BRIEFING PAPER

A briefing paper for the managing director of a Lads Mag on the ethics of publishers placing their magazines in modest screens

Briefing Paper on the Ethics of Publishers of a Lads' Mag about Placing Their Magazines on Modest Screens

This briefing paper is addressed to the Managing Director (M.D) of a Lad Mag about the ethics of publishers placing the lad mags in modest screens.

The aim of this paper is to brief the managing director of a lads' magazine as to how the screening and keeping of their magazines is causing harm to the society and causing severe ethical issues. This would brief, and in some way, convince the publishers to put or not to put their magazines on modest screens so as to minimize the ethical concerns associated with such screening. The structure of this paper is based on discussing the ethical implications associated with putting these sexually-focused magazines on supermarket shelves and others screening spots; while presenting various ethical perspectives in this regard. The paper will elaborate upon the economic, social and political factors that put pressure on the organizations (publishers of such magazines) in both the support and opposition of such regulations and legislations. In the end, the paper will identify and discuss upon the positives and negatives of each ethical option in the light of the discussed ethical perspective.

Lads' mags of the United Kingdom include pornographic magazines such as Zoo, FHM, Bizarre and Nuts that basically project women as mere “sex objects”. These magazines intend to gratify and the sexual orientation of men who view women as dehumanized objects and not as “human beings” (Buckingham & Bragg, 2004, pp. 114). The front cover of such magazines portray a very superficial image of women as “sex objects” and therefore, it may not be a good idea to screen such Lad Mags openly on supermarket shelves for everyone, young and old. Following is a brief summary of key events that recently took place, highlighting the “screening of lad mags” as a far-reaching “issue” with serious ethical concerns:

Recently (24th August 2013), a group who call themselves as U.K feminists staged a protest outside U.K's biggest retail supermarket Tesco in order to condemn the screening of Lad Mags so openly on the shelves everywhere. The group supports the view that retail markets and supermarkets should refrain from selling “sexist” publications, not even in Birmingham but in the whole of the United Kingdom (Bernstein, 2001, pp. 391). Here is what Tesco had to say in response:

“To do that, we have secured agreement from the publishers of Zoo, Nuts and Front that their magazine covers will be more modest from now on and the publishers of Bizarre will now supply the magazine in a bag. We are restricting the sale of these magazines to people over the age of 18, to reassure parents who do not want their children to be able to purchase these titles. And we will ensure these titles are always placed on the back tier of the ...