Advertisements must not cause serious or widespread offence against generally accepted moral, social or cultural standards, or offend against public feeling
Notes:
(1) Although no list can be exhaustive, and values evolve over time, society has shared standards in areas such as:
(a) the portrayal of death, injury, violence (particularly sexual violence), cruelty or misfortune
(b) respect for the interests and dignity of minorities
(c) respect for spiritual beliefs, rites, sacred images etc
(d) sex and nudity, and the use of offensive language. (For further information see the ITC research reports Nudity in Television Advertising and the ASA/ITC report Delete Expletives. The latter reports on attitudes to swearing and offensive language.)
(2) The ASA does not judge cases simply, or even primarily, on the number of complaints received. It makes judgements about the likelihood of widespread offence as well as taking into account the possibility of deep, usually unintentional, offence to sections of the audience which have particular vulnerabilities.
(3) Particular circumstances can result in otherwise unobjectionable material causing offence. For example, a joke may cease to be acceptable if it seems to refer to a recent tragedy or if it appears close to a programme about a serious, related issue. On the other hand, if material might be on the edge of acceptability for a general audience but would be perfectly acceptable to, for example, young adults, careful scheduling in ‘youth’ programmes may be sufficient to avoid causing offence.
(4) Whilst commercials for media products such as CDs and videos must not mislead about their content, any extracts from the products should not cause offence.