CCFC NEWS - Winter, 2006
IN THIS
ISSUE:
Save the Date!
CCFC’s 5th
Annual Summit
Consuming Kids:
Marketing in Schools and Beyond
Wheelock College,
Boston
October 26-28, 2006
Confirmed Speakers:
Enola Aird, Brita
Butler-Wall, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Richard Daynard, Lisa
Fager, Jon Hanson, Allen Kanner, Joe Kelly, Jean
Kilbourne, Velma LaPoint, Diane Levin, Susan Linn, Alex
Molnar, Juliet Schor and Michele Simon.
Moderator: Alvin F.
Poussaint, MD.
CCFC’s 2006 Consuming
Kids summit promises to be our best ever. Since 2001 we
have been bringing together distinguished scholars,
activists, parents, and educators to talk about how
marketing undermines children’s health and well-being and
what we can do about it. This year’s summit features a
special focus on marketing in schools.
The summit kicks off on
Thursday, October 26 at 7:00 PM with an opening reception
and a special presentation of the 2nd annual Fred
Rogers Integrity Award, named in honor of the beloved
host of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, is given by CCFC to the
public figure whose efforts to protect children from harmful
marketing best embody Mr. Rogers’ long-standing commitment
to nurturing the health and well-being of America’s
children. Last year we gave the award to Senator Tom
Harkin. We will be announcing this year’s winner in the
spring.
Friday and Saturday will
feature presentations and workshops on topics ranging from
the impact of Commercialism on Learning to Marketing Sex,
Violence, and Values and we also examine effective advocacy
strategies for reclaiming childhood from corporate
marketers.
So save the date!
Registration information will be available in the coming
weeks at
www.commercialfreechildhood.org/events.htm.
CCFC to Sue
Viacom and and Kellogg
On January 18,
CCFC joined with the
Center for Science and the Public Interest (CSPI) and
two parents from Massachusetts to announce our
intent to file suit against Viacom and Kellogg to stop
them from marketing junk food to young children. The suit
will ask a Massachusetts court to prohibit the companies
from marketing junk foods to audiences where 15 percent or
more of the audience is under age eight, and to cease
marketing junk foods through web sites, toy giveaways,
contests, and other techniques aimed at that age group.
“For over thirty years, public health advocates have urged
companies to stop marketing junk food to children,” said
CCFC’s Dr. Susan Linn. “Even as rates of childhood obesity
have soared, neither Viacom nor Kellogg have listened. And
now the stakes are too high. We can no longer stand by as
our children's health is sacrificed for corporate profits.”
The suit has already received a barrage of media coverage,
including a
supportive editorial in the New York Times. Most of the
mainstream press has been quite respectful, helping us to
raise consciousness about the myriad ways that junk food is
marketed to children. Two excellent articles about the suit
stand out:
Suing the Pants off SpongeBob by the Center for Informed
Food Choice’s Michele Simon and
Time to Kick Kids Ads in the Square Pants by Lenore
Skenazy.
The courts play a time-honored role in struggles for social
justice. To find out more about why we joined in this
effort we encourage you to read
CCFC’s Frequently Asked Questions About the Lawsuit.
We will keep you updated as this important effort moves
forward. If you haven’t done so already, please take a
moment to
urge the CEO’s of Viacom and Kellogg to stop marketing junk
food to young children.
Ten minutes of your time will help us
stop the commercial exploitation of children
Thoughts on Book Fairs?
Have you ever worked or volunteered on
a school book fair? Do you have concerns about the
commercialism that is often prevalent at book fairs (e.g.
books, toys or media that are really advertisement for
television shows)? Have you or your child’s school ever
tried to organize a non-corporate book fair by using a local
independent bookstore? If you answered “yes” to any of
these questions, please email
ccfc@jbcc.harvard.edu so we can learn more about your
experiences.
Seeking Examples of Marketing in Preschools
As marketers look for new ways to
establish cradle-to-grave brand loyalty, they are
increasingly marketing in preschools, often in the guise of
a curriculum or educational materials such as Kellogg’s
“Spark Creativity with Froot Loops” program. CCFC is
compiling examples of this disturbing trend for a new fact
sheet on Marketing in Preschools. If you’ve noticed any
marketing for food, toys, media or other products in your
child’s preschool classroom, please let us know at
ccfc@jbcc.harvard.edu
School Administrators Wanted for Survey on School
Commercialism
Matthew Lapierre, a graduate student at
the University of Connecticut, is studying school
commercialism for his master’s thesis. He is looking for
current or former school administrators to pilot test a
questionnaire and provide feedback before he sends it out to
schools in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The survey takes
about 15-20 minutes to complete. If interested, please
visit
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=722771815961.
Questions should be directed to
matthew.lapierre@uconn.edu.
A warm CCFC welcome to our newest
organizational member, Hardy Girls Healthy Women, Inc.
Hardy Girls Healthy Women envisions a world in which women
and girls experience equality, independence and safety in
their everyday lives. They provide programming for girls
and women and opportunities for community discussion on the
roles we all play in developing hardy, healthy girls and
women. Hardy Girls Healthy Women also has a lending library
full of resources. Their work is to support organizations,
schools, communities, providers, parents and girls in their
efforts to change the culture from one that values girls and
women on how they look to one that recognizes girls and
women for who they are and what they contribute to the
world. For more information, please visit
http://www.hardygirlshealthywomen.org.
Hardy Girls Hardy Women becomes the
twenty-fifth organizational member of CCFC. A complete list
of CCFC organizational members is available at
http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/memberorgs.htm.
For more information on how your organization can join the
growing movement to reclaim childhood from corporate
marketers, please email
ccfc@jbcc.harvard.edu.
CCFC –
Quad Cities
The Campaign for Commercial-Free
Childhood-Quad Cities has initiated a local campaign to
raise awareness of the detrimental effects of screen media
on preschoolers. The goal is to raise the level of
awareness of parents of preschoolers, day care providers,
preschool teachers, and health care providers regarding the
detrimental effects of screen media through a year-long
public awareness campaign, and to suggest age appropriate
alternative that will help these individuals decrease
children's exposure to screen media.
The materials will be distributed to
all new parents of babies born in Scott and Rock Island
Counties in Iowa and Illinois by the Visiting Nurses
Association. CCFC-QC will also provide in-service training
for daycare providers about the detrimental effects and
alternatives to screen media through cooperation with the
Iowa Extension Service. These materials will also be
distributed to all pediatricians, family practice doctors,
and nurse practitioners through cooperation with local
hospitals. CCFC-QC will also prepare a series of articles
to be included in newsletters directed toward parents of
preschoolers about the detrimental effects and alternatives
to screen media. For more information, contact Kathy Bowman
at
KBowman18@aol.com.
Dads and
Daughters
On February 9, Dads & Daughters, Geena
Davis, and USC's Annenberg School for Communication released
the first of several research briefs from a major new study
of the top 101 G-rated films of 1990-2004. The report,
titled “Where the Girls Aren’t,” shows that across all
speaking parts, there are 3 male characters for every 1
female. The ratio is even more lopsided (5:1) when analyzing
crowd scenes and narrators.
The full study is the most in-depth
content analysis ever of G-rated movies. DADs’
See Jane
program commissioned the study and you can read
the full report at
www.seejane.org. The results were presented at the
University of Southern California and discussed by Geena
Davis, Annenberg researcher Dr. Stacy Smith, DADs President
Joe Kelly, and film executive Lucy Fisher. Watch the taped
webcast at
http://annenberg.usc.edu/events/060209seejane/seejane.ram.
Teachers
Resisting Unhealthy Children’s Entertainment (TRUCE)
TRUCE has a new brochure up on its
web site called TV and Your Child. The brochure is
available in both English and Spanish. The one-page
brochure was designed to be downloaded and distributed at
parent events, pediatricians' offices and libraries. There
is also a 2-sided version available that can be printed on
tag paper and used as a bookmark! Contact
truceteachers@aol.org to arrange to get the file.
TechKNOW Girls
Unlimited: To Your Health!
Kennebec Valley
Community College, Fairfield, Maine
April 8, 2006
Join Hardy Girls Healthy Women at the
eighth annual Girls Unlimited Conference at Kennebec Valley
Community College! This year's conference for girls in
5th-8th grade is a hardiness zone for girls to spend a day
meeting new people and expanding their horizons. Workshops
topics include how to read the media critically, what it
takes to become a doctor, and how to start your own business
and be fiscally healthy! Workshops for women include
Girlfighting on the Internet and Packaging Girlhood:
Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes taught by
girlfighting expert Lyn Mikel Brown. For more information,
please visit:
www.hardygirlshealthywomen.org .
Raising Children in Commercial Culture: To Have? Or to
Be?
Washington Waldorf School, 4800 Sangamore Road, Bethesda,
Maryland
April 28-29, 2006
This conference, sponsored by the Nova
Institute, will address the challenges of raising children
in our consumer culture and explore ways that adults can
balance the influence of consumerism and provide children
with what they really want that money can’t buy. Speakers
include CCFC’s Dr. Susan Linn and Dr. Velma Lapoint; Joan
Almon, from CCFC member organization Alliance for Childhood;
and Betsy Taylor from the Center for a New American Dream.
For more information, visit http://www.novainstitute.org.
Media Literacy in a Violent Society
Wheelock College, Boston
July 12-15, 2006
This summer, Wheelock College will be
offering its 11th annual institute, Media Literacy in a
Violent Society. The Institute is taught by CCFC
co-founder, Diane Levin, and Gail Dines. A major focus of
the Institute is how commercial culture shapes the media
culture directed at children and what professionals and
parents can do about it. For information, contact
summerinstitutes@wheelock.edu or
dlevin@wheelock.edu
Facing The Media Crisis: Media Education for Reform,
Justice and Democracy
October 6-8, 2006
The Wyndham Lakefront Hotel and Champlain College
Burlington, Vermont
CCFC member organization the Action
Coalition for Media Education will gather media education
experts, media reformers, public health advocates,
interested citizens, and independent media producers in
beautiful Burlington, Vermont’s Champlain College from
October 6-8, 2006 (Columbus Day weekend) for their third
media education Summit.
Summit keynote and plenary speakers
include U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Sanders, Sut Jhally,
Jean Kilbourne, Bill McKibben, Robert McChesney, Robert
Jensen, Peter Phillips, John Stauber, Diane Wilson, CCFC’s
Josh Golin and more than one dozen other prominent media
educators and citizen/activists!
For registration information or to
submit a workshop proposal, please visit
http://www.acmecoalition.org. Early bird registrants
will receive multi-media education resources valued at more
than $250!
For the latest information about
marketing to children check out the “In the News” section of
CCFC’s website. We update news archives several times a
week. They are organized into sections such as “Food
Marketing,” “Marketing Violence,” and “Toys and Play”.
If you haven’t been checking “In the
News” regularly, here’s some of what you missed:
In-game ads link to the real world
by Clayton
Collins. A look at the ads embedded in video games,
including those that allow gamers to click on links and
order Pizza Hut pizza and other products.
Are Educational Baby Videos a Scam? by Nell Minow.
A startling look at a booming industry that regularly
asserts that their videos for infants are educational,
despite a lack of evidence to support this claim.
Selling an ideal of lipstick and lace By Lyn
Mikel Brown and Sharon Lamb. From Bratz to Dora, the
lessons that marketers are teaching young girls.
Things We Wish We
Didn’t Know
The latest cell phone for young
children? Bratz, the sexpot dolls that actually make us
nostalgic for Barbie. The phones come complete with text
messaging capability and Internet access so marketers can
have constant access . . .
From August 2004 to August 2005,
Nickelodeon’s website for kids Nick.com pulled in more
advertising revenue than any other site . . .
Clear Channel’s Hot 99.5, the top-rated
radio station for 12-17 year-olds in Washington D.C. is
holding a promotion called “Breast Year Ever” in which
listeners apply to receive free breast augmentation surgery.
Editorial: The Corporate Takeover of Babyhood – By Dr.
Susan Linn
The marketing and media industry’s
escalating assault on babies and young children is perhaps
the most troubling development in a commercialized culture
abound with troubling trends. By targeting babies,
companies are not just marketing products, but potentially
inculcating life long habits, values, and
behaviors—hardwiring dependence on media before babies have
a chance to grow and develop. At stake, immediately, is
children’s capacity for creative play. Losing—or never
acquiring--the ability to play may not sound like much until
you realize that play is both the foundation of learning and
essential to mental health. Initiative, curiosity, active
exploration, problem solving, and creativity are capacities
that develop through play, as are the more ephemeral
qualities of self-reflection, empathy, and the ability to
find meaning in life.
Seven years ago, when Alvin Poussaint
and I first wrote about
Teletubbies and the terrible disservice PBS did to
babies and families by falsely promoting the TV series as
educational for children as young as 1, we feared that
because of PBS’s imprimatur, we would see is a whole rash of
television programs aimed at babies. What actually happened
is far worse. Despite the fact that the American Academy of
Pediatrics recommends that children under two shouldn’t
watch screen media; despite the fact that there is no
evidence that screen media is educational for babies;
despite the fact that there is mounting evidence that it can
be harmful, a vast and highly lucrative, babies’ media
industry is flourishing. These days, content from
Nickelodeon and Sesame Workshop can be downloaded on cell
phones and parents are being urged by media executives to
hand them to babies for soothing. Minivans come with
screens in the back seat. Spongebob Squarepants MP3
players, and personalized DVD players are made for
toddlers. Marketers want to reach children not just at home
and at school, but when they are between places.
The burgeoning fad of cute little
electronic media devices especially for toddlers is
devastating, especially in combination with the barrage of
marketing for glitzy electronic toys such the Tickle Me
Elmo franchise that stifle creativity and the fact that
it’s getting harder and harder to find toys that don’t
chirp, beep, squeak, move or talk on their own. As screens
and electronic toys increasingly occupy the lives of our
youngest children they will have little or no experience
with creating play. A recent survey of young children shows
the correlation between TV viewing and diminished time spent
in creative play. We are raising children, from infancy, to
need electronic toys and media in order to be either
stimulated or soothed. Which, of course, is exactly where
corporations want them—as sitting ducks for a bombardment of
commercial messages.
CCFC and our member organizations such
as TRUCE, CEASE, and the Alliance for Childhood are working
hard to address the structural, societal issues are allow
commercialism to subvert children’s play. Our Quad Cities
Chapter has initiated a grass roots effort to educate their
communities about the potentially harmful effects of
electronic media on babies and toddlers. As individuals,
it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the commercialization of
childhood, but when it comes to babies and media there are
steps we can take. Infants and toddlers are not nagging
their parents for electronic doodads. Instead, these
products are foisted on babies by well-meaning adults who
are being sold a bill of goods by saavy marketers.
So don’t buy the hype and don’t buy the
videos or gadgets. And help spread the word. If you’re a
parent, talk to other parents —or expectant parents—about
the fact that those so-called educational electronic devices
for babies are not, in fact, educational. If you a
healthcare provider, publicize the American Academy of
Pediatrics’ recommendation to keep babies screen free. If
you’re a teacher or daycare provider, help parents find
alternatives to TV and movies for their youngest
children.
Working together we can stop the
corporate take over of babyhood.
Support
CCFC
CCFC needs your help. We rely on our members for support
because we will not compromise our commitment to children by
accepting corporate funding.
Your tax-deductible contribution will help us:
-
Raise public awareness about how marketing harms children
-
Advocate for policies that will help protect children from
corporate marketers.
-
Build a coalition of individuals and organizations that
value children more than corporate profits.
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