Private Eye and unpleasant Pheasant facts 2.
This, you might remember, was the advertisement we placed in Private Eye recently. We were surprised to be told by Private Eye that they wouldn’t publish the next two adverts we had planned – they wouldn’t tell us why.
In the next issue of Private Eye were three letters slagging us off – click here.
But then in the last (current) issue of Private Eye the magazine attempted to justify its position but also printed this page of letters supporting Wild Justice’s advert;
It was pretty sporting of Private Eye to publish so many letters supporting Wild Justice and the classy advert (cartoon by Edith Pritchett). Thank you to all of the Wild Justice supporters, some current Private Eye supporters too, and some ex-Private Eye supporters it seems, who wrote in.
Private Eye‘s explanation seems to have been written in a panic (‘we never usually’? tut tut!) but attempted to justify banning two further Wild Justice adverts on the grounds that this advert had blurred the distinction between advertising and editorial. This is pretty clearly nonsense as our advert was on the fourth of five solid pages of adverts – we think Private Eye readers know when they are in the adverts section of the magazine! And obviously, Private Eye hadn’t been worried about this issue when they looked at this advert, took our money and then published it. It was only after letters of complaint – which Private Eye published without checking their truthfulness it seems – that they decided to ban our future adverts.
Maybe the real trouble with the advert was that it was simply too classy. It was beautifully drawn, factual, amusing and wasn’t trying to part you from your cash. You don’t get many adverts like that – Wild Justice breaking the mould again.
One of the adverts that Private Eye banned is published in this week’s Big Issue magazine. We’d invite Wild Justice supporters to go and buy a copy on the High Street and have a look, safe in the knowledge that your money has also helped good causes. We’ll show you the advert some time next week.
