ASA Rules Hacked Off Royal Charter Ad ‘Misleading’

The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint about a Hacked Off advertisement featuring the names of celebrities and writers declaring support for the Royal Charter for press regulation, stating that the ad “was likely to mislead.”

In a ruling published today (Wednesday) the ASA said that the ad, which featured a number of names and the claim ‘What do all these people have in common? The Leveson Royal Charter Declaration’, breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading advertising).

The ruling states that the ad “provided consumers with confusing and ambiguous statements regarding the nature of any involvement of Leveson in the Royal Charter” and should not appear again in its current form.

“We told Hacked Off to ensure future ads made clear that Leveson had not proposed, recommended, written or endorsed the Royal Charter,” the ASA added.

The ruling states: “The ASA understood the Leveson public inquiry was widely reported and considered that consumers would be aware that Lord [Justice] Leveson had made a number of recommendations as a result of the inquiry findings.

“We also considered consumers would be aware that, as a direct result of those recommendations, there was a movement towards the establishment of a new model of press self-regulation. However, we considered that how this would be implemented was not so well known.

“We therefore considered that, without a clear qualification, consumers would understand the title ‘The Leveson Royal Charter Declaration’ to be a claim that the Royal Charter to which the declaration related was one of the direct outcomes of the Leveson public inquiry, rather than a response to it.

The ruling continued: “We considered the strong suggestion of Leveson’s involvement in the Royal Charter alongside a conflicting statement regarding the indirect influence of Leveson’s public inquiry recommendations on the Royal Charter, provided consumers with confusing and ambiguous statements regarding the nature of any involvement of Leveson in the Royal Charter. As a result of this ambiguous information, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.”