Government Hopes to Eliminate “Sexual” Advertising
July 23rd, 2010
The Spanish government has proposed an initiative to prevent newspapers and other publications from posting personal sex adverts in their classifieds section, which they say has a direct association with prostitution and human trafficking.
The Prime Minister said that this type of advertising “must be eliminated” and received unanimous applause from all sides of parliament. He called upon publishers and editors throughout the country to help by self imposing a ban on such adverts, in an effort to combat the trafficking of individuals for sexual exploitation.
Currently these types of advertising in Spain appear in most local and national press, and it is estimated to account for 60% of the total classifieds in print and bring in around 50 million euros in annual income. This income is a valued source to publishers and the Association of Spanish Newspaper Editors has countered that “as prostitution itself is not actually illegal in Spain, the newspapers are fully within their rights to carry such advertising.” They added that if prostitution was outlawed then the newspapers would not be in a position to publish related adverts as they would be for illegal activities.
It does however appear the vast majority of the Spanish public are fully behind the initiative proposed by Zapatero, in a recent survey 78.5% of respondents said that they feel it is totally unacceptable for adverts which promote sex to be published in newspapers, while only 5.9% thought that their removal would be unwise. The government is expected to announce its plans to implement the initiative in the coming months.
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