Is it time for a Political Standards Authority?
February 8th, 2010 | This post was written by Fiona MelvilleYears ago, I worked in advertising. For every ad we made, we had to pass the text and a description through an organisation which has evolved into the Advertising Standards Authority. Their job was to ensure that all ads were “legal, decent, honest and truthful by applying the Advertising Codes” and without their approval we couldn’t put an ad out (I don’t know quite what the process is these days – it was some time ago that I did this!)
Anyway, Danny Finkelstein’s post last week about Gordon Brown’s policy inventions got me thinking. While I am as fond as anyone of deliberately misinterpreting what politicians say, I think that the time has come for political advertising to be held to higher standards. And in return, for political parties to be allowed to buy advertising on TV and radio.
Government advertising (all those ads to lose weight, target benefit fraud, combat swine flu…) has increased by 39 per cent in the last year, with 10,000 messages a day.
I was always skeptical about complaints about government advertising, as there are essential messages that any government will want to communicate, and I was never sure about the connection that viewers made between a particular political party and actions carried out by government departments. However, I saw an ad break with at least four government ads in it recently and I have changed my mind – particularly given Labour’s elision of government and Party branding.
I think it’s time to allow political parties to advertise freely (but not for free!) on TV, radio, cinema, newspapers, billboards, online – wherever they want. But in return, they need to be held to higher standards of truth and honesty in the content of those ads – no more lies about what has and hasn’t been announced as policy, and no more deliberate distortions of what are, after all, generally good intentions.
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Tags: Campaigning, Commentators, Living in Britain
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