The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has not upheld a complaint against an advert for news group The Guardian.
The marketing drive in question appeared on the newspaper’s own website in March 2025. It contained the heading “For facts’ sake’ and smaller text underneath explained the importance of fact-checked journalism.
The word facts was created by overlaying the word act with other text, which appeared to have the same number of letters and ended in K. The K was partly hidden. The text was in black, and the overlaid text “act” was written on a red background in white.
It was challenged by a complainant who believed the phrase alluded to an expletive and therefore was inappropriate to be displayed as it may be seen by children.
Responding to the ASA’s query, The Guardian said it had used the wording in its marketing since May 2021, and it has also been used by other broadcasters and publishers.
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According to the newspaper, the phrase ‘For Fuck’s sake’ would be a potential reaction to misinformation. It added that its target audience was not those under 18 years of age, and publicly available data showcased that 96.7% of its audience were over the age of majority.
The website’s content was unlikely to attract children, and any content that might be, such as a children’s quiz, was found in the Lifestyle section, where the ad did not appear.
The Guardian did acknowledge that a child may access the website, but suggested that younger children wouldn’t understand the wordplay and teenagers who could understand it would have already encountered expletives and therefore were unlikely to be harmed by the ad.
The ASA said it “considered “fuck” a word so likely to offend that it should not generally be used or alluded to in advertising”.
It added: “However, we accepted that Guardian News and Media Ltd’s editorial policy meant that it was used relatively frequently in their newspaper and website, shaping the context in which the ad was seen and influencing expectations among its readership. We therefore considered that an obscured version of the word “fuck” reflected language used elsewhere in their website and newspaper.”
It dismissed the motion, believing that the ad would not cause widespread offense.
