Ryanair adverts ridiculing Saddam ‘not offensive’

ADVERTS ridiculing Saddam Hussein and his regime are not offensive, the British advertising watchdog ruled yesterday.

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) rejected complaints that three Ryanair posters in the national press trivialised the war on Iraq.

The first showed a picture of Saddam Hussein inside a black circle with a line running diagonally across it.

Below that image, the advertisement asked: “Need a Break? Ryanair’s low fares ... for quick getaways!”

The second showed a photograph of a statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down and claimed, “Fares falling faster than Saddam!” The third was headlined “EasyJet’s (New) Head of Information.”

Below the headline was a picture of the Iraqi Minister of Information Muhammad Sa’id al-Sahhaf and two speech bubbles.

One said: “We’re winning the war. We’re beating the Americans,” and the other said: “EasyJet have the Lowest Fares.”

The Ryanair posters sparked 13 complaints of bad taste.

They were said to trivialise the conflict, particularly because the poster appeared next to an article about the war.

Complainants also said the adverts were offensive because the fate of Muhammad Sa’id al-Sahhaf was unknown and because his image was used to denigrate a competitor.

But Ryanair said it took the events in the Gulf very seriously and had not intended to trivialise the war or cause offence to the public.

It said the war had adversely affected the European air travel industry.

And to combat that, it had taken an opportunistic approach when it designed advertisements to attract attention to its offer of very low fares.

The company said the adverts were one-offs and that because of the high volume of coverage of the war on Iraq, it could not avoid the adverts being placed on the same newspaper pages as articles about the war.

Rejecting the complaints, the ASA said that the three adverts did not show pictures of a violent or distressing nature and did not specifically trivialise the deaths, injuries or plight of those involved in the conflict.

It concluded that the advertisements did not trivialise the war and, although distasteful, they were not likely to cause serious or widespread offence.