Day 065 - 09 Dec 94 - Page 22

     
     1        My argument is that by portraying products as desirable and
     2        attractive food choices, it increases their salience and
     3        their desirability.  That would not necessarily be a
     4        problem if it was not for the imbalance in the types of
     5        food that are advertised on television, and the dominance
     6        of fatty and sugary foods which therefore makes those
     7        particular kinds of products more attractive to them.
     8
     9   Q.   Do you have a view whether or not children are especially
    10        gullible where advertising is concerned?
    11        A.  I would not necessarily use the word "gullible".
    12
    13   Q.   What word would you use?
    14        A.  We have to recognise that children are not adults.
    15
    16   Q.   What implications does that have?
    17        A.  The implications are, and they are ones that the
    18        regulatory bodies have recognised, that special care and
    19        due regard should be paid towards children's ability to
    20        understand, and I use "understand" in the widest possible
         context, what advertising is all about.  Nobody would
    22        suggest that children are born with an adult like
    23        understanding.  Children go through a process of learning,
    24        researchers have looked into that.  There may be different
    25        pieces of research which may come to slightly differing
    26        conclusions as to at what age a child may or may not
    27        understand, be aware of one particular aspect of
    28        advertising.  But the overall picture is quite clear.  As
    29        children are developing and their ability to know what is
    30        going on is largely age related.
    31
    32   Q.   Do you suggest, which is perhaps more important still, do
    33        you suggest that, what one might call repetitive
    34        advertising to children succeeds in overcoming both the
    35        child's natural, so far as he has it, natural scepticism,
    36        critical faculties and so on, both that and the parents'
    37        influence on the child's food choices?
    38        A.  You used the words "natural scepticism" and ---
    39
    40   Q.   Yes, I do deliberately.
         A.  No, you said another.
    42
    43   Q.   Critical faculties?
    44        A.  Right.  Well, the point is that a child is exposed to
    45        advertising before it has the ability to, perhaps, develop
    46        some of those critical faculties.  I do not think -- when
    47        you say "natural scepticism", children are not born with a
    48        natural scepticism, far from it.  Children are born to be
    49        very open to learning, to the world, taking in influences.
    50        That is how children develop. 
    51 
    52   Q.   I should have used the word "acquired" scepticism.  Again, 
    53        see if you can cast your mind back.  It is quite early in
    54        life, is it not, that people could come through, I suppose,
    55        a series of disappointments or shocks, become quite
    56        sceptical about what they are told about life, the world
    57        they live in generally, is it not?
    58        A.  I think there are a lot of adults that feel, perhaps,
    59        sometimes in retrospect that they should have been more
    60        sceptical about something.  As human beings, we are open to