Media Forum: Is it time media cut the clutter?

Should the media industry be more sensitive to the environment?

In their more reflective moments, most rural landowners like to think they are a bit like David Archer, the worthy and virtuous lead in Radio 4's soap The Archers. People who use the country's motorway network on a regular basis could be forgiven, however, for seeing them somewhat differently - not as Goody Two Shoes Archer but as his ducking and diving Ambridge antithesis, Eddie Grundy.

How else to explain all those billboards that have been springing up in roadside fields - a trend that has been alarming environment groups, most notably the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which last week published the damning results of a recent survey.

The pressure group reckons there is now one billboard for every three miles of fast road in the UK. Far from acting as custodians of the nation's countryside, farmers are adding ever more blots to an already-scarred landscape.

But actually, you can hardly blame the Grundys of this world for succumbing to the wads of bank-notes that the ad industry insists on thrusting under their noses. And it's not hard to argue that this is a problem for the media sector rather than yet another story of greed and complacency in the shires.

And, after all, hasn't advertising been a blot on other landscapes in recent memory? Take, for instance, the fuss over fly-posting. It has taken legal action to rein that in. Not to mention all the clutter that legitimate 'ambient media' has created: everything from petrol pumps to pissoirs.

Or the ridiculous advertising clutter on the web. Not to mention spam.