UK - Television WILL screen pro-abortion adverts amid storm of controversy

[dipsydoodle]

Last edited Sat Jan 21, 2012, 06:11 AM - Edit history (1)

Private clinics that carry out abortions for profit are to get the go-ahead to promote their services with TV and radio adverts.

Advertising watchdogs will trigger a storm of controversy by announcing the decision on Monday after years of argument, the Mail can disclose.

Pro-life campaigners reacted with fury, saying the move would trivialise human life by putting the choice to have a termination on a par with buying washing-up liquid or cereal.

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt is understood to be ‘very unhappy’ about the move, but cannot override the ruling from the independent advertising regulator the Advertising Standards Authority. Until now, restrictions have meant abortion clinics can advertise their services only if they are not run for profit.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2089628/TV-screen-pro-abortion-adverts-private-clinics-ahead-media-promotion.html#ixzz1k5EDYyXX

edit to add : this was the only forum which immediately came to mind when posting this. If others feel it needs more exposure elsewhere then please repost as necessary.

[alp227]

2. story by the Guardian (better source than that worthless tabloid Daily Mail)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/21/private-abortion-clinics-advertise-tv

[dipsydoodle]

3. off topic : Yes but that worthless tabloid the Daily Mail

will still be around when the Guardian is long dead - like it or not.

From August : Guardian Loses Readers Even After Ousting Murdoch Tabloid

For the 190-year-old Guardian, whose parent company posted a 58.6 million-pound ($97 million) operating loss last year, the figures are a fresh source of doubt over the financial viability of a respected combination of analysis, exclusive reporting and nimble digital operations. Chief Executive Officer Andrew Miller said in June that the newspaper, which also led coverage of the WikiLeaks disclosure of classified U.S. diplomatic cables, may run out of cash in three to five years without a reorganization.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-17/guardian-loses-readers-even-after-bringing-down-murdoch-tabloid.html

The Mail is just a news source same as any other. Don't be misled by political bias : if our newspaper buyers were only influenced by that we'd only ever have a Tory government. Political bias is probably the least reason which determines who buys what here other than maybe the Guardian in the south east of England which is their main base.

These are audited 2011 actuals for our press : http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=48416&c=1
Only the Independents figures are slightly misleading due to interaction with the i which they own. The biggest real drop is in the Guardian's distribution and if it was up to me I'd say they were simply guilty of boring people.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. story by the BBC (better source than that worthless tabloid Daily Mail)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16663800 (and a look at the comments shows this story was up before you posted here)

And not only is the BBC better than the Mail, according to your own chosen metric of the number of people who use the website, it was also not considered, in a poll, more unpopular than anything in Britain.

Why you pollute your mind, and DU, with the sleaze of the Daily Mail is a continuing mystery to the rest of us, dd. You really have awful taste in media. You know very well they put right wing prejudices into all sorts of articles. Yet you continue to use them as if they are a form of objective news reports. Whatever your personal grudge against The Guardian (which is so extreme you prefer Rupert Murdoch's rags to it), you really can do better than parrot the Daily Hate.

[dipsydoodle]

5. As I've said before

I have no actual use for newspapers other than lining the cat's litter trays as and those I get from neighbours.

I simply posted a story here which I thought might be of interest to others : source was incidental.

I don't recall any reference to the number of people who use the "website" on this occasion but if you mean the Mail's website it is by all accounts the world's most read media one second only to the NYT.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. No, by no account the world's 2nd most read media site

The BBC beat the NYT, and CNN, this year:

http://www.google.com/adplanner/static/top1000/

The BBC is at #48; the Mail at #150. And, let's face it, the Mail's website is driven by the gossip and picture column on the right.

[dipsydoodle]

7. I'm obviously out of date

I hadn't realised the figures could change so fast monthly. I got that figure from the Guardian last year. I'll find a link later when I'm on the computer.

edit to add : this was it - Mail Online becomes world's second most popular newspaper site.

Associated Newspapers' online network passes Huffington Post with 39.6m unique visitors in March

Mail Online, Associated Newspapers' online network, has overtaken the Huffington Post to become the second most popular news website in the world in March, according to new figures from metrics firm comScore.

Arianna Huffington's groundbreaking news and opinion website, which was bought by AOL for $315m (£193m) in February, was leapfrogged by Mail Online, which is now second only to the New York Times in ComScore's "newspapers" category.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/apr/19/mail-online-website-popular/

I'm still amazed at the rate of change which occurs.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. 'newspaper' does not mean 'media'

and clearly, the BBC is not a newspaper, so never would have been mentioned in the ComScore category. However, it's true that The Guardian reported that badly, by saying at one stage "the second most popular news website in the world".

[LeftishBrit]

11. 'if our newspaper buyers were only influenced by that, we'd only ever have a Tory government'

Well, fortunately they aren't and we don't. But it's not a simple either-or. People aren't *only* influenced by what they read in right-wing rags; but they're influenced to some extent. And we have had Tory governments *more often* than we would have, if not for this influence. I strongly suspect, for example, that Thatcher would have been a one-term Prime Minister if not for the right-wing press. And I am quite sure that Labour would have defeated Major in 1992. And given the closeness of the 2010 election, we might well not have ended up with a Tory-led coalition currently.

[LeftishBrit]

9. OTOH, I don't approve of TV adverts for anything medical...

that is any more complex than over-the-counter tablets, and ideally not even those. Medical decisions should be kept well away from marketing. I understand that TV advertising has a pernicious influence on American healthcare decision making, and I don't want Britain to go down that route. All part of the creeping privatization of our health system.

So I very much don't approve of private abortion clinics (or any sort of private clinics) advertising on television.

On the other hand, I think that quite a lot of the outrage is really from people who aren't so much against the marketing side, but just don't want anyone to have abortions at all, and are using this as an excuse to demonize *all* abortion providers.

[dipsydoodle]

10. I'm inclined to agree

I'm not against abortions other than maybe the NHS bearing the cost repetitvely - used to be restricted to one only.