Rawl's Veil of Ignorance
Many philosophers and ethicists have attempted to draw ethical principles that could be used to guide human conduct in difficult situations. These principles are not merely a list of do's and don'ts. They offer some broad approaches to handling a diverse range of situations that may give rise to ethical conflicts and dilemmas.
One of these broad approaches is John Rawl's concept of the Veil of Ignorance. Technically, it is a method to resolve complex situations and obtain justice by ignoring social differentiation. In simpler terms, it means that everyone steps back and assumes a position: "Suppose you are not in this position you are in but you are . . . ."
In application, this means the media owner should step into the shoes of the consumers, the advertisers, the advertising agencies, the government agencies, and assume that he or she may return to any one of those positions later. It resembles the idea of incarnation: if you believe that you could return for a second life on earth as, say, a pet dog, how would you treat all pet dogs today?
Rawls argues that with the Veil, one will seek to protect the weak and to minimise risks. And because the veil depends on negotiation and discussion, it does not depend totally on intuition to arrive at morally appropriate course of action.
The ASAS meetings have an element of Rawl's Veil of Ignorance. There is a fair amount of negotiation in difficult cases. Is the ruling to hard for the advertiser? What are the implications for enforcement by the media owners? Is it too hard to enforce? Is there too much of handholding of the consumer?
Cynics might be tempted to ask if it would not lead to a situation where all in ASAS defend their respective corporate stance. That is, an advertising agency defends advertisements, just as the consumers' representative denounces all advertisements. In practice, as may be expected in practice, as Rawl's Veil of Ignorance demands, there is a fair amount of honesty that keeps the negotiations going. In some instances, the parties have voted against what might on the surface be described as a stance against the association's viewpoint. But such a stance is to be expected now and then. If nothing else, it maintains the credibility of the representative. Otherwise the view of the representative, if it matches entirely with the expected view from the association's, would have little, if any, use as input.
What about the bias in favour of the weak. This is conceptually so. But in the writer's possibly biased view, the stance have been fairly well balanced. In any event, if there is a bias, it should be biased in favour of the consumer--who is indeed the weakest party in the advertising industry.