From: lawriew@runx.oz.au (Lawrie Waller)
Subject: Re: Free Speech and ACP
Organization: RUNX Un*x Timeshare.  Sydney, Australia.
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 92 00:31:25 GMT

In article <1992Sep23.115756.6952@newshost.anu.edu.au> apr110@rsphy7.anu.edu.au (Anthony Roberts) writes:
>
>I saw a report on the ABC news last night about the refusal of one of
>the Rugby League Magazines to run an anti-smoking advertisement. The magazine
>was owned by ACP (Australian Consolidated Press - Packers group?).
>
>The advert was a parody of the red background Winfield add with the
>league trophy. It showed a bronze statue of one child putting a
>cigarette in anothers mouth. [I only saw the add breifly and may have
>confused the details]. The cup was called the `Wind-failed Cup'.
>
>ACP cited the reason for refusing the add was because of its offensive
>nature: they claimed it encouraged children to smoke. As it is
>implausible that an add organised by an anti-smoking group is
>pro-smoking (unless they really bungled) this argument must be
>incorrect. From my brief glimpse of the add the children were portrayed
>as dolls and were unhappy. Hardly encouraging! 
>
>Thus ACP's censorship can only be seen as a violation of free speech.
>The League paper has refused to allow appropriate and community sanctioned
>ideas to be advertised in its magazine. One must wonder whether a
>careful analysis of other ACP papers would yield a bias against anti-smoking
>news or views. This also raises questions about the influence of
>corporations on the news that we receive.
>
>While this issue should receive attention from all of the political
>parties, I hope to see the Liberal party becoming involved. It was only
>recently that they argued that the Governments Laws on equalising and
>restricting TV advertising by parties were a serious infringement of
>free speech. This must be seen as an even more serious breach as it
>involves the whims of a publisher compared to the decisions of a
>democratically elected government.
>
>Get your facts and fax your Liberal MHR's or Senators and let them know
>how you feel.
>
>I am not aware of any written sources of this information and would
>appreciate people letting me know which papers published the story (how
>long and how far back into the paper).
>I have just scanned Wednesdays Australian and can find no article
>refering to this matter. (Perhaps it was reported on Tuesday?). 
>
>Tony
>
>Disclamour: I was born with a speling defeckt.
>
>Alternative sources of media that you should know about; Modern Times -
>a monthly magazine on
>current affairs and culture; Broadside Weekly - alternative weekly press
>based in the labour and 
>alternative movements; Green Left weekly - alternative views, paper of
>the Democratic Socialist Party.
>They will not survive without support from the Australian public.

I find this diatribe very interesting-just one question of the writer!
If the same publications refused to print tobacco ads -would you still
have us all write to our politicians screaming for freedom of speech?
Please dont hide behind the present fact that a law has been
introduced banning such ads. If you do I'll have to ask you why you
are not campaigning against such laws.
I see in such messages above the worrying "new morality" which is a
form of lopsided wowerism that seeks to ban or regulate any form of
social interaction which is not politically correct. This is,and I am
old enough to remember, the stuff on which the Third Reich was
founded.

-- 
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lawriew@runx.oz.au              |Friend is sometimes a word devoid of
Lawrie Waller-SYDNEY AUS        |meaning;enemy,never.(Victor Hugo)
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Newsgroups: aus.politics