As seen in the video above, it portrays how a non-muslim behaves during the Ramadan festival. Public have claimed that the commercials is racist and flooded the television station facebook pages with complains.
In addition, Media Prima chief operating officer Ahmad Izham Omar apologized in Twitter and announced that the advertisements will be removed. Just minutes after the apology, Omar had tried to shift the topic asking for opinions and had asked the citizens to calm down.
This is another advertisement controversy that Media Prima was caught airing a Hari Raya commercial with a Christmas overtone. The public criticize again and the commercial was removed.
Due to a wide range of ethnic groups in Malaysia, the culture context for each individual is widely different. Hofstede, 1980; Hofstede, 1991; Markus & Kitayama, 1991 states that an ‘individual social attitudes, such as those related to a sense of belonging and identification, individual distance, emotional connections, and a sense of community, rely heavily on one’s social context and cultural background’ (Huang and Deng 2008). It is hard to please the viewers yet to ensure that multiple ethnic groups can co-exist together, it is important for the media to take responsibility.
The International Chamber of Commerce has came up with a few advertising ethics and one of it is decency. They state that ‘marketing communications should not contain statements or audio or visual treatments which offend standards of decency currently prevailing in the country and culture concerned’ (ICC 2011). This is why the media needs to have ‘the knowledge, experience and discriminatory ability of the typical consumer to whom it is directed, as well as social, cultural and linguistic factors’ (ICC 2011). By those abilities, the media will be able to produce a good commercial for the public to enjoy. Again as stated from the previous post, ‘everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression which includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’(The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 2011).
Click here for the original article of Media Prima pulls out ‘racist’ Ramadan ads.
References:
Huang and Deng 2008, Social Interaction Design in Cultural Context: A Case Study of a Traditional Social Activity, International Journal of Design, Vol.2, No. 2, pp. 81-96, viewed on 5th November 2011, <http://www.ijdesign.org/ojs/index.php/IJDesign/article/viewFile/%0b341/154>.
International Chamber of Commerce 2011, Consolidate ICC code, viewed on 5th November 2011, <http://www.codescentre.com/index.php/icc-code#genmain>.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 2011, Preamble, viewed on 5th November 2011, <http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml>.
Youtube 2010, Iklan Raya tv3 yang diharamkan, viewed on 5th November 2011, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl8MrUrBBEI&feature=related>.
Youtube 2011, News: Malaysia TV station Ramadan Ads sparks up debate - 03Aug 2011, viewed on 5th November 2011, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke7p5rp-nbI>.
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