U.K. Ad Highlighting Plight of Orangutans Is Deemed Too ‘Political’ to Air

According to a judicial case heard in the House of Lords in 2008, the rationale behind the regulation is “to protect democracy from overpowerful voices,” Mr. Scott said.

“It’s almost the flip side to what you find in the United States, where there is more of a laissez-faire approach, if you want to spend your money on buying airtime, you can,” he said. “There is a more paternalistic, condescending view reflected in this law.”

The United States once had what was called the Fairness Doctrine, introduced in 1949, requiring broadcasters to give equal time to opposing viewpoints, but that was done away with in the Reagan administration.

Political spending, and by extension advertising, was unleashed in two Supreme Court decisions, Buckley v. Valeo in 1976 — which allowed unlimited campaign spending outside of direct donations — and Citizens United in 2010, which allowed unlimited spending as long as it was not “coordinated” with a political campaign.

So is the Iceland ad ‘political’?

Political is in the eyes and ears of the beholder.

There is little doubt that huge areas of rain forest are being leveled to make way for palm oil plantations. According to Greenpeace, “an area the size of a football pitch is torn down in Indonesia’s rain forest every 25 seconds, with palm oil driving the destruction.”

And habitat destruction is assuredly bad for orangutans and other species. Nearly 150,000 orangutans living in Borneo, an enormous island in Indonesia, vanished from 1999 to 2015, a 16-year research effort showed. They are now an endangered species.

Richard Walker, managing director of Iceland, the food retailer, said in a telephone interview that the company’s ad was neither too aligned with Greenpeace nor political.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/world/europe/palm-oil-ad-uk-iceland.html?partner=rss&emc=rss