Gagging charities “political” messages
Posted by Ian Noon on May 7, 2009
Not contenting with doing a review of parental confidence in provision for children, being chair of the Special Educational Consortium and Executive Director of Advocacy and Policy at RNID, Brian Lamb spoke out last week about silly laws that affect charities. Specifically, charities are not allowed to do adverts on social issues relating to their campaigns due to a law that prohibits political advertising.
The law aims to stop the airwaves being flooded by wealthy political honchos. But it’s also catches out charities that might want to do adverts about social issues. For example, NDCS probably wouldn’t be able to do adverts that calls on the Government to ensures schools have good acoustics and are inclusive. Worse, we couldn’t respond to any adverts by private companies that might, for whatever reason, talk about deafness. And animal rights charities couldn’t do adverts rebutting impressions given by, for example, fast food companies that the chickens that go into a McNuggets live a life of luxury.
It’s not something we plan to do. But it would be nice to have that option. But it doesn’t really feel like a very level playing field…
Benedict Pringle said
I agree with Brian Lamb. The ban on political advertising on TV in this country is out of date, bad for the economy and inhibits free speech.
Tim said
While I agree with Mr Lamb on the merits of his point, he does not come to this issue with clean hands. RNID have constantly rejected the requests of deaf people – their own members- to improve communication with us. See:
http://tim-theregency.blogspot.com/2009/04/communicating-with-deaf-people-rnid.html