Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-02-Speech-2-487"
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"en.20080902.35.2-487"2
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"Mr President, I would like to thank the EP and the rapporteur, Mrs Svensson, for addressing a very delicate issue on how marketing and advertising affects equality between men and women.
Advertising plays an important role in the financing of the media. It reduces the cover price of magazines and newspapers and ensures that much audiovisual content is available free to consumers. This is important for freedom of expression and diversity, a question which is often debated in this House.
What we have seen over the years is an accumulation of bans or controls on advertising – cigarettes, alcohol, fatty food – and soon there will be new rules for how car manufacturers advertise CO
emissions. Advertising is a soft target because it is much easier to regulate it than to address the underlying problems, which are often more complex – though the report which we are discussing tonight favours further controls on advertising, this time from the subjective area of gender politics.
As Media Commissioner, I recognise the underlying policy concerns, but I also wonder what will be the impact of these concerns if they are carried out on a whole industry and on the general public. As it has become more difficult to advertise because there is less money and because of all the bans, advertisers have reduced the role of advertising in their marketing expenditure. There are other ways to market products without advertising them in the media: product promotion for instance. That is very bad for media pluralism, because most of all the written press – the newspapers and the magazines – do not get enough income in order to continue to be published.
The report does not take into account the positive aspects that support the objectives of the report in order to protect citizens. Let me give you some examples. Article 3 of the Audiovisual Media Service Directive contains strong wording on human dignity and non-discrimination in relation to audiovisual advertising. The Commission, I can assure you, will ensure that Member States’ transposition of this Directive reflect what the legislator wanted.
Neither does the report underline the valuable role that self-regulation has played. Let me give you an example here, too. You should be aware that it has been responded to well in cases of, and I quote: ‘objectionable stereotyping’, and I will give you a very concrete example. The fashion industry has stopped its ‘porno-chic’ campaigns, which stigmatised women as pure sex objects. So there are legislative measures in order to solve the problems.
We should have, in this respect, a very realistic approach. Advertising is a short-form medium, glimpsed on a page or in a 30-second video spot. What the report calls ‘stereotyping’ may be just a quick way to link a product to a particular group of consumers. It can also reflect poor creative work. There is, on the other hand, good advertising and bad advertising, and as Media Commissioner I have to accept that the freedom of expression also includes the right to fail – even to fail badly – even if we do not like it. If I asked the plenary here to take a decision on that, I think that the right to fail would not be hampered.
As the report acknowledges, there is no conclusive research that links stereotyping with gender inequality. Policy-making requires a strong evidence base, not just strongly-held views, and that is what we are basing our policy proposals on and why the Commission supports the positive recommendations made in the EP report. Best-practice exchange, for instance, among the regulators is something that we always encourage. Education, research and further debates should certainly continue.
I would like to underline that for nine years now, as Media Commissioner, I have been pleading for courses in schools on media literacy. I believe that this would be the most important thing: if we could awaken the critical appraisal of youngsters in order to read advertisements, to reject the bad advertisements, something which is really not relevant to our society. I would like to concentrate on best practice, for instance I like the Spanish example of awards for advertising that handle gender issues well. That is the right way to proceed, and that is why we should accentuate the positive and see whether we can make further progress, because it is worthwhile fighting for this."@en1
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