Amnesty advert
The Irish Section of Amnesty International is broadcasting the following advertisement on Irish television:
A slightly longer, generic version is available here. It is a powerful advertisement, well worth the half-minute it will take to watch it; but it raises an interesting question. Is it a political advertisment within the meaning of section 20(4) of the Broadcasting (Authority) Act, 1960 and section 10(3) of the Radio and Television Act, 1988, which provide that no advertisement shall be broadcast which is “directed towards any religious or political end …”?
As we have seen several times on this blog (here, here, here, here and here), many advertisements have fallen foul of this prohibition, from Trócaire‘s most recent lenten advertisment, through the Interim National Consumer Agency‘s campaign against price controls on groceries, to EU Commission advertisments extolling the virtues of the European Union. It is a silly and unjustifiable restriction on political speech, but it has survived scrutiny in the Irish and English courts, and the European Court of Human Rights has upheld restrictions on religious advertising. On the other hand, that Court has struck down prohibitions on political advertising, as has the US Supreme Court, just at the end of last month.…