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 🙂