Last week it became clear that the Advertising Standards Authority had launched an inquiry into the Government’s £6m TV advertising campaign aimed at climate change sceptics. Now it appears that the UK broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, will also investigate complaints that the advert is politically motivated and therefore breeches the ban on broadcasting political adverts. They would seem to have good reason for deciding to do so.

This is what the advert tells viewers about climate change:

(If the video viewer does not appear on your computer then use this link)

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So far, the ASA has received over 650 complaints and rising. That score ranks with the most complained about advert of 2008, which attracted 840 complaints. According to a letter that I received from the ASA this morning the following points will be investigated:

1.  The ad was political in nature and should not be broadcast;

2. The theme and content of the ad, for example the dog drowning in the storybook and the depiction of the young girl to whom the story was being read, could be distressing for children who saw it;

3. The ad should not have been shown when children were likely to be watching television;

4. The ad was misleading because it presented human induced climate change as a fact, when there was a significant division amongst the scientific community on that point;

5. The claim “over 40% of the C02 was coming from ordinary everyday things” was misleading;

6. The representation of C02 as a rising cloud of black smog was misleading;

7. The claims about the possible advent of strange weather and flooding, and associated imagery in the ad, in the UK were exaggerated, distressing and misleading;

They also say that:

Points (1) and (4) in relation to the TV ad may be subject to Section 4 of the CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code, which is administered by Ofcom. We will therefore be referring to Ofcom objections to the TV campaign raised in respect of ‘political’ objectives; Ofcom will in due course be publishing a Finding of its determination. When both bodies have concluded their investigations, we plan to notify complainants of both our and Ofcom’s determinations.

This is what Section 4 of the  CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code says:

SECTION 4: POLITICAL AND CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES

No advertisement:

(a) may be inserted by or on behalf of any body whose objects are wholly or mainly of a political nature

(b) may be directed towards any political end

(c) may have any relation to any industrial dispute (with limited exceptions)

Note to 4(c):

The Broadcasting Act 1990 specifically exempts public service advertisements

by or on behalf of a government department from the prohibition of

advertisements having ‘any relation to any industrial dispute’.

 

(d) may show partiality as respects matters of political or industrial controversy

or relating to current public policy

Notes to Section 4:

(1) The purpose of this prohibition is to prevent well-funded organisations from

using the power of television advertising to distort the balance of political debate. The rule reflects the statutory ban on ‘political’ advertising on

television in the Broadcasting Act 1990.

 

(2) The term ‘political’ here is used in a wider sense than ‘party political’. The

rule prevents, for example, issue campaigning for the purpose of influencing

legislation or executive action by legislatures either at home or abroad. Where

there is a risk that advertising could breach this rule, prospective advertisers

should seek guidance from licensees before developing specific proposals.

 

(3) The setting of standards and investigations of complaints in relation to

political advertising have not been contracted out to BCAP and the ASA and

remain matters for Ofcom. The ASA refers complaints about political advertising to Ofcom.

[my emphasis]

 

http://www.cap.org.uk/The-Codes/~/media/Files/CAP/Codes/BCAPTVAdCode.ashx

 

Note (2) has particular resonance in view of the imminence of the Copenhagen summit.

The ASA’s letter ends with the following rather strange request:

Please treat all correspondence as confidential until such time as a decision is published on our website.

Had I given an undertaking to treat whatever the ASA told me in confidence before receiving this letter I would of course abide by that commitment. But no such request was made and it would seem to me that it is in the public interest that what is happening should be in the public domain. In fact I can think of absolutely no reason for requesting confidentiality other than to spare the government’s blushes, and I certainly hope that was not what motivated the ASA. Both the ASA and Ofcom can take a very considerable time to reach decisions that appear on their web sites, so it is very strange to expect that there should be no public discussion of these matters in the meantime.

All this is very embarrassing for the government, and for Ed Miliband’s Department of Energy and Climate Change in particular. They commissioned the advert in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate change summit in December because opinion polls indicate that there is still widespread scepticism about global warming.

A report at the TIMESONLINE - apparently based on  pre-launch media briefings - says that the advertising campaign ‘will be the first to state unequivocally that Man is causing global warming and endangering life on Earth’, and that is precisely what it does. But scientific evidence does not endorse that claim, as many of those who have complained to the ASA have pointed out.

In defending the campaign, climate change minister Joan Ruddock told the Guardian that:

‘It is consistent with government policy on the issue, which is informed by the latest science and assessments of peer-reviewed, scientific literature made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and other international bodies.’

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/16/complaints-government-climate-change-ad

In fact neither the IPCC nor the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science and an international body of great repute, have made unequivocal statements about the causes or effects of global warming. The IPCC says only that ‘most’ of the mid-20th century global warming was ‘very likely’ caused by human influence. This leaves considerable scope for other, natural, causes.

A statement on climate change at the Royal Society website says that rising temperatures, changing sea levels, and impacts on global weather are a ‘possible’ consequences of climate change and that these changes ‘could’ have serious impacts. Far from claiming that there is unequivocal evidence of human influence they refer only to ‘an international scientific consensus’.

Then there is the growing realisation, now accepted by climate scientists and increasingly being reported in the media, that global average temperatures have failed to rise for a decade. The advert provides no hint of this but portrays global warming a growing threat which is entirely due to human activity, and preventable by changing our lifestyles.

So it is hard to see how the ASA can fail to condemn this advert as being misleading, but what about the political motivation that seems to underlie such an eye-catching initiative? This is not a matter for the ASA, but for Ofcom who are responsible for enforcing legislation that forbids political advertising.

The Copenhagen climate change summit in December could see the UK saddled with massive contributions to the annual payments that will have to be made to the developing countries, including China and India, if they are to be persuaded to cut carbon emissions. In the run-up to a general election, how do you sell that kind of commitment to a public that is by no means convinced that there is a problem, but is increasingly concerned about spiralling public debt?

The political stakes are high.  Ed Miliband has been widely tipped as a possible successor to Gordon Brown as leader of the Labour Party. The foreign secretary, who is likely to play a major role at the summit, happens to be his brother David.  He is thought to have his sights set on becoming the EU’s new High Representative (foreign minister) when the Lisbon Treaty comes into force. For both of them it is very important that whatever is agreed at Copenhagen should be applauded by the public when they return and not derided as an act of New Labour folly.

In a speech to the Major Economies Forum in London last week the prime minister, Gordon Brown, claimed that there was only 50 days left to save the world from global warming, and that there was no ‘plan B’ if the Copenhagen negotiations fail.  He too is in desperate need of public support. A great deal of political capital is riding on the effect that those adverts may have, and this makes claims that they were politically inspired, and therefor illegal, all the more credible. The Copenhagen summit is beginning to look more and more like a political minefield where career-terminating damage may be inflicted if the government’s policies cannot be made to look sensible by mid-December.

The prime minister is fond of boasting that Britain leads the world in the war on climate change, and this is not the first time that our government has been spooked by lack of public support in the run-up to a war. What seems to be happening now is horribly reminiscent of the prelude to the invasion of Iraq, when scepticism about the need for military intervention was an obstacle to government policy.

Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell’s solution was the ‘dodgy dossier’, providing what appeared to be unequivocal evidence that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction and claiming that this was based on robust intelligence. Now it would seem that Gordon Brown’s administration is employing the same techniques to win support for policies for which they might otherwise be cold shouldered by the electorate as a general election approaches. The TV adverts are being funded by six million pounds of taxpayer’s money.

It will be interesting to see whether the electorate are as gullible the second time round, and just how independent and courageous the ASA and Ofcom prove to be when confronted with very politically sensitive decisions.

Update 02/11/2009: See comment #4 below for something new about this.