The things you learn

It’s amazing the things you can learn on your way to finding out about something else. I was at the website of the Advertising Standards Authority to read their decision in the complaint about the Mitre 10 commercial. I scanned the list of decisions and found one entitled “08/628 - Right to Life New Zealand Newspaper Advertisement”. I know that RtLNZ is a far-right christianist group, as the name suggests, so I had to have a look.

It turns out that someone filed a complaint with the Authority over an ad RtLNZ placed in the Christchurch Press the day before the last election (and I never saw this mentioned in the mainstream media). The advertorial-style ad was headlined, “The Government’s secret agenda for social engineering?” (boldface was in the ad). The three subheadings were “The first attack could be on the unborn child,” “The second attack could be on the elderly and the seriously ill,” “The third attack could be against the institution of marriage.” It was this third section that was the source of the complaint.

The complete text under the third heading was: “The institution of marriage is exclusively confined to one woman and one man; it is the foundation stone of civilised and stable society. In a letter to the Right to Life, dated 20 October 2008, Jeanette Fitzsimons, leader of the Green Party stated: ‘As a specific Green Party policy, we state that rainbow and heterosexual partnerships are equally entitled to respect and support. We support the extension of all legal partnership arrangements and rights to same-sex couples’. The Greens therefore support legislation to provide for same sex marriage.” What any of that has to do with abortion—RtLNZ’s focus—is beyond me. But, I digress…

In fact, the Green Party did not support same sex marriage, but did support Civil Unions. The complainant felt that “Right to Life have misrepresented the Green Party on the day prior to the 2008 general election with an advertisement in a prominent part of a widely distributed newspaper. The advertisement may have had an adverse effect on the Green Party election result.” That’s obviously true, but did it breach the Code of Ethics?

The Chairman ruled that two provisions were relevant. First, “Rule 2: Truthful Presentation” requires that advertisements should not be “likely to deceive or mislead the consumer, makes false and misleading representation, [abuse] the trust of the consumer or [exploit] his/her lack of experience or knowledge. (Obvious hyperbole, identifiable as such, is not considered to be misleading).” The second was “Rule 11: Advocacy Advertising”, which says that while expression of opinion is essential for a functioning democracy, “opinion should be clearly distinguishable from factual information.”

The Authority also had to consider freedom of expression guaranteed by the Bill of Rights Act 1990. However, Section 14 of that act does make clear that in advocacy advertising, opinion and fact must be clearly identifiable. Moreover, freedom of expression is not absolute, as it could infringe on another person’s rights. The Code is there “to ensure there is fair play between all parties on controversial issues.” However, robust debate also ought to be encouraged. It would seem to be a conundrum.

The majority of the Complaints Board held that the line saying “The Greens therefore support legislation to provide for same sex marriage.” “was presented as a statement of fact in the advertisement but was in fact the Advertiser’s interpretation of the Green Party policy in relation to legal partnerships.” This placed the ad in violation of Rule 11 because separation of fact and opinion wasn’t clear. So, the complaint was upheld—on a pretty narrow point.

I fully admit to a little schadenfreude whenever far-right groups get their comeuppance, but I was actually more interested in the way the Board got to their decision (which I think was correct).

I have no idea what, if any, penalties were imposed, but they would’ve been minor, probably just a requirement for the paper that published the ad publish the decision. In my experience, most newspapers don’t review ads very carefully (except for ones making therapeutic medical claims). There’s a wall between advertising staff, who are working to meet sales targets, and the editorial staff who put the paper together. Sometimes someone on the editorial staff will query an ad they see on a page proof, but not always, and even if they do, very often nothing is done (even ads with bad grammar or punctuation are often left alone).

I hope that the wingnuts at RtLNZ learned that they can’t get away with misrepresenting their opponents' positions. I certainly learned a bit more about how complaints are handled, and that could be useful if I ever lodge one. But the main thing is that the voters lost out in this, deprived of fair and honest debate by an extremist group determined to misrepresent the truth for their own political ends, and by a newspaper that was far more interested in money than vetting ads. I hope we all learn something from that.