I AM GLAD TO SEE that the Independent Tele- vision
Authority has appointed a supervisor of TV advertising. It has long been notorious that advertisers can easily infringe or evade the code originally laid down, forthright though it sounded at the time. For example, it insisted that no method of advertising might be used 'which takes advantage of the natural credulity of children.' But innumerable commercials do precisely that : children are shown sucking sweets, eating cakes and consuming soft drinks with gusto. Other commercials evade the code by sleight of hand. It insisted that no advertisement should refer to a product's value in, say, the treatment of bald- ness; but it is easy for an advertiser to plug his product's value in nourishing the hair (though it probably has no such value) and thereby to imply it is a hair-restorer. But I do not know whether the new ITA supervisor will have any powers to put down abuses of this kind : nothing in the past record of the ITA suggests that it is really concerned to enforce the Act.
Previous page
