March 24, 2004

Mobile phone autism advertisement ruled offensive

The National Autistic Society in the UK today described an advertisement for mobile phone screen wallpapers, found likely to have caused "serious and widespread offence" to people with autism, as a "borderline criminal offence", reports The Guardian

"It featured an image of actor Dustin Hoffman from the film Rain Man - in which he played a man with autism - with the word "RETARD" stamped across the picture.

"The advertisement appeared in the January issue of football magazine FourFourTwo. It featured a full page of mobile phone wallpapers and ringtones, and the picture of the offending wallpaper was around one inch square."

emily | 10:07 PM | | Add this this entry to your del.icio.us bookmarks. Digg This Technorati search results for this Entry
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