Stations wary despite nod for condoms
NZPA-Reuter Washington The United States government’s chief medical officer has come out in support of condom commercials on television as a way to reduce the spread of AJ.D.S., but television network executives said such advertisements would offend millions of Americans. “The threat of AJ.D.S. is so great it overwhelms other considerations,” the Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, told a congressional hearing. "Advertising is necessary with respect to condoms and would have a positive effect.” Koop, in a report last year, said the use of condoms during sexual relations could help stop the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, which is transmitted primarily through sexual contact He said condoms should always be used by those who have sex with more than one partener or who are not sure if they or a partner have been exposed to the ALD4. virus. A few local television stations have carried condom advertisements but the three major United States television networks — NBC, CBS and ABC — have rejected them, saying the ads are too controversial. “As a birth control device, such ads are offensive to segments of our audience on moral or religious grounds,” the Vice President of NBC, Ralph Daniels told the hearing of the House of Representatives Health Subcommittee. “Other viewers believe that condom advertising, in any context, inherently delivers a message about sexual permissiveness which they find objectionable,” he said. The chairman of the subcommittee, Henry Waxman, called the networks hypocrites for refusing to broadcast the ads while airing sexually suggestive programmes and commercials. “While portraying thousands of sexual encounters each year in programming and while marketing thousands of products using sex' appeal, television is unwilling to give the life-saving information about safe sex and condoms,” Waxman said.
Stations wary despite nod for condoms
Press, 16 February 1987, Page 19
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