Download Dee Madigan, discussed advertising and internet censorship

Talk given by
Dee Madigan
at the Shaken and Stirred Christmas Speakeasy on Prohibition and Human Weakness
6 December 2008
Censorship has been around since Roman times when two officials were appointed by the government
to conduct the census, award public contracts and supervise the manners and morals of the people. In
1972 in the US, comedian George Carlin performed a routine called the “Seven Dirty Words”. It was
broadcast uncensored on The Pacifica radio station. Someone heard it and complained and it set in
motion a series of court cases that led to a decision known as Pacifica 7, which formally established
indecency regulation in American broadcasting. In case you’re interested those seven dirty words
are..shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and...tits.
Australia introduced broadcast censorship in the early 80’s although film censorship had been around
since 1917.
Today the scope of censorship has been expanded to include most media, including advertising in that
media. But primarily broadcast media, which includes TV and the internet, and advertising thereon.
It is felt by some that broadcasting is uniquely powerful, and the advertising on it uniquely persuasive,
so much so that it is beyond the control of the individual, causing them to lose the capacity to make
appropriate choices.
So what exactly is censorship. It’s the suppression or deletion of material which may be considered
objectionable, harmful or sensitive, as determined by a censor. It is usually exercised by governing
bodies often at the urging of special interest groups – and in western countries, almost always from the
religious right wing. And one of the arguments against censorship is who gets to decide what
constitutes offensive content? What accountability do they have? What transparency? Basically, who
watches the watchers.
But why should we care about censorship of advertising? Isn’t it better that we don’t allow advertising
that promotes sexism, that is offensive, that encourages children to eat junk food?
Advertising is increasingly blamed for a whole range of social ills like child obesity, youth drinking and
irresponsible driving and there is increasing pressure to censor advertising because of this. Why?
Because advertising is a soft target. People hate advertising (according to tonight’s agenda, it’s a vice!)
and often with good reason. Advertising is renowned for objectifying women, inappropriately using sex
to sell, for portraying men in any domestic situation as a bumbling fool. It seems almost reasonable that
these type of offensive ads are censored. But it’s not, for a whole variety of reasons. The arguments
against censorship are not restricted to advertising because the implications of censorship go, of course,
well beyond. You see, the problem with censorship is it never stops where it starts.
But does this mean that anything is acceptable, that in our determination for free speech, anything
goes? No, of course not. There is a difference between that which is illegal, for example where harm
can and has been proved, for example child pornography, and that which is deemed indecent by some.
Free speech has a price, despite its name. Its price is the continual observance and questioning of our
actions.
Advertising as it stands today is highly regulated. Every ad you see on TV has been pre-approved.
There are legislative and industry rules about what can and can’t be advertised, and how they can or
can’t be advertised. A self-regulatory system for the industry was instigated in 1998 by the Australian
Association of National Advertisers who set out a code of ethics and a set of principles and advisory
notes for advertising to children and a code for advertising of food and beverages. The object of this
Code is to ensure that advertisements are legal, decent, honest and truthful and that they have been
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prepared with a sense of obligation to the consumer and society and fair sense of responsibility to
competitors.
I guess it’s the word decent that is where censorship, or the threat of it comes in. Whereas truthfulness,
honesty and legality can be proved or disproved, decency is a judgment call. Generally it’s what is
considered decent to the average person on the street. Censorship makes it what is decent to the
censors, who are seldom the average person on the street.
Some of the types of advertising regulations in Australia are as follows: we have constraints on
‘political’ advertising, with requirements that ads funded by parties feature contact details.
We have requirements for inclusion of health warnings on product packaging, for example alcohol and
tobacco, requirements for disclaimers on financial services, ‘fine print’ in some print and TV ads, e.g.
disclosing the cost of premium message services such as adult chat lines and astrology line and there are
broader constraints against false or misleading representations under the national Trade Practices Act
and state/territory consumer protection legislation. Governments may also simply ban advertising of
specified services and products (e.g. alcohol and tobacco ads on Australian television). Or the
government may simply restrict when the ads can be shown, for example during ‘children viewing’
periods in the morning and afternoon...
It’s also worth noting that because television licences are granted by the government, at an enormous
cost, and can in theory be taken away, media owners tend to toe the government line in terms of what
they believe is appropriate content, so we have a kind of quasi censorship there anyway.
Trying to differentiate between responsible media regulation and censorship is not easy. But that the
dividing line is a precious one, even when, in fact especially when, it is not always clear.
If we are going to censor advertisements that clearly don’t offend any of the established rules, that is
when we are headed down the slippery slope.
Even if you dislike an ad, supporting a decision to remove any form of media because you or someone
else found it offensive sets a dangerous precedent.
If we follow that logic there’s reason to ban everything. Everybody finds something offensive.
And what is so wrong with being offended? Is being offended such a bad thing in itself – why do we
need to live in a world that is so bloody inoffensive? We’ve all been offended at some stage in our lives.
If not, then we’re not confronting issues we should be. Imagine if every time you were offended by
something you could stop it from happening. Would you, or more importantly should you? And think
of how many times you’ve offended someone. Imagine if they had the right to restrict what you could
say. Being offended is one of the costs of free speech, but it’s a price worth paying.
If an ad offends you switch it off and don’t buy the product.
That way we let the market decide: those ads which are truly indecent and offensive won’t work.
I’m going to talk now a little a bit about the government’s plan to introduce mandatory filtering on the
internet – it’s not strictly advertising but as I said before the implications for censorship are not limited
to one medium or one type of communication.
The Government plans to impose a mandatory filter for all internet users that will block sites found on
the secret ACMA (which is the Australia Communications and Media Authority) blacklist and blacklists
held by other countries. But only half of ACMA’s list is child pornography, while the rest is mainly Xrated porn and sexual fetish material.
Senator Nick Xenophon and Family First Senator Steve Fielding, both of whom the Government
needs to pass legislation, have already said they want the mandatory filters broadened to include the
blocking of hard-core pornography and online gambling sites.
A second, optional filtering tier, which will also be tested in the trial, will block content deemed
inappropriate for children.
Apart from incredibly infringing on our rights as adults to read and watch what we want, internet
censorship is an unwinnable war. There are 5–7 billion web pages, hundreds of millions of blogs and, at
a conservative estimate, at least 10 million nominally pornographic sites.
None of the filters being tested for Australia will be capable of filtering non-web applications such as
peer-to-peer file sharing programs. Furthermore, the filters can easily be evaded by those set on
accessing child pornography, using freely available tools.
And laboratory test results released in June by the Australian Communications and Media Authority
found available filters frequently let through content that should be blocked, incorrectly block harmless
content and slow network speeds by up to 87 per cent. And we already have one of the slowest
broadbands!
The only non-Government supporters of the plan are vocal family and religious groups such as the
Australian Family Association and the Australian Christian Lobby.
Senator Conroy has said Britain, Sweden, Canada, Norway, Denmark and New Zealand have all
implemented similar filtering systems. However, in all cases, participation by ISPs was optional and the
filtering was limited in scope to predominantly child pornography.
Only two countries have mandatory internet filtering. Saudi Arabia and China – those well-known
bastions of human rights.
What I find particularly interesting is that this move by the government is happening without any where
near the public outcry it warrants. And this public acceptance is worth examining. Why are we as a
nation willing to allow this, or certainly not willing to protest against it to any real degree? I know there
are protests organised by Getup and the DLC but it’s not galvanised mainstream Australia. It is part of
an incredibly worrying trend toward the acceptance of loss of freedom. We are happy to accept
cameras everywhere, we’re happy to allow the government to control what we see all because it makes
us feel safe – but that’s just it – it might make us feel safe, it doesn’t actually make us any safer.
I think a lot of it has to do with fear mongering by governments and the media; we’re scared.
Particularly when it comes to our children. We’re scared to let them walk to school by themselves or
even play in the front yard. And we wonder why there’s an obesity epidemic – blame it on the junk
food ads. ‘Surely we should not only support but applaud any measures the government takes to
‘protect’ our children? After all, it is one less thing we have to worry about as parents?’ It is this kind of
attitude the government is counting on from middle Australia in introducing their mandatory internet
filtering system.
Problem is, it doesn’t protect our kids. What will protect our kids is if their parents educate them about
the dangers of the internet, and equip them with the skills they need to avoid the dangers. We don’t
fence our parks, we educate our kids about stranger danger.
It also means ensuring there is reflective critical dialogue about anything they might find confronting or
offensive, because they will find it – kids will be kids. And it might mean deciding to put a filter on. But
there’s a big difference between parents putting a filter on their kids’ computers to the government
imposing one upon the whole population.
Censorship removes your right to decided what you and your children will and won’t watch. And what
censors often don’t consider is that, if they succeed in suppressing the ideas they don’t like today,
others may use that precedent to suppress the ideas they do like tomorrow.
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By allowing censorship we abdicate personal responsibility ‘I am incapable of turning off the TV or
internet if the content include the advertising offends me, much better to have a government agency
ban the offending content instead’.
There’s also no proof that censorship achieves its goals. Obesity rates had not fallen when advertising
restrictions on junk food had been introduced elsewhere. Most researchers and investigators agree that
exposure to media violence is not the sole, or even the most important, factor in contributing to youth
aggression, anti-social attitudes, and violence.
We live in such a risk adverse society (partly because we’ve become a lot more litigious and partly
because our experiences are increasingly becoming censored). And when risk is controlled, we diminish
the possibilities of experiencing and coming up against the ‘edges’ of our full humanness; when time
honoured forums of experiencing risk/freedom are regulated out of existence then the risks go
underground...harder drugs...violence ... We become deprived of the formative experiences (or
‘protected’ from them by censorship) that would allow us to discover who we are as individuals, and
teach us to self-regulate according to the particularities of our unique psychological needs. We become
illiterate in the lexicon of knowing what our ‘limits’ are.... so when we do ‘lash out’ we flail around
wildly like the amateurs we are, we’ve missed lots of risk-taking experiences that are an essential
(though the inherently risky) process of maturation. Maturation is risky. Not everyone succeeds, for a
plethora of reasons, but it’s an essential process. It’s the only way we can grow up. Censorship turns us
into perpetual children.
Copyright Dee Madigan, 2008.