Govt takes ad off air for insulting nurses

A Virgin mobile phone advertisement considered insulting to the nursing profession has been withdrawn after I&B Ministry threatened to take action against TV channels showing it, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Oct 23, 2008, 24:51:20 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

A Virgin mobile phone advertisement considered insulting to the nursing profession has been withdrawn after the Information and Broadcasting Ministry threatened to take action against two television channels for showing it.

The commercial shows two young men in adjoining hospital rooms with their arms in slings. They play a prank on the nurse by asking her to fetch a ringing phone from their trouser pockets. When she fails to find it, the boys laugh at the fact that she has fallen for their trick.

The National Commission for Women, which considered the ad obscene, said it treated the nurse like an object. “There were also sexual overtones which cannot be allowed on public television,” an NCW official said. The Commission had received representations from various women’s organizations against the advertisement.

The I&B Ministry, on receiving a complaint, found that the ad violated the advertising code under the Cable Network Act. It issued notices to Star Movies and Discovery channel for showing it.

“The channels have informed us that the advertisement has been taken off air and is being replaced with a different and sober Virgin advertisement,” a ministry official said.

The swift action against Star Movies and Discovery was an attempt on the government’s part to salvage its image, which is under attack from the courts for allowing poor content on television. Last week, the Supreme Court had asked Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam whether there could be a single day in a year when a family could sit together and watch TV without an assault on their basic values. Earlier, the Delhi High Court had pulled up the government for allowing poor quality content on television.

The ministry has issued showcause notices to five entertainment channels this month alone, the most for any single month this year. Bindass was issued a notice for telecasting a programme titled Dadagiri in which obscene language was used. Hungama received flak for its cartoon show Shin-Chan, which allegedly denigrates children. And Channel V’s Get Gorgeous 5 was considered an obscene reality show.

In 2006, Star One had escaped with a warning for the use of obscene language in its popular series Great Indian Laughter Challenge.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Follow India news real-time updates and the latest news covered on Hindustan Times, featuring today's critical updates on Sonam Wangchuk LIVE and more across India.