Ethical issues in advertising

ADVERTISING has been defined as “any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor”. In other words, advertising is the paid use of the media of mass communication to sell a product, a service or an idea.

As the economic outlook of Asian countries steadily improved, advertising became an indispensable mechanism in accelerating awareness, acceptance and distribution of goods and services. The basic objective of all advertisements is to convey the message to the desired target through some communication carrier. The commercial mass media available to advertisers are newspapers, magazines, radio, television, film, outdoor billboards, etc. Some advertisers produce their own medium such as direct mailing of leaflets and brochures.

With the advent of radio’s commercial service and later television and FM radio channels, advertising companies in Pakistan got a tremendous boost. The messages conveyed through advertising are short and crisp and much more attractive than most of the programmes broadcast by the electronic media, and, therefore, more watchable.

Since advertising has grown into a major source of financial support for TV channels, they are tempted to give as much as one-third of their prime time space to commercials. In fact there are no time limits imposed on advertising in popular programmes and even during news bulletins. The viewers naturally are frustrated with frequent commercial breaks and programmes lose their continuity and charm due to too many interruptions.

Likewise, largely circulated newspapers are giving as much as 50 per cent of their space, particularly on the front and back pages, to advertisements. In their quest for as much advertising revenue as they can muster, they do not even hesitate to print or put on air highly offensive, immoral and indecent ads in clear violation of journalistic ethics which have been wilfully put on the back burner. Viewers round the clock are deluged with the same commercials which are playing an odious role in corrupting the country’s social and moral values and escalating the demand for and prices of consumer goods beyond all reasonable proportions.

The ‘dream merchants’ of advertising are weaving a web of deception and glamour and projecting a mirage of false prosperity and artificially thriving economies in countries like Pakistan, where millions of people are living in abject poverty lacking even the most basic necessities of life. A large number of products advertised are serious health hazards such as junk food, in which children and youth have been made the main targets.

Another very unethical and dangerous form of advertising is the practice of ‘puffery’ which is American slang for the use of “gross hyperbole or subjective claims” in advertisements. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been empowered by the Supreme Court to stop false and deceptive advertising which through “representation, omission or practice … is likely to mislead the consumer and lure him to buy such products which may be harmful to his health”. The FTC has now been empowered to impose fines or altogether ban deceptive advertising. It has also formulated specific regulations to stop false and misleading advertising of products for children’s markets.

These actions have resulted in a considerable reduction in the incidence of gross distortions and misrepresentations. Similarly advertising of such products as cigarettes and certain brands of drugs and hard liquor which can cause terminal diseases have been banned altogether on the electronic media in the United States and the majority of countries of the world.

Pakistan is probably the only country in South Asia where products which are recognised health hazards are being advertised unchecked through puffery and false and misleading claims. There is no agency, official or otherwise, to check and control such harmful advertising, nor are there any pressure groups in society to provide protection to the unsuspecting consumers.

The Pakistan Advertising Association, incorporated under the Companies Ordinance, carries a clause in its Memorandum of Association calling for “protecting the art and trade of advertising and sales promotion from unethical practices and monopolies of foreign and house agencies”. In the present scenario it seems that this clause is not being implemented and is in fact wilfully ignored by the advertising agencies themselves.

There is need for the print and electronic media in Pakistan to join hands in launching a vigorous education programme to protect the country’s consumers from (a) deceptive claims of producers of goods and services and misleading sales promotion by advertisers; (b) excessive spending under the influence of advertising; and (c) the harmful effects of advertising on children.

The government may also consider setting up a watchdog commission like the American FTC to protect consumers from misleading and harmful advertising.

The writer is former director news of PTV.

Razzle-dazzle ’em

Every so often an optimist pipes up, “Pakistan isn’t all that bad.” It is. Forget politics, militancy and the economy for a moment; this is still a wretched place.

By any measure, by any test Pakistan fails to provide its citizens a healthy, modern, varied life.

Thank God for women. Chicago, the Broadway musical and Hollywood hit, came to Karachi and scored a triumph for women. The play’s lead characters are sexy, saucy and bold. They are everything that a Pakistani woman is not supposed to be — at least in public. Yet two Pakistani women took up the challenge and didn’t flinch. They danced and sang and performed as the script required, not as Pakistani norms demand. The critics will criticise and the musical aficionados will throw in their tuppence but as a political statement it was an emphatic victory. Elsewhere, friends Zeb and Haniya having been wowing the world of music. Their debut video is about a woman who ends a relationship on a mature, sensible note. Zeb and Haniya are cousins from Kohat so the media — home and away — has leapt at juxtaposing the politics of that neighbourhood with female musical talent, much to the chagrin of the cousins who would rather the focus be on their music.

These women ought to be celebrated. Sure, the rabid mullahs will chant prayers for their souls and wish hellfire and brimstone upon them but that’s what rabid mullahs do. While the Chicago actors and Zeb and Haniya are caught in a battle not of their choosing, it ought to be of some consolation that they are on the right side.

What these bold women are doing is recapturing the public space that has been denied to them since Zia. The generation that came of age during the time of the Islamist dictator are all children of Zia — a generation whose public voice was stifled unless it was used to intone religious mores. A decade of democracy and a near-decade of enlightened moderation have followed but our national discourse — a lofty term for the tripe that is offered for public consumption — continues to be framed by the general. Everything we do, everything we drink, everything we say, everything we think, the parameters of what is publicly acceptable or not has been dictated by Gen Zia.

The Taliban — Zia’s ideological progeny — are simply taking his ideological purge to the next level. Social scientists analyse the destruction of girls’ schools in antiseptic academic-speak. Treatises on patriarchy and institutionalised misogyny and the conflict between individual and society are trotted out. Less erudite people talk of obscurantism and uneducated, poverty-stricken, wild-eyed, bushy bearded men chewing tobacco and holding prayer beads while making the world in their likeness. At its core though it remains what it is: a crude mechanism of social control which acknowledges that a society without women is easier to tame. Nudge women out of the mainstream and half the job of ideological purity is complete.

The difficulty for the moderates is that pushing back is dangerous. A media group took on the Lal Masjid brigade and sundry militants with irreverent political cartoons and an unequivocal editorial stance against militancy. Soon enough the death threats poured in. In an email exchange, an editor told me “there’s nothing we can do about a strike if they choose to make one, short of capitulating or closing shop. That’s the asymmetric advantage they enjoy over their opponents.” Most would choose not to fight. Some — the brave — do.

But what most unwittingly do is feed the beast. It is true that most Pakistanis do not want the Talibanisation of the country. But there is a hesitancy to criticise the Taliban and their ilk, if only because they wrap themselves up in the cloak of Islam. The ascetic lifestyle, heroic resistance and virtuous future that the Taliban offer tug at emotional strings that are difficult to repulse. Even if most would — and do — choose the material over the spiritual on a daily basis, there is a reluctance to judge the pious. It’s a general feature of organised religions, but in Pakistan it is worsened by the failure to distinguish between a Pakistan-for-Muslims and Pakistan-as-an-Islamist-state. The Taliban are alert to this dilemma of Pakistanis, as were the Americans, the Saudis and the ISI when they pumped money into the jihad culture here. Resistance is futile.

Or is it? It is the sharpening of the wrong distinctions that has gotten us in this fix. The Pakistan-state-has-failed versus the Islamist-state-by-definition-is-a-success model is a false choice that few are willing to explore. I tried to during the quintessential cabbie conversation. A clean-shaven man with otherwise moderate opinions, he surprised me by arguing for the Taliban and cursing the Pakistani state. “I’m a sinner,” the cabbie told me, “but I know the Taliban are right. They want to bring Islam.” We happened to be driving through Karachi’s commercial district at the time, so I pointed out the window to a skyscraper. Could the Taliban give him that? Or even the taxi he was driving?

Incontestably the economic argument is neither sufficient nor necessary. Al Qaeda recruits are known to be middle-class and educated. The connection between poverty and Islamic radicalism is often assumed but far from clear.

Yet economic progress is an undeniable aid in pushing back religiosity, especially its more radical forms, at the level of society. A small family would have paid the effective minimum monthly wage to watch Chicago. The play would probably not have been staged were it not for corporate sponsors. The media group debunking the militants’ lies relies on rising incomes to gain readers and viewers. Zeb and Haniya’s musical expedition has been expensive and their outreach would have been limited were it not for a fledgling music industry.

So while growth is important because it can dull the allure of a religious ideal for a cabbie dreaming of a better future, it’s the spillovers that are perhaps the more valuable. For a media group growth has meant more readers and viewers whose false notions can be challenged. For the women of Chicago and Zeb and Haniya growth has created the space to fight back through their art, knowingly or otherwise.

The first step to winning a battle is to acknowledge its existence. Next is the hard part: fighting it. So far Pakistan has not shown much of an inclination to wrest away the public space from the mullahs. That’s why it’s so important to tip your hat to those who do put up a fight.

cyril.a@gmail.com

An indictment of the government?

THE monetary policy announced by the State Bank governor for the first six months of the current year repeats its routinely ignored message to the government.

In its bare essentials, the message asks the government to stem the menacingly rising flow of borrowing from the bank. In 2007-08 this was as much as 80 per cent of the bloated fiscal deficit. The government must start reducing the stock of this borrowing which has accumulated to trillion-plus rupees. Needless to say, government borrowing from the State Bank provides unadulterated fuel to inflation.

There is nothing new in what the State Bank is saying and what the government is doing. What is new, however, is the tone and tenor of the State Bank. Not accidentally, what is also new is that there is a democratic alliance in place. Is it the swansong of a governor nearing the end of her tenure? Or, more ominously, has the State Bank joined the chorus of suggestions by some institutions of the state that the democratic government has failed to deliver?

Revenues have been overestimated and expenditures underestimated throughout the last eight years, but the State Bank had never pointed this out in a formal statement in the very first month of a budget. Every one knows what governments do on the last day of the fiscal year. But June 30 this year was exceptional. On this day the State Bank informed the public that the elected government had borrowed Rs55bn on a single day, with no comparable picture of such fateful days in the past. A comparison of sorts is given when it purports to show that the borrowing in January-March was Rs204bn, the period of the caretakers, while the democratic alliance borrowed a larger amount of Rs284bn in April-June.

Presented out of context, these facts show the democratic alliance as profligate even before it had time literally to spend a rupee. It could not have started any pet projects in such a short time. Nor could it dole out favours when it had hardly had time to establish itself. Its preoccupation was to pay for the subsidies of Rs407bn piled up as a result of the fiscal ineptitude of its predecessors. The unacknowledged fact is that the democratic government, at great cost to its popularity, has moved rapidly to plug this hole caused by the champions of macroeconomic fundamentalism.

The indictment goes on. Generally the revenues do not start pouring in during the very first month of the fiscal year. And despite very serious efforts to curtail them, the food and energy subsidies still have to be paid. But the State Bank is unhappy that the government borrowed Rs33bn in the first 25 days.

What has changed? Why has the State Bank suddenly become vocal about its autonomy. There was a VVIP visit at the State Bank on July 5, a day in the past to which this country continues to regress. The governor made a presentation on the economy. According to a press release, the governor stressed that the “revenue deficit should be converted into a surplus, as laid down in the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation Act 2005. The governor added that the key concerns of the SBP are high stress of the government borrowings and drain on foreign exchange reserves…. She also pointed out the importance of restoring investors’ confidence with a view to encourage investment inflows and consistency and continuation of prudent policies.”

The VVIP, continues the press release, “discussed various issues related to food and oil price developments and appreciated the SBP’s briefing. He also acknowledged the strengths of [the] SBP as an institution, its policy advice and its continued support in overall economic development of the country.” In attendance, among other VIPs, was the senior management of the State Bank of Pakistan. Not to be ignored, the VVIP is the appointing and reappointing authority for the governor.

Before this briefing, one vaguely knew that there existed a central board of directors of the State Bank, but it hardly ever found a mention in its policy pronouncements. But the monetary policy statement issued on July 29 repeatedly presents it as an assertive board. As a “pre-emptive” action, a commitment has been obtained from the government to ensure net zero borrowing in 2008-09. On June 10, i.e. before the budget, the State Bank informed the government that the central board of directors “resolved that [the] government should retire Rs21bn in each quarter of FY09.” The government has also been asked to include in the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation Act 2005 provisions to phase out the reliance on borrowing from the State Bank.

In May 2008, the State Bank described Pakistan as “the rare example” where this law does not restrict debt monetisation. This was never pointed out to those who introduced this law and claimed victory even before its promulgation that the begging bowl had been broken. Similarly, having accommodated thus far the process whereby “consumption and not investment has been the driver of growth”, the State Bank concludes for the democratic alliance that “excessive recourse to SBP borrowings to finance the fiscal deficit is now unsustainable.”

Section 9A(b) of the State Bank Act gives statutory powers to the central board to determine and enforce the limits of borrowing for supporting the federal budget. The central board has 10 directors, all nominees of the previous government and some even served in the cabinet of the chief executive of Pakistan in 2000-03. No wonder consistency of policies, meaning guided democracy, comes naturally to them.

According to the governor, a ‘jirga’ of this board is being sent to the government to assert the State Bank’s statutory right to determine the limits of government borrowing for budgetary support. Monetary policy makes its impact felt with a lag of 12-18 months. The signs of the impending crisis had appeared in July 2007 and the State Bank’s action then would have allowed the democratic alliance today a smooth transition. But the State Bank raised its policy rate by a mere 50 basis points and shied away from enforcing its writ on the free-spending Shaukat Aziz administration.

In November-December 2007 alone, the State Bank allowed the government to borrow Rs178bn. And now it is becoming restless because the government in its first month borrowed Rs33bn. The consequences of the failure to act in July 2007 are being projected as problems that the democratic alliance does not have the competence to deal with. The plot continues to thicken.

The writer was chief economist of the Planning Commission in 2000-06.

Terrorism & the Olympics

“SAFETY is our top concern,” said China’s Vice-President Xi Jinping in late July, pointing to the deployment of 100,000 troops around Beijing and the surface-to-air missile batteries that protect the main stadiums as proof of the regime’s determination to ensure that no terrorist attack would disrupt the Olympic Games. But it couldn’t stop two equally determined Uighur militants from killing sixteen Chinese police and injuring another sixteen in an attack on a border post near Kashgar.

True, Kashgar is in the far north-western province of Xinjiang, 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) from Beijing, but if two men armed only with hand grenades and knives could do that much damage there, what is to stop others from doing it in Beijing? Certainly not surface-to-air missiles.

The best way to prevent terrorist attacks is to remove the grievances that often motivate them, and to penetrate the terrorist organisations with informers. China hasn’t done very well on either front. In Xinjiang as in Tibet, it has inundated the local population with a wave of Han Chinese immigrants who live essentially separate and far more prosperous lives, and created great resentment as a result.

Ironically, the reason for the huge influx of Han Chinese immigrants is a ham-handed effort to quell separatist sentiments in the two provinces. Most Chinese believe that their country has ruled both Tibet and what used to be called East Turkestan since time immemorial, but in practice they only came under direct Chinese control in the mid-18th century, around the same time that the British were seizing control of India.

So if Beijing doesn’t want its western territories to go the way of British India eventually, then it must find a way to bind Tibetans and Uighurs to China. The solution, Beijing reckoned, was lots of development and rising prosperity, which would reconcile both Tibetans and Uighurs to Chinese rule.

Maybe it would have, too, if the subject peoples had actually shared in the prosperity, but they didn’t. Educational levels and technical skills were gravely lacking in the indigenous populations, so the real (although probably unintended) effect was to draw in millions of Chinese immigrants who did have the necessary skills. And it was they, of course, who got all the good new jobs.

In 1945, ninety per cent of Xinjiang’s population were Uighurs, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people who are closely related to the other Muslim populations of Central Asia. (Indeed, the Uighurs of Xinjiang and the Uzbeks of northern Afghanistan and Uzbekistan can actually understand each other’s languages.) Now the Uighurs are down to eight million out of nineteen million: less than forty-five per cent of the population and falling fast.

As in the case of Tibet, there has been very rapid urbanisation, but most of the native population lives in ghettoes that are little better than slums, with no hope of getting the good jobs that are monopolised by Chinese immigrants. The difference between the two regions is that in Xinjiang there have been sporadic terrorist attacks against Chinese people and interests since the early 1990s.

Tibet is isolated by geography, culture, religion and language. It has no strong affinities with anywhere else, which largely explains its relative political passivity between the big 1959 revolt and this year’s disturbances. By contrast, Uighurs have strong historical, cultural, religious and linguistic links with the other Central Asian groups — all of which got their independence when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

That example, of course, was very seductive, and so a wide variety of Uighur separatist groups have carried out occasional terrorist attacks both in Xinjiang and in China proper over the past two decades. The rise of “Islamist” terrorism latterly has given them a more coherent ideology than mere nationalism, and also some useful contacts in the more distant parts of the Muslim world. They have only killed a couple of hundred people in twenty years, but they remain a serious headache for the Chinese regime.

In all that time, Beijing has not succeeded in penetrating and breaking up the Uighur groups who are waging this violent separatist campaign. Part of the reason is doubtless that these groups are small, numerous and fragmented, but they are also increasingly difficult for the Chinese intelligence services to penetrate because they have become more and more Islamist (as opposed to merely nationalist) in their ideology.

So could Uighur separatists, or even Tibetan ones, carry out a terrorist attack in Beijing during the Olympics? Of course they could. Nothing too spectacular, of course. No hijacked airplanes crashing into stadiums. But two men with grenades (or two women, for that matter) could do a lot of damage, and even 100,000 troops would need some luck to stop them.

— Copyright Gwynne Dyer