Controls of Advertising and the Media - Essay Example

Controls of Advertising and the Media The purpose and jurisdiction of ASA The advertising standards ity (ASA) is one of the regulatory bodies responsible for the control of advertising in the UK. Its codes of practice have a central focus: advertising should be legal, decent, honest and truthful. The codes of practice used in this case are subject to constant change in the light of cases submitted to it by groups or members of the public. In this case, advertisers gradually test the boundaries and public responses thus raising the issues on which the panels are adjudicated (Feintuck and Varney 2006, p197). However, the best sources for the media student are these jurisdictions that give a clear indication of what the society is prepared to tolerate at any one given time. However, there is a constant debate between the ways in which goods and services are promoted and their acceptance in the public sphere. It is important to remember that both goods and services themselves may not always be the issue but the associations and values that they raise for the consumer. This is further complicated by different patterns of regulations in varied state nations (Mueller 2010, p31 2). Some of the jurisdictions of ASA There are some various jurisdictions regulatory issues in advertising and among these jurisdictions are: complaints, falsehood and deception, consumer information, decency, using and subverting the system. Complaints The jurisdiction comprising of complaints involve the study of adjudications that will make clear how few complaints here actually are. This does not necessarily mean that people were not offended. People can choose to respond in different ways and at different times to events. At a personal level, consumers may decide to boycott French goods or certain banks or political parties for ideological reasons. Most of the customers do not complain formally but respond in a negative fashion to the goods or services by not buying into them. By way of contrast, pressure groups can affect the reception of an advertisement by campaigning about it and making it a focus for concern. Falsehood and deception A major emphasis in advertisements is concerned with the truth claims that they make. This rests on a distinction between falsehood and deception. It is possible to say things in an advertisement which are false provided there is so no intention to deceive the consumer. It is possible, therefore, to make all sorts of promises as long as they are vague and unspecified (Edwards 2003, p132). OfCom Since the creation of commercial television in the 19th century, broadcast advertising had been the responsibility of the relevant statutory regulator. The 2003 communications Act gave powers to anew regulator, the Office of Communications, known as OfCom. OfCom has been considered to play a fundamental role as the governmental regulator that is responsible for British commercial television-sub contract control of the content of television advertisements. However, OfCom retained control of the quality of advertising, and of its overall timing. The regulator has worked better in the regulation and control of advertisements of BBC as well as other media companies OfCom has a co-regulatory partnership with ASA (Hardy 2010, p169). Under this system, complaints about broadcast advertising are considered and determined by the USA. The key expectations to this partnership are political advertising. OfCom has given the strongest links between sponsorship ands programming and editorial issues. OfCom’s functions in respect of the setting, reviewing of advertisement standards codes are usually undertaken by the broadcasting committee of advertising practices in consultation with the agreement of OfCom (Stationery Office and THE U.K. ST 2011, p191). OfCom Jurisdictions Based on the BCAP Code, the jurisdictions are designed to inform advertisers and broadcasters of the standards expected in the content and scheduling of broadcast advertisements as well as protecting customers. One other fundamental piece of legislation that prohibits unfair advertising to consumers is the consumer protection from unfair trading regulations of 2008 (Winston Fletcher 56). The idea of OfCom regulating the print media as it does the broadcasting media is an ever-present threat. This statement indicates how politicians expect the threat of legislative regulation of the print media to galvanize the PCC into invigorating the process of voluntary self-censorship. However, OfCom has delegated its statutory powers over the content of broadcast advertisement in USA and BCAP. OfCom has emerged to be a punitive body with statutory powers against British electronic communicators breaching laws on taste, decency, fairness and privacy that have been constructed by non-elected bureaucrats (Crook 2010, p306). Advantages of self regulation Self regulation is the establishment of rules of conduct and standards by an industry or service sector itself. The main advantage of self-regulation is that rules and standards set by the operators themselves are likely to be more practical, based on the business practices, since operators have a better understanding of their own business than a legislator or legislator has. Self-regulatory rules and standards are more quickly adapted to technological innovations and new business practices compared to legislation. The fact that online gambling is being driven by technological developments makes self-regulation relevant to this sector. On the other hand, business businesses prefer self-regulation because it is considered being more effective as well as less intrusive that government regulation. Self-regulation on environmental matters is conducted at various levels that include: individual, companies, industry associations, as well as independent testing associations. The goodness with this is that, the standards for all these forms of environmental self-regulation must exceed the requirements of the most stringent applicable government regulations (Hörnle and Zammit 2010, p74). When individual companies use self-regulation system, maintaining a single operating standard, including for the environmental matters, offers some cost savings. With the same global operational standards, a company may save costs by interchanging the same designs, equipment and personnel between the company’s various locations. In addition, maintaining the same global operating standards offers benefits in terms of consistent product quality. In an era of global customers and global sourcing, it is important for a company to offer the same quality in its products from its various locations. Some companies have found that it is not possible to maintain a consistently high product quality among different locations without the same operating standards, including for environmental matters. Individual industries often engage in environmental self-regulation both nationally and internationally. Environmental self-regulation at the industry at the industry level, typically through the associated, affords individual companies at the company level. In addition, individual companies avoid the environmental cost disadvantages of instituting environmental self-regulation. Adopting industry policies also cost less for the individual companies than formulating their own policies, but of course does not obviate the need to implement those policies at the company level (Twigg-Flesner, Parry, Howells, and Nordhausen 2007, p149). However, industry associations can advertise and otherwise promote their environmental regulations to important corporate constituencies more effectively and less expensively than individual companies can do so. Such advertising and promotion can be important because environmental matters are major concern for governments and general policies. Finally, with self regulation policy in business, government allows business activities on environmental matters at the industry level both national and international scales. The reason for allowing this practice is that, governmental competition regulators do not consider environmental matters to commercial issues giving rise to competition within industry (Nelson 2006, p112). According to Bortolotti, Fiorentini, Eni and Mattei (1999, p110), self regulatory regime takes the advantage of the fact that members of the profession have better knowledge of the ways to guarantee quality and about efficacy of various potential actions. A regulatory authority cannot acquire and maintain a specialized knowledge of each profession. Therefore the profession has the best capacity to control quality and recognize low standards. Self-regulation is also considered being a more flexible and therefore less likely to stifle innovation or excessively limit consumer choice. Finally, self-regulation generally results in the costs of regulation being borne by the profession itself. Public regulation is costly to taxpayers, some of whom do not consume the product. In addition, self-regulatory bodies have incentives to minimize costs of enforcement and compliance. Disadvantages of self-regulation The major disadvantage of self-regulation is that its rules and standards frequently have not been subject to a process of political consensus involving all stakeholders. Furthermore, self-regulation frequently has no teeth parse as there may be no independent body monitoring its implementation and enforcing these standards (Hörnle, and Zammit 2010, p74). Against the advantages of self regulation, one must point to a major advantage. Although the professions may indeed have better information, they may lack appropriate incentives to control and enforce quality standards. It may be assumed that professional wish to exclude competition, so that they will aim at giving the consumers the impression that the services of all professional are equally good. The advertisements for the attorney’s profession as a group, which are made in spite of the strict ethical rules regarding advertisement, confirm this disadvantage. It is obvious that, differences do occur in quality whereas competitive pressures could improve quality; professional ethics may restrict the information available to consumers and harm competition. There is thus a serious risk that market failures due to symmetric information, principal-agent problems and externalities will therefore persist. In spite of the conceivable ineffectiveness of self-regulation as a remedy, to market failures and the substantial costs associated with them, the advocates of self-regulation hold that the benefits in terms of cost efficiency remain crucial. As much the advantages of self-regulation may outwit the disadvantages, the process is known to discourage competition within the industries hence raising the costs of items in businesses. However, if the damages to the society caused by the self-regulatory restrictions on competition are higher than they are for government regulation, the arguments asserting the cost efficiency of self-regulation may not hold as suggested by Bortolotti, Fiorentini, Eni and Mattei (1999, p110). Reference list Bortolotti, B., Fiorentini, G., Eni, F. & Mattei, E. (1999). Organized interests and self-regulation: an economic approach. Oxford: Oxford university press Crook,T. (2010). Comparative Media Law and Ethics. New York: Taylor & Francis Edwards, M. (2003). Key Ideas in Media. Cheltenham, UK: Nelson Thornes Feintuck, M. & Varney, M. (2006). Media regulation, public interest and the law. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Hardy, J. (2010). Cross-Media Promotion. London, UK: Peter Lang. Hörnle, J & Zammit, B. (2010). Cross-border Online Gambling Law and Policy. London, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Mueller, B. (2010). Dynamics of International Advertising: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Nelson, B.L. (2006). Law and ethics in global business: how to integrate law and ethics into corporate governance around the world. New York: McGraw Hill Professional, 2006, Stationery Office (Great Britain) & THE U.K. ST (2011). Regulation of Television Advertising: House of Lords Paper 99 Session 2010-11. Texas: The Stationery Office, 2011 Twigg-Flesner, C., Parry, D., Howells, G. & Nordhausen, A. (2007). The Yearbook of Consumer Law 2008. New York: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd Read More