Nasty advertising effect
Help is available for people who have problems with gambling from Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand: Te Rōpū Āwhina Mate Petipeti o Aotearoa.
I opened up Stuff on my iPad this morning, via the web browser rather than via the Stuff app, because I find the app inflexible.
On the left hand side of the screen, there was a tiny white thing that looked for all the world like a piece of paper on the screen.
This image shows a screen grab of the front page, with the little tag highlighted. Because I am not a proficient image editor at all, I did this by getting a screen grab on my iPad, then pulling the image into Word, and using an autoshape to highlight the tag, and then I used Grab to get a new image showing the highlight. This is almost undoubtedly not the best way to do things, but it worked.
Here’s the original screen grab from my iPad. If you click on the thumbnail, you will go through to a larger image, and you will be able to see the tag at the side of the page easily enough. You will also be able to see the time at which I took the shot, and the other tabs I had open at the top of the image.
It looks very much like something stuck on the surface of my iPad screen. I brushed it off, but it wasn’t a tiny piece of paper at all. Instead, it was a link to another site.
Here is a screen grab of the site that opened up. Again, if you click on the thumbnail, you will go through to a larger image, and you should be able to see a screen grab of the site easily.
It’s the TAB, New Zealand’s “premier” horseracing and sports betting agency. It’s a gambling site.
There is no indication whatsoever on the Stuff site that when you brush the little tag, you will end up on a gambling site. I am not a gambler, aside from paying the stupid tax when I buy the occasional Lotto ticket, so it’s not really an issue for me. But I do mind being tricked into opening up another site.
More importantly, this is probably dangerous for people with addictive gambling problems. A problem gambler may be doing his or her very best to stay away from on-line gambling, only to end up opening up an on-line gambling site by mistake.
Help is available for people who have problems with gambling from Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand: Te Rōpū Āwhina Mate Petipeti o Aotearoa.
I know times are tough in the newspaper industry, and that it is very hard for newspapers to generate advertising revenue. I know that they need to get people to click on the ads, to try to get some income from the eyes browsing their sites everyday.
But this kind of thing is difficult.
Update – added due to parliment’s comment below: As it turns out, this is not a trick, or a way to lure you into opening up the site without being aware you are doing so. Because I open up the site in my browser, banner adds don’t appear “properly”, so I just get this tag on the side instead. The consequence is that I end up opening the site by mistake. I have amended the wording of this post in places to reflect this. Update ends.
It’s not just Stuff who is at fault here. The TAB claims to have a harm minimisation policy, and to help people to gamble responsibly. But people end up opening their on-line gambling site without being at all aware that it is going to happen. Sure, it may well comply with the letter of the TAB’s policy. But I think that the TAB needs to take more responsibility with respect to how their advertising actually works.
The tab doesn’t appear on the computer version of the Stuff website, so if you want to see it all for yourself, you will need to log into Stuff from a mobile device (iPad/iPhone). And I couldn’t find an equivalent tag on the app version of the site. The TAB site that appears on my iPad is the mobile version of the site, so again, if you want to see it for yourself, you will need to use a mobile device. No, I am NOT providing any links to the TAB site. You can google them easily enough if you want to. However I am not interested in facilitating their business at all, even in the most minor way.
How could it be fixed? Simple. Have a little pop-up box making it clear that clicking or tapping on the link will take you to the TAB’s site. That way, problem gamblers would be able to avoid the site.
There is help available for problem gamblers in New Zealand at the Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand: Te Rōpū Āwhina Mate Petipeti o Aotearoa.
Compare and contrast
Here are two stories, both appearing on the Stuff newspapers website today.
Story number one, about a woman who was assaulted in the early hours of the morning in downtown Wellington. NB: She was able to fight off the man who assaulted her, with assistance from a family member.
Assault on woman in problem spot alley (Trigger warning for assault)
There is a poll accompanying this story.
The poll asks, “How safe do you think the central city is for women after dark?” (Emphasis mine.)
Story number two, about a man who was assaulted in the early hours of the morning in downtown Hamilton, with serious consequences for him.
Arrest in city bashing (Trigger warning for assault)
Here are the differences I see.
1. The first story identifies the gender of the victim in the headline but the second story doesn’t.
2. The first story is accompanied by a poll which makes gender central to the issue of safety but the second story doesn’t.
3. If you click through to the stories, you will see that the first story has comments enabled, but the second hasn’t. Warning: as Tallulah says, under no circumstances read the comments.
Same old story: men are normative, women are a special case, and when a woman is assaulted, it’s because she didn’t take care to keep herself safe.
On the positive side, the text in both stories avoids overt victim blaming, ‘though there is just a hint of it in the police officer in the first story pointing out that, “Historically, it is an alleyway where there has been assaults.” The second story has a police officer saying, “he warned on the day of the attack such behaviour, as happened on the corner of Hood and Alexandra Streets about 3.30am, could and would not be tolerated. “
International Women’s Day on Stuff: All you old hags should wear make-up
Today is International Women’s Day, a celebration which takes different forms in different countries. In New Zealand, it serves as a day to consider the progress that women have made, and the progress that is yet to come.
The New Zealand Herald focuses on the biggest concerns facing women, with various facts and stats, and an interview with Rowena Phair, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. The issues are… interestingly framed, in the way that Sheryl Sandberg’s analysis of why we have so few women leaders for TED is interestingly framed (video at link). Sandberg is Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, and her advice for women about how to get to top positions is all about how to behave like men. She pays no attention to systemic problems that confront women, and instead offers advice for individual women, not contemplating even for a moment that it might be better to look at the whole way our society structures work and work expectations. See Julie’s post at The Hand Mirror for a discussion of the Sandberg talk: Too few women leaders.
The CEO of Women’s Affairs tells us that the top five issues facing women are:
1. Balancing home life with paid work
2. Staying healthy
3. Getting the right reward for their skills
4. Backing themselves as leaders
5. Feeling safe in relationships.
All good issues to focus on, of course, but look at the advice that is given for each issue.
1. Balancing home life with paid work:
“A big issue for women is managing those responsibilities.”
2. Staying healthy:
“New Zealand women need to make sure they leave space in their busy schedule to take care of themselves.”
3. Getting the right reward for their skills:
“Women are concerned about their financial future, especially in their 20s, and Phair said one way this can be dealt with is by considering all the options available to them in the workforce.
4. Backing themselves as leaders:
“Women are really active in their communities, they’ve got opinions to contribute, but they’ve really got to have the confidence in their convictions…”
5. Feeling safe in relationships:
“It’s very unusual for men to be physically violent without some behaviours that lead up to that so women can keep themselves safe by being very alert … and to get help as quickly as they can.” She said young women are particularly vulnerable to abusive relationships. “Woman really need to keep their eyes open in relationships.”
With the exception of the first, it’s all about what individual women can do to change things. No discussion of systemic factors that might work against women. For example, it sounds like the easiest thing in the world to find a bit of time to stay healthy, but if you are trying to care for small children, and trying to work, then just finding the time to do anything extra can be difficult, even when it’s home based. As for trying to get to the gym, well, you have to sort child care first, so the cost can be considerable. Getting up and going for a run in the mornings might do, until winter darkness closes in. And even then, someone has to be a home to care for the children.
Getting the right reward for their skills? The evidence is that even when women don’t take time out for child care, and do push just as much for higher salaries, they still don’t get paid as much as their male colleagues, because it’s not nice for women to negotiate, so women who do negotiate are punished for it. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. More recently, Catalyst found that:
When women did all the things they have been told will help them get ahead—using the same tactics as men—they still advanced less than their male counterparts and had slower pay growth. (Source)
Being a leader in your community – it’s up to you to be confident in yourself. No mention of the constant put-downs that women are subject to, from on-going commentary on their appearance and what they wear (vide Helen Clark and Julia Gillard) to being spoken over, to the dispiriting experience of saying something insightful and helpful, only to have it ignored, until a man two seats further along the table says exactly the same thing, and the point is taken up with enthusiasm.
And the last one – that’s a real doozy. It’s up to the woman to keep herself safe in violent relationships, and the person who perpetrates the violence is not responsible for his, or more rarely her, violence at all.
We are hearing the CEO through the filter of the NZ Herald reporter, so we can’t be sure that Phair herself framed those issues and responses in exactly that way. Even so, it is at least disconcerting to find no attention paid to the systemic issues that women face. Instead, it’s all individualised, and the remedies are all focused on what individual women can do.
On the other hand, the Herald’s reporting is several light years ahead of what Stuff has come up on International Women’s Day. You can find out How to look 10 years younger! In a transparent piece of advertising for a book masquerading as editorial content, women are told that they need to use the right make-up so that they can look younger. The book’s author says that she loves, LOVES! working with older women, aged over 35, because they can look 10 years younger with the right make-up. And of course, it is a woman’s duty to look as young as possible, because older women are simply socially unacceptable.
This 46 year old woman declines.
For a much more inspiring analysis of International Women’s Day, take a look at Scuba Nurse’s post, where she writes about all the good things for women in New Zealand, as well as noting where there is still work to be done: International Women’s Day 2012. And over at Hoyden about Town, Mindy has some Sobering thoughts on the eve of International Women’s Day, reviewing the international statistics on violence against women.
Some more thoughts on the Weepu bottle feeding stoush
Like Annanonymous, the latest breast vs bottle dust-up has touched a raw nerve for me, no doubt due to my own experiences with breast feeding. But also because I find the number of shoulds and shouldn’ts that are dished out endlessly to parents deeply wearying. All too often the edicts seem to be handed out with little thought as to how parents might achieve them, or what constraints there might be, or what other issues a parent may be facing.
I’ve found some of the language used disturbing. This sentence from Dita di Boni’s column in the Herald is a case in point.
[La Leche League / midwives / etc] can suggest, coerce and press the issue, but it is a mother’s choice in the end whether or not to take the advice proffered.
Well, that’s… revealing. “Coerce.” That has been exactly the problem for many mothers who have tried breastfeeding, but experienced tremendous difficulties, for whatever reason. There is an enormous amount of pressure on women to breastfeed their babies. And it is facile to say that women can just choose whether or not to take the advice. When that pressure to breastfeed is applied by an expert, it is very hard to resist it. All the more so in those early weeks and months with a new baby, especially a first baby. So many new parents know so very little about how to care for babies, so they are very dependent on midwives and health nurses and and La Leche League experts. To suggest that a new mother who is struggling with pain, and cracked nipples, and ever-feeding infants, has the emotional resources to withstand the pressure applied by those she is depending on is bizarre.
di Boni goes on to say that, “It is up to women to have confidence in their choices.”
And there it is again. Holding individual women responsible for the failings of a society that promotes breastfeeding, but doesn’t provide the resources to enable women to access help with it, and then berating them for lacking confidence if they try to withstand the pressure put on them by those who are experts. Experts in breastfeeding, that is, but not necessarily at all knowledgeable about the particular contexts within which individual women are living and rearing children.
On the other hand, I am baffled by the idea that being pro-breastfeeding is equivalent to being anti-fathers and fathers being involved in their children’s lives, and that bottle feeding is great because then men can be involved in caring for their children. That’s the view espoused by fathers’ rights activist Darrell Carlin.
But there are myriad ways for parents of any gender to care for their children: talking, playing, reading books, cuddling, settling to sleep, dressing, changing nappies, taking to doctors’ appointments, toting them around the house in a sling while you get the housework done, going for walks, singing. And that’s all just in the first few weeks, and just the things that you can do with the baby (c/f say, earning an income to support the baby, or doing housework while the baby is asleep). There is precisely one task that the great majority of fathers can’t do: breastfeeding. And really, if they really, really, really do want to do it, then they could always try a Lact-Aid.
The remainder of Carlin’s column is taken up with wailing about how the nasty feminists have taken over the world and men are oppressed. And put upon. And really, women should be fighting for men’s rights because after all, men gave women the vote. Also, the nasty feminists again. Whatever.
And the last thing that has surprised me: La Leche League’s complete inability to use social media. LLL has tried to say that all it did was ask the Health Council to remove a few seconds from an anti-smoking/pro-smokefree public service ad showing Piri Weepu feeding his baby. In doing this, the only thing they were trying to achieve was to ensure that one public service message – smoke-free – wasnt’ contradicting another – pro-breastfeeding.
But actually, that’s not all they did. As it turns out, what they also did was alert their membership to the issue.
The irony is the damage to the league was done by its own hand. When the Health Sponsorship Council asked their opinion on the Weepu advertisement, La Leche supporters responded intemperately by launching a mass email campaign. The language in the emails was, by the admission of one supporter, “passionate”.
“Passionate” was one word that was used to describe the e-mails. I also heard, “virulently intemperate”. I haven’t seen any of the e-mails, but I’m guessing that they were not polite. And that’s what created the story. Not the request made by LLL, but the allegedly vicious language used in the e-mails sent by supporters. I’m guessing that if LLL had simply given some advice on the ad, without initiating the e-mail campaign, then the story would never have hit the headlines in the first place.
To my dear friends and sisters in Australia
I’m very sorry. This man was awful when he was on New Zealand TV, and now he will be popping up on your screens.
Paul Henry: ‘Aussies will love me’
He’s known for mocking Susan Boyle, and criticising a Green Peace campaigner for having facial hair, and for making racist comments about our governor-general. The Hand Mirror has an excellent summary of his history on New Zealand TV: Paul Henry – MCP round-up. Pop on over there to see exactly why you really don’t want him.
We’ve sent some pretty good exports to Australia over the years, such as John Clark. I hope you are as glad to have him as we are sad to have lost him. But Paul Henry? I’d be stopping him at the border and throwing him back this way, if you could.
It will be interesting to see how long he lasts.
