title: Culture & Media
title: "Culture & Media"
layout: policy
What should we do to enhance culture, and how should we ensure a robust but ethical media landscape?
What should we do to enhance culture, and how should we ensure a robust but ethical media landscape?
Advertising regulations should be tightened to ensure quasi-scientific language and terminology is not used to promote any cosmetic, toiletry or food products.
@philipjohn - about 10 years ago
What's the thought behind this? The ASA is doing a pretty good job on this anyway from what I can see, e.g. Homeopathy.
@PaulJRobinson - about 10 years ago
Pretty much every anti-aging cream, shampoo or bio-yoghurt will have a 'science' part incvolving collagen, good bacteria, or Pro-V vitamins that are complete nonsense. I saw a drink this evening that consisted of gold and collagen. To their credit it didn't make any verbal or written claims as to what it did or what it was for. But the implication was that it was good for imoroved skin or beauty. Complete BS On 20 Mar 2014 21:03, "philipjohn" [email protected] wrote:
What's the thought behind this? The ASA is doing a pretty good job on this anyway from what I can see, e.g. Homeopathy.
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/openpolitics/manifesto/pull/134#issuecomment-38220876 .
@philipjohn - about 10 years ago
Ahh okay, yes, I feel your pain ;)
That said, I'm not sure a specific policy on this would be workable in a cost effective way. This should be handled by an education policy that ensures the teaching of sceptical reasoning.
Perhaps there's room for something under a consumer watchdog though?
This does seem like something that belongs in the ASA rather than being state-controlled. How are their policies set? Do government even have the power to influence it?
@PaulJRobinson - about 10 years ago
I can't get access to ASA website at the moment, so will investigate this question later.
As far as I can tell, this is a matter for the ASA, which is non-legislative. While I feel the pain of bullshit science, I'm not sure that this doesn't fall outside our remit.
But, @philipjohn's suggestion of making sure education policy includes skeptical reasoning and evidence assessment is a good one, and something we can cover.
@PaulJRobinson - about 10 years ago
But the Asa is just an enforcement body. They don't decide what rules to follow. They just ensure all advertisements follow government guidelines. I imagine they can recommend changes to those regulations, but government sets them. This was the case when government changed rules of advertising toys and junk food on children's programmes a few years ago.
Hm, that might be right. I was going with the bit on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdvertisingStandardsAuthority%28UnitedKingdom%29 that says:
The ASA is a non-statutory organisation and so cannot interpret or enforce legislation. However, its code of advertising practice broadly reflects legislation in many instances.
@philipjohn - about 10 years ago
Just trying to figure out how this works. The ASA seems to be mainly an enforcement body. It's independent and financed by the advertising industry. The actual code of conduct they work to is drawn up by the two Committees of Advertising Practice.
The code of conduct does two things; 1. Reflect legal requirements (e.g. tobacco advertising) 2. Specifies rules not required by law
So my interpretation is that for Government to influence what advertising is allowed it has to legislate, and that legislation will then be adopted within the codes of conduct. In this particular proposal, that would be tricky I think.
I still stand by my original comment and in supporting the principle here I'd suggest it's not a bad idea to have something on this. For example, if a future Government or the ASA decides to loosen the rules related to quasi-scientific claims, we can point to a manifesto that pre-empts that.
Perhaps we need to say we would "push" for strengthening of rules around the use of "science" in advertising, and maybe that we would seek to force advertisers to back up any claims with peer-reviewed studies published in open access journals?
Yes, OK, that's a good compromise. I don't think this would be strong enough to legislate on, but we could say we would encourage the ASA to strengthen their rules around this area. I could agree to that. The current wording could be interpreted that way, but it's perhaps worth clarifying it a little bit more.
@frankieroberto - about 10 years ago
Isn't the ASA entirely voluntary (albeit widely followed by traditional media platforms)?
@philipjohn - about 10 years ago
I believe so, but I think it's that situation where Government says "we'll let you self-regulate, but we reserve the right to implement statutory regulation if you don't do a good enough job"
title: Culture & Media
title: "Culture & Media"
layout: policy
What should we do to enhance culture, and how should we ensure a robust but ethical media landscape?
What should we do to enhance culture, and how should we ensure a robust but ethical media landscape?
Encourage the Advertising Standards Authority to tighten regulations around the use of pseudo-scientific language and terminology for the promotion of cosmetic, toiletry, food or other products, without sufficient evidence.
@philipjohn - about 10 years ago
Merged in 0a023e7 - and learned that I should be better at commit messages ;)
The OpenPolitics Manifesto
@PaulJRobinson - about 10 years ago
This pull request has been automatically generated by prose.io.