NEW YORK (Reuters) - Boeing Co. apologized on Friday for a mistakenly published advertisement for its V-22 Osprey aircraft showing troops dropping onto the roof of a mosque in what appears to be a simulated battle scene.
...
...Boeing, which created the ad with partner Bell Helicopter, said publication was a "clerical error" by the National Journal, which ran the ad on September 24.
...
The ad "did not proceed through normal channels," Boeing said, and despite asking for it to be withdrawn and destroyed, was published in error.

The National Journal, a Washington government and policy magazine, admitted it made a clerical error and said it accepted full responsibility in a statement issued on Friday.

The ad shows troops rappelling down from an Osprey craft to the domed roof of a building labeled "Muhammad Mosque" in Arabic as smoke billows from a burned-out car nearby.

"It descends from the heavens. Ironically it unleashes hell," says the ad, published by Boeing and Bell Helicopter, a unit of Textron Inc., which jointly developed the Osprey.

The aircraft "delivers Special Forces to insertion points never thought possible," says the text of the ad.

ROME (Reuters) - Sony has apologized for an advertising campaign for its PlayStation game console which featured a young man wearing a crown of thorns with the slogan "Ten years of passion."

Some Catholics were outraged by the adverts, which ran in newspapers and magazines to celebrate the product's tenth anniversary.

"This time they've gone too far," said Antonio Sciortino, editor of Famiglia Cristiana (Christian Family), a mass-circulation Catholic weekly.

"If this had concerned Islam there would have been a really strong reaction," Sciortino was quoted as saying in the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

- posted by Don Porges @ 10/01/2005 12:11:00 AM |