Day 065 - 09 Dec 94 - Page 52
1 what I am putting.
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What would you say about that?
4 A. I would say that if I had also written in Gains
5 Esserman's research in this section, that would have not
6 made any difference to the conclusions that the report
7 comes to because the context in which this section is, the
8 context in which it is looking at is the age related
9 differences that children have in their understanding of
10 advertising.
11
12 I have already previously pointed out that it is a subject
13 which has caused early in the United States a lot of debate
14 and discussion. It is not one here that has been seen to
15 be necessarily of quite such significance because it is
16 generally recognised that what they understand or do not
17 understand is not a defence against the persuasiveness of
18 advertising. I think that is where more of the debate in
19 this country has tended to focus.
20
21 MR. RAMPTON: You did not put it in, did you, the findings of
22 the Gains and Esserman study and other parts of the
23 introduction written by June Esserman (which we will look
24 at if you wish in a moment) because they are inconvenient
25 to your theory, the thesis you are propounding in your
26 paper, that advertising has, as you put it, an influence
27 which rivals and may exceed parental and educational
28 influences. It did not fit in, did it, and so it was
29 suppressed, was it not?
30 A. No, I do not accept that. This particular study here
31 was not looking at rival influences at all. So in that
32 sense whether it is in or out has no bearing of that. As
33 I say, it would not be inconvenient to report this study
34 because the general trends that this study shows in
35 relation to other studies are all pointing in the same
36 direction and, as you yourself I think said just now, that
37 no one would disagree that there were age developments into
38 children's understanding of advertising.
39
40 Q. Can you turn, please, to page 4 of your paper which I call
41 "Nutrition Nightmare", I am going to read you a sentence
42 and a sentence along that I read before with some of its
43 context. It is in the third paragraph in the left-hand
44 column: "Advertising messages have a power and status that
45 rivals and may exceed parental guidance and educational
46 influences".
47
48 Can you turn, if you still have it open, back a tab in this
49 green pile to tab 4. I will pick up June Esserman's
50 introduction where I left it last time you were here, that
51 is, on following page (which, I am afraid, I cannot give a
52 number to but it has a picture of some children on it, a
53 boy in a checked shirt and then a boy and girl in the
54 bottom picture), I want to start at the top of the page.
55 She writes: "What we have begun to understand from more
56 recent research is that key importance of parents and
57 teachers in children's defence against the blandishments of
58 television, even for products youngsters desire, informal
59 observations of children as well as research, suggest that
60 approval from a loving parent or an admired teacher is a
