Adverts for medical treatments which often contain fictitious or
inflated claims were banned on Wednesday as part of the ongoing
drive to improve trust in newspapers.
The government banned adverts for treatments for cancer,
venereal diseases, AIDS, psoriasis, epilepsy, hepatitis B,
vitiligo, and lupus erythematosus, as well as for services
including abortion, as part of the ongoing drive to clean up the
advertising industry.
The move follows an earlier ban on advertising breast enlarging
products and height improving medicines in August.
The General Administration of Press and Publications and the State
Industrial and Commercial Administration have issued the bans in an
effort to improve public trust in newspapers. But experts have
warned the latest ban could slash small newspapers' profits.
"These ads can account for up to 60 percent of the revenue of
some small newspapers," said Chen Gang, professor of advertising
with Peking University, noting that the adverts are often an
important source of income for city newspapers.
The Beijing Times, a local newspaper in the capital,
said the banned adverts contributed annual revenue of about 1
million yuan (US$126,000).
"The ban's influence on us will be limited because these adverts
account for only 5 percent of our total advertising," said Meng
Long from the paper's advertising department.
However, he admitted that the ban would cause a loss of 100,000
yuan (US$12,600) this year. "We will have to adjust our advertising
business strategy next year," he said.
According to a recent survey by the Beijing's administration of
industry and commerce, newspapers often carry adverts which make
exaggerated or untruthful claims about their products.
The survey said at least 2,400 out of the 2,560 inaccurate
adverts detected by the monitor in the third quarter of 2006 were
published in newspapers, with medical adverts accounting for a
large proportion.
"If we find banned ads through either our spot-checks, or
reports we receive, we will initially warn the newspaper or
magazine," said an official with the administration's newspaper
division. "If the warning does not work, the newspaper can face
having its business suspended as well as a penalty fine."
?
A quick glance at Beijing's major newspapers yesterday seemed to
reveal less potentially inaccurate adverts, but readers have doubts
about how long the effect of the ban will last.
"Simply banning these sorts of adverts won't mean the end of
them," said Beijing News reader Yuan. "If they're banned
in newspapers today, they will just emerge in other media tomorrow.
The most important thing is to strengthen supervision and law
enforcement."
Having lost the ability to advertise in newspapers, some of the
advertisers involved have decided to stop advertising for now.
"We will stop advertising for a while," said a woman, surnamed
Lian, who works for Beijing Houshengtang Pharmacy, which often
advertises its vitiligo treatments in local newspapers.
"If the newspapers aren't allowed to run the adverts, we have to
stop. So far, we haven't considered which media we may replace them
with," she said.
(China Daily November 2, 2006)