*I used the major­ity of the text from Rachel Rayner­’s post on the same issue http://www.rachelrayner.co.nz/2013/04/truth-in-advertising.html and I thank her for being an ena­bler 🙂