Complainant filed a complaint that the Respondent had incorrectly stated that tests had shown that the bottle of lemonade in which a condom wrapper had been found, had not been tampered with. As the copy of the Bureau of Standards test clearly stated that the test result was that it only appeared not to have been tampered with and that full tests would have to be performed to establish that it had not been tampered with, the BCCSA held that the complaint was justified. Correction ordered.
The BCCSA , however, also held that the statement in the insert that the company had failed to respond to the purchaser’s complaint would have been interpreted by a viewer in the context of the insert, which clearly indicated that there had been contact with the purchaser. It was also clear that the purchaser had been uncooperative in not having made the bottle available to the Complainant for proper testing.
BCCSA also holding that complaint that the Respondent had broadcast a comment by the purchaser that an employee of the Complainant had said to him that “Black people should not complain”, and that this amounted to an implication that the Complainant was racist, was not justified. It was clearly the statement of the purchaser, which would not have been taken seriously by viewers, since it was reasonably clear from the item as a whole, that the purchaser had been uncooperative and that the Complainant had not had an opportunity to react to this negative view of the purchaser. The matter accordingly remained open-ended and was not, in the light of the said conduct of the purchaser, of such a nature that the Respondent should have sought and broadcast the view of the Complainant on this comment. The said part of the item was, in any case, not the focus of the item as a whole.