Regulation

Media Regulation is the use of legal means to control media ownership and the content of media communications; which are split into two sections, ASA and Ofcom. ASA (Advertising standards authorities) observe to see what is allowed on television, this is so they make sure that certain programmes aren’t breaking the regulated law. Ofcom (Of communications)- law enforcement, ASA suggests things to Ofcom, to enforce law. ASA have no real power. ASA and Ofcom target advertisements that breach or violate the enforced rules set, which are known as BCAP. BCAP (Broadcast committee of advertising practice) is a set of rules of things you can’t do by law and voluntary rules, which are ethical and moral codes; which aren’t allowed in advertisements. This is also known as the BCAP code. If ASA find something wrong with a specific advertisement they send a complaint to Ofcom; who after a while revise the situation and decide whether to take action or not. An Example of BCAP codes are misleading advertising, this is saying that a product or service does something that isn’t true to sell it. This happened with Red Bull’s previous slogan “Red Bull gives you wings”, which was misleading and potentially harmful to the consumer in case they thought they could fly after drinking it. In result of this Ofcom had to take action, this lead to Red Bull being sued and had to change their slogan to ‘Red Bull gives you wiiings”, which doesn’t infer that you can fly after drinking red bull. Another BCAP rule comes under the category of “Children”, this rule states that if directing advertisements at children or featuring them, there can’t be any unsafe practices and/or unfair pressure on them: this is using pester power and sales promotions for children. This rule was created because the fact that children can be easily manipulated by older people and misleading ads and things that put a lot of pressure on them. Another rule is based around pornographic images being displayed on advertisements; the rule restricts any type of R18-

rated material being shown in advertisements. This is to stop children from seeing explicit images and it is also to prevent people from complaining about seeing nudity; people may complain about viewing nudity because it may give off the wrong impressions about certain products or services. An advert that has been banned recently is one of the Easter bunny Aldi series adverts, this advert was banned because it used real life baby bunnies in the advertisement. This was seen as harm and offence to animal rights with the little bunny rabbit in danger within the advertisement. ASA reported this advert and after Ofcom reviewing it they had the advert taken down.