There’s one rule for Tiger, another for the GAA

A MEDIA law expert sees no “meaningful distinction” between GAA players drinking Club Energise during television interviews and sports people like Tiger Woods wearing sponsored clothing during interviews.

Dr Roddy Flynn of DCU's School of Communications said the ongoing dispute between the Gaelic Players Association (GPA) and RTÉ about displaying Club Energise in interviews has its roots in the EU's Television Without Frontiers directive of 1989. The directive, which was updated in 1997, bans surreptitious advertising on European television.

Asked about GPA claims that GAA players were not being treated the same as other sports people, Dr Flynn said: "I can't see any meaningful distinction between a guy picking up a bottle for an interview and someone like Tiger Woods wearing Nike for an interview. The current argument seems to be that it looks a bit shabby for GAA players to drink on camera, while there's a sheen of professionalism with the likes of Tiger Woods."

However, Dr Flynn said that complaints lodged with the Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCI) or the Advertising Standards Authority about sports people like Woods were likely to be rejected.

"People could complain, but they'd probably be told something along the lines that the logo is an integral part of the clothing the sports person chose to wear. We know that the sports person is being paid to wear it, however, so that's a distinction which may be disingenuous."

Dr Flynn pointed out that television channels like MTV were proactive when confronted by images they didn't want to screen, blurring the logos on t-shirts and caps electronically to make them unrecognisable.

"Product placement is regarded as insidious advertising because it's not acknowledged as advertising," he said.

"It's commonplace in movies, but even in the US there are suggestions that this should be regulated, that there should be messages at the end of films stating 'you have been watching an advertisement for X'.

"The EU hasn't stamped it out but it's acknowledged that you need to be overt about what you're doing for example, a newspaper is overt about an advertising supplement, there's a clear distinction between editorial and advertorial content."

Enforcement of the directive is a matter for each jurisdiction, Dr Flynn said; the regulatory authorities in each of the 25 EU member states police the area but in Ireland that's complicated by the presence of two such authorities.

"In Ireland there are two regulatory authorities, one for RTÉ and one for the independent sector, the BCI. It's conceivable that the BCI could have one code and RTÉ another, meaning something could be permissible on TV3 and not on RTÉ," he said.

The GPA and RTÉ are due to meet again today in an effort to resolve the dispute.