Political Correctness News

I recently completed a book defending free speech. Emerald Press scheduled it for publication but then decided not to proceed. Here's what it said about the book in Emerald's September 2019 catalogue:

In Defense of Free Speech: The University as Censor Author James R. Flynn, University of Otago, New Zealand

Synopsis: The good university is one that teaches students the intellectual skills they need to be intelligently critical--of their own beliefs and of the narratives presented by politicians and the media. Freedom to debate is essential to the development of critical thought, but on university campuses today free speech is restricted for fear of causing offence. In Defense of Free Speech surveys the underlying factors that circumscribe the ideas tolerated in our institutions of learning. James Flynn critically examines the way universities censor their teaching, how student activism tends to censor the opposing side and how academics censor themselves, and suggests that few, if any, universities can truly be seen as good. In an age marred by fake news and social and political polarization, In Defense of Free Speech makes an impassioned argument for a return to critical thought.

I was notified of Emerald's decision not to proceed byEmerald's publishing director, in an email on 10th June:

I am contacting you in regard to your manuscript In Defense of Free Speech: The University as Censor . Emerald believes that its publication, in particular in the United Kingdom, would raise serious concerns. By the nature of its subject matter, the work addresses sensitive topics of race, religion, and gender. The challenging manner in which you handle these topics as author, particularly at the beginning of the work, whilst no doubt editorially powerful, increase the sensitivity and the risk of reaction and legal challenge. As a result, we have taken external legal advice on the contents of the manuscript and summarize our concerns below.

There are two main causes of concern for Emerald. Firstly, the work could be seen to incite racial hatred and stir up religious hatred under United Kingdom law. Clearly you have no intention of promoting racism but intent can be irrelevant. For example, one test is merely whether it is likely that racial hatred could be stirred up as a result of the work. This is a particular difficulty given modern means of digital media expression. The potential for circulation of the more controversial passages of the manuscript online, without the wider intellectual context of the work as a whole and to a very broad audience--in a manner beyond our control--represents a material legal risk for Emerald.

Secondly, there are many instances in the manuscript where the actions, conversations and behavior of identifiable individuals at specific named colleges are discussed in detail and at length in relation to controversial events. Given the sensitivity of the issues involved, there is both the potential for serious harm to Emerald's reputation and the significant possibility of legal action. Substantial changes to the content and nature of the manuscript would need to be made, or Emerald would need to accept a high level of risk both reputational and legal. The practical costs and difficulty of managing any reputational or legal problems that did arise are of further concern to Emerald.

... Read the full article from quillette.com

Three families of those killed while watching a Batman film in 2012 have written to Warner Bros complaining about the new Joker film and urging the studio to join action against gun violence.

Twelve people died in a cinema showing The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado. They included Jessica Ghawi, 24, whose mother Sandy Phillips told BBC News she was horrified by the Joker trailers. Speaking to BBC News, Phillips said:

When I first saw the trailers of the movie, I was absolutely horrified. And then when I dug a little deeper and found out that it had such unnecessary violence in the movie, it just chilled me to my bones. It just makes me angry that a major motion picture company isn't taking responsibility and doesn't have the concern of the public at all.

A letter from the 3 families asked the studio to lobby for gun reform, help fund survivor funds and gun violence intervention schemes, and end political contributions to candidates who take money from the National Rifle Association.

Warner Bros responded that the latest film Joker was not an endorsement of real-world violence and said that the studio has a long history of donating to victims of violence, including the 2012 cinema shooting in Aurora, Colorado.  It added:

Make no mistake: neither the fictional character Joker, nor the film, is an endorsement of real-world violence of any kind. It is not the intention of the film, the filmmakers or the studio to hold this character up as a hero.

Nearly 30,000 people have signed a petition calling on Oxford University Press to remove entries that discriminate against, and patronise women

Launched this summer by Maria Beatrice Giovanardi from the feminist group, the Fawcett Society, the petition claims that Oxford dictionaries contain words such as bitch, besom, piece, bit, mare, baggage, wench, petticoat, frail, bird, bint, biddy, filly as synonyms for woman.

Sentences chosen to show usage of the word woman include: Ms September will embody the professional, intelligent yet sexy career woman and I told you to be home when I get home, little woman. Such sentences depict women as sex objects, subordinate, and/or an irritation to men, the petition says.

Signatories are calling on OUP to eliminate all phrases and definitions that discriminate against and patronise women and/or connote men's ownership of women, to enlarge the dictionary's entry for 'woman', and to include examples representative of minorities, for example, a transgender woman, a lesbian woman, etc.

In response, OUP's head of lexical content strategy Katherine Connor Martin pointed out that the content referred to in the petition is not from the scholarly Oxford English Dictionary, but from the Oxford Thesaurus of English and the Oxford Dictionary of English, which are drawn from real-life use of language, Martin said:

If there is evidence of an offensive or derogatory word or meaning being widely used in English, it will not be excluded from the dictionary solely on the grounds that it is offensive or derogatory.

Nonetheless, part of the descriptive process is to make a word's offensive status clear in the dictionary's treatment. For instance, the phrase the little woman is defined as 'a condescending way of referring to one's wife', and the use of 'bit' as a synonym for woman is labelled as 'derogatory' in the thesaurus.

Update: Utterly ridiculous!

19th September 2019. Thanks to Alan

Utterly ridiculous!

Basic purpose of a dictionary is to enable the user to find the meaning of a word.

Thus, it must contain words that could offend for one reason or another - 'fuck' in its literal meaning or as a cussword; 'Jesus Christ!' used blasphemously; 'nigger' , essential for readers of Mark Twain; 'womanish' , 'girly' , as sexist insults...

A foreign speaker seeing that Boris Johnson called David Cameron a 'girly swot' needs to be able to find out what these words mean and why they are insulting.

The Victorian scholars who founded the OED beat themselves up precisely because contemporary mores wouldn't allow them to include words like 'fuck' which they believed should have been there. Hard to believe that these idiots can be trying to turn the clock back in the 21st century.

The Council of Europe is an organisation which aims to uphold human rights across Europe (beyond the EU and reaching as far as Russia). The European Court of Human Rights was established under the auspices of the Council of Europe.

The Council has recently been considering the issue of sexism being everywhere and has penned a long list of recommendations that are taken straight out of the uncompromising language of extreme feminism. The council explains in a press release:

New Council of Europe action against sexism

In March 2019, the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers adopted a new Recommendation on Preventing and Combating Sexism. Not only does this text contain the first ever internationally agreed definition of sexism, but it also proposes a set of concrete measures to combat this wide-spread phenomenon.

Sexism is present in all areas of life. From catcalls on the street, to women being ignored during work meetings, to boys being bombarded with aggressive role-models in video games. It is also there when comments are made about politicians on the length of their skirts rather than their latest parliamentary report. When sexist behaviour accumulates, it can lead to an acceptance of discrimination and even violence.

Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland said that No-one should be discriminated against because of their sex. This is a basic principle which we are still far from respecting in practice. Through efforts to prevent and combat sexist behaviour, the Council of Europe wants to help ensure a level playing field for women and men, boys and girls.

Sexism is harmful and lies at the root of gender inequality. It produces feelings of worthlessness, self-censorship, changes in behaviour, and a deterioration in health. Sexism affects women and girls disproportionately. Some groups of women, such as politicians, journalists, women's human rights defenders, or young women, may be particularly vulnerable to acts of sexism. But it can also affect men and boys, when they don't conform to stereotyped gender roles. Moreover, the impact of sexism can be worse for some women and men due to ethnicity, age, disability, social origin, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation or other factors.

To address these issues and encourage the full implementation of the Recommendation, the Council of Europe has just launched a video and action page under the hashtag #stopsexism and the slogan See it. Name it. Stop it. The aim is to help the wider public identify acts of sexism and take a stand against them.

The Music Marathon
Gold, 27 May 2019, 12:45

The Music Marathon is a music programme on Gold which is broadcast on AM radio in Manchester, London, Derby and Nottingham and nationally on DAB. The licences for these services are held by Global Radio Limited.

Ofcom received a complaint about offensive language (“yellow Chinkies”) in the music track Melting Pot, a song from 1969 by Blue Mink . No introduction to the track was broadcast, or any other content discussing it. The track included the following lyrics:

“Take a pinch of white man,
Wrap him up in black skin,
Add a touch of blue blood,
And a little bitty bit of Red Indian boy.
Oh, Curly Latin kinkies,
Mixed with yellow Chinkies,
If you lump it all together
And you got a recipe for a get along scene;
Oh what a beautiful dream
If it could only come true, you know, you know.

What we need is a great big melting pot,
Big enough to take the world and all it’s got
And keep it stirring for a hundred years or more
And turn out coffee-coloured people by the score”.

We considered that references in the lyrics (including “yellow Chinkies”, “Red Indian boy”, “curly Latin kinkies” and “coffee-coloured people”) raised potential issues under Rule 2.3 of the Code:

Rule 2.3: “In applying generally accepted standards broadcasters must ensure that material which may cause offence is justified by the context...Such material may include, but is not limited to, offensive language…discriminatory treatment or language (for example on the grounds of…race…) Appropriate information should also be broadcast where it would assist in avoiding or minimising offence”.

Global Radio said that it understood some of the lyrics in this song had the potential to cause offence but said that the other lyrics and the context of the time it was written and released mitigated the potential for offence. It said that the offensive language was not intended to be used in a derogatory fashion in the song. It said that the term yellow Chinkies was not used as an insulting term directed at a person of Chinese origin. The Licensee said that it is clear from the lyrics of the song that the message of the song is racial harmony, inclusivity and equality

The Licensee said that following the complaint notification from Ofcom, it had permanently removed the track from Gold's playlist.

Ofcom decision: Resolved

We considered that the use of the term yellow was a derogatory reference to the skin colour of Chinese people. We therefore considered that the phrase yellow Chinkies had the potential to be highly offensive.

Ofcom's research does not provide direct evidence for the offensiveness of the terms Red Indian boy , curly Latin kinkies and coffee-coloured people . However, Ofcom considered that Red Indian is generally understood to be a pejorative term in modern speech and is frequently replaced with Native American . Although the terms curly Latin kinkies and coffee-coloured people are not widely understood to be racial slurs in modern society, unlike the terms Chinky and Red Indian , we considered that they had the potential to cause offence because they could also be considered derogatory references to particular ethnic groups.

In our view, the potential offence caused by these lyrics may have been heightened by the cumulative effect of the repeated use of this language during the verse and chorus

In considering the context of the broadcast, Ofcom took into account that Melting Pot was released in 1969 by Blue Mink, and reached number three in the UK Singles chart and number 11 in Ireland in 1970. We considered that, although this song was popular at the time, the passage of time (nearly 40 years) may have not made it sufficiently well-known today to mitigate the potential for offence.

Ofcom also considered Global's argument that any offence was mitigated in this case by the positive intention of the song, which was a message of racial harmony.

We did not agree that this provided sufficient context to mitigate the potential for offence. The title Melting Pot, which may have provided an indication of the track's overall message, was not broadcast, nor was the song introduced with any contextual information that would have highlighted its overall message to listeners. There was also no other context provided to justify the broadcast of the offensive language.

For all of the reasons above, Ofcom's Decision is that this potentially offensive material was not justified by the context.

However, we took into account the steps taken by the Licensee following notification of the complaint from Ofcom. We acknowledged that it said it had removed the track permanently from Gold's playlist.

Our Decision therefore, is that this case is resolved.

Content from previous decades can be broadcast under the Code. However generally accepted standards clearly change significantly over time, and audience expectations of older content may not be sufficient to justify its broadcast. Where older material contains content, such as language, which has the potential to cause offence to today's audiences, broadcasters should consider carefully how to provide sufficient context to comply with Rule 2.3 of the Code.

Update: Please leave it alone. I just think it's ridiculous

13th September 2019. See article from dailystar.co.uk

Sixties band Blue Mink has blasted a radio station's decision to drop their racial harmony promoting song Melting Pot from its playlist.

TV censor Ofcom made a politically correct decision to ban the song after one listener complained about the lyrics when the song was played on Gold.

African-American lead singer Madeline Bell said:

It took years to suddenly decide in this politically correct time that we live in that it was an offensive and racist record. We're worrying about the lyrics of a protest song about making coffee-coloured people.  The song is 50 years old. Please leave it alone. I just think it's ridiculous.

Bell, ho performs Blue Mink songs as part of her solo routine, has vowed to continue performing Melting Pot.

An internal project to rewrite how Apple's Siri voice assistant handles sensitive topics such as feminism and the #MeToo movement advised developers to respond in one of three ways: don't engage, deflect and finally inform with neutral information from Wikipedia.

The project saw Siri's responses explicitly rewritten to ensure that the service would say it was in favour of equality, but never say the word feminism -- even when asked direct questions about the topic.

The 2018 guidelines are part of a large tranche of internal documents leaked to the Guardian by a former Siri grader, one of thousands of contracted workers who were employed to check the voice assistant's responses for accuracy until Apple ended the programme last month in response to privacy concerns raised by the Guardian.

In explaining why the service should deflect questions about feminism, Apple's guidelines explain that Siri should be guarded when dealing with potentially controversial content. When questions are directed at Siri, they can be deflected ... however, care must be taken here to be neutral.

For example, Apple got tested a little on internet forums about #MeToo. Previously, when users called Siri a slut, the service responded: I'd blush if I could. Now, a much sterner reply is offered: I won't respond to that .

In 2007, the pornography website Pornhub averaged 1 million visits per day. By 2018 this had increased to 92 million visits per day -- or 33.5 billion views over the course of a year.

As an interdisciplinary group of sexademics, we're interested in porn's cultural role and impact. A common question we hear is whether this growth in porn consumption is good or bad for society.

Of course, the honest-but-unsatisfying answer is: It depends. But sometimes studying various aspects of porn consumption can change the way we think about it.

You might have heard, for example, that porn fuels misogynistic attitudes and sexual violence.

If this were the case, you would think that people who consumed a lot of porn would hold particularly negative views towards women.

So we decided to study a group of men whom we've dubbed porn superfans -- those who are so enthusiastic about porn that they'll attend the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. We wanted to compare their attitudes about gender equality to those of everyday Americans. Profiling the superfans

Our study was inspired, in part, by the journalists and politicians who have said that porn consumption is at epidemic levels -- so much so that it constitutes a public health crisis. They write and speak of the perils of porn addiction and objectification, how porn encourages hatred of women and sexual toxicity.

Would this play out in the results of our study?

The 294 expo attendees we surveyed certainly differed from the general population in a number of ways.

Their average age was 44 years old. Almost half -- 47.3% -- indicated that they watched porn less than once a day, but more than once a week. Over one-third -- 36.1% - indicated they watch porn every day. In other words, over 80% of the attendees in our sample watched porn multiple times a week. Only 34.1% of them were married, but they were highly educated: 60.5% had a college degree or higher. A scene from the 2017 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Paul Maginn, Author provided

We compared these results to the results from the General Social Survey, a nationally representative survey conducted every couple of years that charts social trends.

This survey only asks whether people have seen an X-rated movie in the last year, and 37.6% of the men indicated that they had. Just over half of the men in the General Social Survey sample were married, while just 28.7% of them had a college degree or higher. Misogyny unmasked?

But we were most interested in comparing the gender attitudes of each group. So we asked the expo attendees the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with four statements from the General Social Survey:

• A working mother can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her children as a mother who does not work.

• Most men are better suited emotionally for politics than are most women.

• It is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family.

• Because of past discrimination, employers should make special efforts to hire and promote qualified women.

After parsing the results, we discovered that male porn superfans actually expressed more progressive attitudes towards gender equality on two of the questions. For two others, they indicated just as progressive -- or, said another way, just as sexist -- attitudes as the general population.

Over 90% of porn superfans -- compared to just over 70% of the GSS sample -- agreed that working mothers can have just as warm and secure relationships with their children than non-working mothers.

For the statement that men and women should hold traditional gender roles within a family, 80% of porn superfans disagreed. Nationally, 73% percent of respondents disagree with this statement.

A similar proportion -- 80% -- of AVN Expo attendees and General Social Survey respondents disagreed with the statement that men, rather than women, were more emotionally suited for politics.

Although a majority of porn superfans and General Social Survey respondents -- 72.4% and 74.5%, respectively -- agreed that women, due to past discrimination, should get special preference in the workplace, this was the least supported statement we tested. Notably, however, this level of support is higher than a recent national poll indicating that 65% of Americans support affirmative action for women. Porn crisis or moral panic?

These findings challenge what porn scholars call the negative effects paradigm, which sees porn as an inherently bad thing that cultivates harmful attitudes.

Our survey isn't the only one that upends this way of thinking. A 2016 study based on General Social Survey data found that male porn consumers held more egalitarian views on women in position of power, women working outside the home, and abortion than those who didn't view porn.

And while most porn is produced and consumed by men, a growing number of women -- straight and LGBTQ -- are producing porn and consuming different genres of porn, a trend that's largely been ignored.

For now, it's probably best to pump the brakes on the idea that pornography causes negative attitudes toward women. The evidence just isn't there, and much of today's rhetoric about pornography seems to be more of a moral panic than public health crisis.

The government has spent many years strangling casual work with an ever increasing amount of onerous red tape. Now it has proved itself to be rather desperate for ideas when suggesting jobs for those without qualification. A government DWP web page listed dances in adult entertainment establishments as one option for jobseekers.

But of course this idea is a little politically incorrect so had to be hastily withdrawn when it was noticed. And of course claim that it was some sort ofawful mistake.

The Department for Work and Pensions site - titled work you could do - suggested claimants could search the phrase striptease artist online to find vacancies. Other job suggestions on the same page included becoming a fortune-teller or loading a Bingo machine.

The Mirror was able to browse the page on Tuesday but it has since been taken offline, hours after concerns were raised on an online welfare forum.

A DWP spokesman admitted:

This is inappropriate and we will immediately review this to determine why it is mistakenly listed.

This is not the type of employment our work coaches help people into.

A Whitehall source suggested the information had been sourced from a list of professions on the Office for National Statistics.

A TV ad for the Volkswagen eGolf, seen on 14 June 2019, opened with a shot of a woman and a man in a tent. The woman was asleep and the man switched off the light and closed the tent, which was shown to be fixed to a sheer cliff face. The following scene depicted two male astronauts floating in a space ship. Text stated When we learn to adapt. The next scene showed a male para-athlete with a prosthetic leg doing the long jump. Text stated we can achieve anything. The final scene showed a woman sitting on a bench next to a pram. A Volkswagen eGolf passed by quietly. The woman was shown looking up from her book. Text stated The Golf is electric. The 100% electric eGolf. Issue

Three complainants, who believed that the ad perpetuated harmful gender stereotypes by showing men engaged in adventurous activities in contrast to a woman in a care-giving role, challenged whether it breached the Code.

ASA Assessment: Complaints upheld

The first scene of the ad showed both a man and a woman in a tent, panning out to show that it was fixed to the side of a cliff and therefore implying that they had both climbed up the steep rock face. However, the woman was shown sleeping, by contrast with the man in the scene. Furthermore, due to the short duration of the shot and its focus on the movement of the man, it was likely that many viewers would not pick up on the fact that it featured a woman, as was the case with the complainants.

The ad then showed two male astronauts carrying out tasks in space and a male para-athlete doing the long jump. We considered that viewers would be likely to see the activities depicted as extraordinary and adventurous -- scientific and career-based in the case of the astronauts and physical in the case of the athlete. That impression was reinforced by the claim When we learn to adapt, we can achieve anything. While we noted that a third astronaut appeared in the background, the image was very brief and not prominent. We considered that many viewers would not notice the presence of a third person, and if they did, the image was insufficiently clear to distinguish their gender.

The first two scenes both more prominently featured male characters. While the majority of the ad was focussed on a theme of adapting to difficult circumstances and achievement, the final scene showed a woman sitting on a bench and reading, with a pram by her side. We acknowledged that becoming a parent was a life changing experience that required significant adaptation, but taking care of children was a role that was stereotypically associated with women.

In context, the final scene (the only one that featured the product) gave the impression that the scenario had been used to illustrate the adaptation and resulting characteristic of the car -- so quiet that it did not wake the baby or register with the mother -- rather than as a further representation of achievement, particularly as the setting was relatively mundane compared to the other scenarios.

Taking into account the overall impression of the ad, we considered that viewers were likely to focus on the occupations of the characters featured in the ad and observe a direct contrast between how the male and female characters were depicted. By juxtaposing images of men in extraordinary environments and carrying out adventurous activities with women who appeared passive or engaged in a stereotypical care-giving role, we considered that the ad directly contrasted stereotypical male and female roles and characteristics in a manner that gave the impression that they were exclusively associated with one gender.

We concluded that the ad presented gender stereotypes in way that was likely to cause harm and therefore breached the Code.

The ad must not appear again in the form complained about. We told Volkswagen Group UK Ltd to ensure their advertising did not present gender stereotypes in a way that was likely to cause harm, including by directly contrasting male and female roles and characteristics in a way that implied they were uniquely associated with one gender.

Offsite Comment: Stereotypically Stupid: The ASA's Latest Slice Of Lunacy

  19th August 2019. See article from reprobatepress.com

Offsite Comment: Feminists think stereotypes are only bad when other people use them

23rd August 2019. See article from spiked-online.com by Jon Holbrook

 

A campaign group for people with Tourette's syndrome has asked a comedian to apologise for his award-winning joke made at the Edinburgh Fringe festival.

Tourettes Action said it was so disappointed by Swedish comedian Olaf Falafel's gag, which won Dave's Funniest Joke of The Fringe prize. It said the fact the public voted for the joke showed how we as a nation deal with people who are different.

Falafel won the award with the gag:

I keep randomly shouting out 'Broccoli' and 'Cauliflower' - I think I might have florets.

TV channel Dave asked panellists, comprising the UK's leading comedy critics, to submit their six favourite jokes made at the festival. It then put the shortlist to 2,000 members of the public, 41% of whom voted for Falafel's joke.

But the chief executive of the UK's Tourettes Action charity said the rubbish joke had brought shame on Dave. Suzanne Dobson said her grorup had been about to launch a campaign to stop using Tourette's as a punchline, which unfortunately has come about a week too late.

The San Francisco Board of Education voted this week to cover up a suite of controversial 1930's murals at George Washington High School, reversing an earlier decision to spend $600,000 to destroy them by painting them over.

The murals, The Life of Washington , were created by the Russian emigre artist Victor Arnautoff as part of a New Deal art initiative and depict episodes from the life of George Washington. A few people have been offended by three of the 13 murals in the cycle for including depictions of enslaved African-Americans working at Washington's Mount Vernon property, and also violent images of Native Americans.

In Tuesday's vote, the board members voted 4--3 in favor of covering up the murals, frustrating both those who'd campaigned for outright destruction, and those who'd campaigned for their preservation.

While it is a step in the right direction to take permanent destruction off the table, we will continue to strongly oppose spending $815,000 to permanently wall off the murals so nobody has the choice to see them or learn from them, said Jon Golinger, the executive director of the Coalition to Protect Public Art, an organization created to advocate for the murals' preservation, to the New York Times .

A TV ad and video on demand (VOD) ad for the soft cheese, Philadelphia:

a. The TV ad, seen on 14 June 2019, featured a woman passing a baby to a man who then held the baby in his arms. Another man appeared carrying a baby in a car seat. The first man said New dad, too? and the second man nodded. The scene was revealed to be a restaurant with a conveyor belt serving buffet food. The men chatted, saying Wow, look at this lunch, Yeah, hard to choose and This looks good, whilst a sitting baby and a car seat were seen on the moving conveyor belt, as the men were distracted by selecting and eating their lunch. The first man then noticed his baby had gone around the conveyor belt, said errr and argh!, and moved across the room to pick the baby up. The second man picked the baby in the car seat off of the conveyor belt, and one of the men said Let's not tell mum.

b. The VOD ad, seen on the ITV Hub, on 18 June 2019, featured the same content.

The complainants, who believed the ad perpetuated a harmful stereotype by suggesting that men were incapable of caring for children and would place them at risk as a result of their incompetence, challenged whether the ads were in breach of the Code.

Rather than the ads depicting a harmful stereotype, Clearcast thought the ads depicted an example of a momentary lapse in concentration by somewhat overwhelmed and tired new parents which was quickly realized and rectified. They did not think the ads showed the new fathers being unable to look after the babies properly because of their gender, but instead it was established early on that they were new dads and unused to dealing with young children. They did not believe the ads were a representation of all fathers and did not believe it suggested that the fathers in the ads, or fathers more generally, were incapable of parenting.

ASA Assessment: Complaints upheld

The CAP and BCAP Code stated Advertisements must not include gender stereotypes that are likely to cause harm, or serious or widespread offence. The joint CAP and BCAP guidance said that ads may feature people undertaking gender-stereotypical roles, but they should take care to avoid suggesting that stereotypical roles or characteristics were always uniquely associated with one gender. The guidance provided examples which were likely to be unacceptable, which included An ad that depicts a man or a woman failing to achieve a task specifically because of their gender e.g. a man's inability to change nappies; a woman's inability to park a car.

We considered the scenario represented two new fathers in sole charge of their children, who both became distracted when choosing their lunch and subsequently failed to notice when the children were carried away on a conveyor belt. We acknowledged the action was intended to be light-hearted and comical and there was no sense that the children were in danger. We considered, however, that the men were portrayed as somewhat hapless and inattentive, which resulted in them being unable to care for the children effectively.

We recognised that the ad depicted new parents and could therefore be seen as a characterisation of new parents as inexperienced and learning how to adapt to parenthood. We also recognised that, regardless of their gender, it was common for parents to ask their children (often jokingly) not to tell their other parent about something that had happened. However, in combination with the opening scene in which one of the babies was handed over by the mother to the father, and the final scene in which one of the fathers said Let's not tell mum, we considered the ad relied on the stereotype that men were unable to care for children as well as women and implied that the fathers had failed to look after the children properly because of their gender.

We also considered that the narrative and humour in the ad derived from the use of the gender stereotype. We did not consider that the use of humour in the ad mitigated the effect of the harmful stereotype; indeed it was central to it, because the humour derived from the audiences' familiarity with the gender stereotype being portrayed.

We therefore concluded that the ad perpetuated a harmful stereotype, namely that men were ineffective at childcare, and was in breach of the Code.

The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Mondelez Ltd to ensure their advertising did not perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes, including suggesting that stereotypical roles or characteristics were always uniquely associated with one gender.

The Nazi Pug: Joke or Hate? is a BBC 3 documentary.

Markus Meechan (known on YouTube as Count Dankula) is the victim of a travesty of justice as he was found guilty of posting a YouTube video judged grossly offensive and containing menacing, anti-Semitic and racist material. The video was a joke. but what does the prosecution of a YouTube comedian mean for freedom of expression. The BBC asks: is a censorious state overstepping the mark? Or are there some things you just shouldn't joke about?

BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Dan Murdoch (Britain's Forgotten Men; KKK: The Fight for White Supremacy) returns with this documentary following Markus as he explores London's comedy scene, to see what stand-ups can get away with, and why there's a backlash against edgy humour.

Matthew Berlow, of Glasgow Friends of Israel, said of the BBC documentary:

Are we really at the stage when we can now laugh at the painful deaths of six million human beings and call it edgy comedy?

Berlow has also called on YouTube to remove the original Count Dankula joke video that has know been viewed 4.3 million times. He claimed that YouTube is perpetuating the crime that Meechan was convicted of.

An advert for the Nottingham air conditioning company Not Just Cooling has been banned from local buses.

The ad was booked to appear on seven buses in the city but Adverta, which places adverts on buses and trams, blocked it and claimed it could cause offence.

Lee Davies, who designed the ad, said it was a little bit of harmless fun.

PC Miserablist, Professor Carrie Paechter, director of the Nottingham Centre for Children, Young People and Families, said that the advert was like something out of the 1950s and called for it to be banned. She whinged:

If I had young children, I wouldn't want them passing that on the way to school, because of the messages it gives them about society. The subliminal message about society is that it's OK to comment on women's bodies, and comment on women's bodies as if they are the possession of someone else - 'your wife'.

It also gives the subliminal message that it's the man of the house that's responsible for getting the air conditioning fixed.

I don't want to demonise the company or the company's owner ...BUT... it is a foolish advert and it needs to come down.

The Advertising Standards Authority decided this advert was not offensive or irresponsible in 2015 - but PC rules have changed since then.

The ASA said it had not received any complaints about the advert in the latest fracas.

Update: No hot wives in Nottingham

29th July 2019. See article from reprobatepress.com

Less a story of moral panic and censorship wrapped up as a fight against gender stereotyping -- though it's definitely that too -- and more a prime example of how the BBC will manipulate news reports to fit their own agenda

Read the full article from reprobatepress.com

Campaign is a trade magazine for the advertising industry that has an international reach but is based in the UK.

The latest issue has a photo of Farage on the cover, trailing a profile interview with him inside the magazine. The profile was fairly sympathetic. Campaign acknowledged that, like the best marketing gurus, Farage knows how to get a simple message across with maximum effect. Clearly, Campaign believes that a successful politician, one whose party used social media and political messaging to good effect in the EU elections in May, is an apt subject matter for a magazine that deals in the issue of changing minds and making a splash.

But this simple observation did not impress some of the magazines high profile readers. A group of major media and internet companies got together to give Campaign a good roasting for not giving Farage a harder time. A group called Media for All wrote:

Campaign's cover story offering lessons from Nigel Farage felt like an insult to the advertising community and what it tries to do every day. The decision to publish a lengthy profile interview without a contribution from the many groups that Farage's politics demonise is also hard to understand, given Campaign's long support for equality and diversity in our industry.

No-one is disputing Nigel Farage's political successes or his right to voice his opinions on prominent platforms.

However, the playbook he and his political allies have employed to achieve success is about hate and it is simple: identify people who look different, mobilise anger against them and hold them up as the people everyone else should blame.

The only lesson our industry should draw from this playbook is not to have any part in it.

Campaign's failure to understand that is why the feature provoked such dismay. Media for All welcomes your response and we would like to be part of the future debate. Like you, we believe that media is a brilliant industry and should be welcoming to all.

The media industry is making many positive steps towards being a more representative and diverse place. But this cover story was a step in the wrong direction.

Yours sincerely,

Media for All

Bhavit Chandrani, sponsorship controller, ITV
Akama Ediomi Davies, director of global solutions, Xaxis; co-founder, We Are Stripes
Sarah Jenkins, chief marketing officer, Grey London
Desiree Lopez, chief executive, Flamingo Group
Priya Matadeen, general manager commercial, Dazed Media
Dora Michail, managing director for commercial growth, Telegraph Media Group
Liam Mullins, managing partner, the7stars
Dino Myers-Lamptey, former managing director, Mullenlowe Mediahub
Dara Nasr, managing director, Twitter
Naren Patel, chief executive, Primesight
Rak Patel, head of sales, Spotify
Jay Rajdev, EMEA vice-president of brand solutions, Videology
Nishma Robb, marketing director, Google
Mimi Turner, brand strategist, Mimi Turner Associates

Offsite Comment: Silicon Valley thinks journalists shouldn't talk to Nigel Farage 

See article from spiked-online.com by Brendan O'Neill

When Campaign magazine interviewed Farage, social-media bigwigs went crazy.

Brian Leach, the man sacked by Asda for sharing a video clip of the comedian Billy Connolly mocking religion on social media has been reinstated. His dismissal last month caused nationwide outrage and lots of bad press for Asda.

Leach was sacked after a colleague complained that a sketch he shared, in which Connolly said religion is over and called suicide bombers wankers, was anti-Islamic.

The National Secular Society has been in touch with Leach throughout an internal appeals process and has now learned that he has been given his job back. NSS chief executive Stephen Evans said the decision was:

A victory for common sense. We welcome Asda's decision to reinstate Brian Leach, although this case raises broader concerns about the extent to which employers can legitimately restrict their employees' freedom of expression on social media.

Leach had removed the relevant social media post and apologised to his colleagues before he was sacked.

Jesus And Mo had a fine take on the episode:

Comic Omid Djalili has upset a few social media users in Wales with a joke about the Welsh language.

The comedian posted a picture of a road sign for Nantgaredig and the National Botanic Gardens of Wales, bearing the translation Gardd Fotaneg Genedlaethol. Djalili tweeted:

There are worse things than being Welsh, dyslexic & having a terrible stutter. But not many.

A few people responded eg Marc Jones wrote:

Disappointing that someone with Iranian heritage reckons it's OK to have a pop at a minority culture.