Well with all that kerfuffle about the High Court decision on abortion, I almost forgot to mention that I received a letter from the ASA in Saturday's post. Before you get excited that this may mean an outcome, it's just a form letter acknowledging receipt of my complaint and telling me they are putting it into their process. Although it doesn't explicitly say so, I assume this letter, dated 12th June, is in response to the email I sent them on 30th May.* I was going to type their latest letter out but that really does sum it up.
What's encouraging is:
- I've been given a different complaint number (08/287) from the decision they had previously sent to me (08/183) and also to Joanna (and no doubt others) - I think this means they are treating my complaint as what is known as a "subsequent complaint", ie different in substance from a previous complaint made about the same ad. Which is good, because that is certainly the case.
- the Chairman will now determine if there is "a) suitable for the Board's consideration; and b) comes within the Board's jurisdiction." Clearly b) is met, so it's really just a matter of getting through a), to avoid last time's "no cause to proceed" result.
- they've identified a list of the parts of the Advertising Codes of Practice that they think are relevant to my complaint and it's quite long, which I would think might make it less likely they can claim it isn't suitable for consideration.
- the last sentence of the letter, which is from the same person who sent the previous PFO ones, starts "Please do not hesitate to contact me..." (Joanna I thought you would get a chuckle out of that!)
So if the Chairman decides the complaint should proceed several things will happen:
1. I will have to sign a waiver, signing away the right to "take or continue proceedings against the advertiser, publisher or broadcaster concerned." I'm assuming they mean legal proceedings, so that's not a problem. I'll let you know more once I've seen the wording of the waiver, assuming we get to that point.
2. The advertiser, in this case ALAC, will have an opportunity to put their case about why the ad doesn't breech the Codes.
Okie dokie, that's it for now, except to say I haven't heard back from ALAC yet, from my last email to them (the one with all the questions) and also that you should go read the comment thread on that post, especially Zanavashi's comment, which I think may be quite enlightening about the culture within addiction recovery circles and why this ad, and others like it, get made in the first place. C.C and Joanna have also been musing in that thread about a ten-year old ALAC ad from the "where's that drink taking you?" campaign, which, as C.C. covers in more length at her own blog, shows that ALAC has done this victim-blaming thing before...
* Actually I didn't even get a response to that email, so I sent a gentle reminder (honest!) on the 11th June, asking if they had received my previous email and forwarding it again.
3 comments:
Just about every single ad ALAC outs out involving women has something to do with sex:
http://www.alcohol.org.nz/CampaignItsNotTheDrinking.aspx
A reply is good news - including the "don't hestitate to contact me"
Thanks for the mention Julie. Ackkk, I should have replied here earlier when my brain was more alert, so I'll add this for now as "thoughts in progress".
There is another aspect to this I have been milling over these last few days, as I've been wondering how to contribute something to the abortion-related discussions here at the hand mirror which is more constructive than my rant over at the standard.
It may or may not be relevant, but the reason it popped into my head as an afterthought to my previous post is that it's a religious overtones connection which (amazingly) hadn't occurred to me before.
For those who don't know about 12-step programs (where by far the majority of addiction recovery work is done in this country) there is an an expectation that you cannot successfully recover unless it is with the assistance of a "higher power".
Although they "say" this can be anything "spiritually meaningful" to you personally, it happens more often than not that recovering alkies tend towards Christianity - in fact I would go as far as saying that most non-govt funded recovery programs are recruiting grounds for jesus.
As mentioned in that other thread, I suspect a significant number of the people who work with ALAC (and in some way responsible for these ads) have been closely associated with the 12-step recovery programs at some time - and if on top of that they became born-agains then this would superimpose yet another layer of moralistic woman-blaming crap on top of their objectivity.
ZOMG, can you imagine it??? Lisa got pregnant that night and needed an abortion - so she has society blaming her, her support network blaming her and also the ranting fundies protesting outside the clinic blaming her. On some kinda cosmic level I am wondering that the timing of these two issues in the public limelight right now is not such a coincidence after all.
Blessed be,
Z
Post a Comment