Law Weblog

Will all students please note …"Bloody" is offensive

Tuesday 2 December 2008 at 6:51 pm | In News | 1 Comment

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ordered The Sun newspaper not to use the word ‘bloody’ on posters in future. said it was socially irresponsible to use the word in an advert that appeared in a public place.

The offensive advert appeared on the side of a lorry.

“Where the bloody hell were you?”

There was a background of the Union Jack flag. It showed Great Britain’s Olympic gold medal tally of 19 compared to Australia’s 14.

The paper said that the ad was a tongue-in-cheek reference to a well-known advert for the Australian Tourist Board. It said it considered the word “bloody” to be “a generally acceptable mild epithet, and not offensive.”

The ASA said:

“We acknowledged that The Sun’s ad had been prepared in a light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek manner, following the UK’s recent success at the Olympics, but nevertheless considered that the word ‘bloody’ was a swear word, albeit a milder one than some others and concluded that it was socially irresponsible to reproduce it in advertising in an untargeted medium to which children could be exposed”.