Friday, April 02, 2004
Football, Already Down, Kicks Itself with a Topless Woman
Just as football and rugby in various professional forms in Australia are under intense and justified scrutiny for their sexist, macho and, in some cases at least, violent attitudes toward women, another huge gaff has happened, this time in trying to make AFL appealing to children. The Australian reports:
Just as football and rugby in various professional forms in Australia are under intense and justified scrutiny for their sexist, macho and, in some cases at least, violent attitudes toward women, another huge gaff has happened, this time in trying to make AFL appealing to children. The Australian reports:
THE AFL has been forced to recall 40,000 CD-ROMs given to young children to promote Australian football because it secretly included a picture of a topless woman. Officials became aware of the image when a child stumbled across it among myriad football-related files on the disc, distributed to 5 to 12-year-olds in NSW and South Australia. AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou said an investigation had been launched to establish whether the inclusion of the picture was mischievous or accidental. However, he said the AFL had dumped the CD-ROM's producer - a subsidiary of advertising agency George Patterson Bates. ... The AFL has apologised to parents, Auskick's 120,000 participants and its sponsors. Auskick is the AFL's development program, which aims to entice primary school-age children to the code and rewards them with giveaways such as backpacks, footballs, drink bottles and the CD-ROM. Parents have been asked to destroy the offending disc or return it to an Auskick co-ordinator. A replacement CD-ROM will be issued soon. The program made headlines last year when the plastic drink bottles had to be recalled because they contained a nozzle that could have become lodged in children's throats.Regardless whether the image was intended to be there, or added by someone else (as will no doubt be claimed), surely the quality control of CD-Roms for kids should be sufficiently strict that all the films on a disc are checked before mass distribution?!
[Posted by Unknown] [2:30 pm]
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