MPs maul advertisers in Motion

UK advertisers have been criticised in a House of Commons Motion for running ads during Channel 4’s screening of the controversial film, The Last Temptation Of Christ.

The complaint comes in the same week as an influential US Christian lobby group is calling for a boycott of Unilever goods in protest at what it claims is the company’s sponsorship of primetime TV featuring sex, violence and bad language.

The UK’s parliamentary Motion cites 33 advertisers that were featured during the film, including Mars, Vauxhall, Sony, Nike, American Express and Tesco. It calls on management boards to “urgently review their policy of associating products with a broadcast likely to cause offence”.

Signatories to the Motion include MPs David Alton, Michael Alison and Donald Anderson – all associated with Parliament’s Christian movement.

In the US, the American Family Association placed full-page ads in the New York Times on Sunday listing examples of offending programmes, including NYPD Blue. It also names Unilever products and invites consumers to boycott them. It plans to run the campaign across the US, and probably the UK.

Many US companies avoid advertising alongside programmes that the association finds objectionable.