Coalition Launches Campaign to Protect Schoolchildren From Channel One

Thu, 02 Mar 2000 09:30:58 -0500

Commercial Alert				March 2, 2000

	A broad coalition of progressive and conservative organizations and
scholars asked Members of Congress, governors and others to protect
children from Channel One, an in-school marketing company.  The
coalition aims to cut off advertising revenues for Channel One and to
remove it from the nation's public schools.  The coalition sent letters
to:

* 	Members of the U.S. House and Senate Appropriations Committees,
asking them to eliminate all federal funding for Channel One;
* 	Governors, asking them to take all steps within their powers to
remove Channel One from their state's public schools;
* 	Channel One's advertisers, asking them to stop advertising on Channel
One;
* 	Members of the House Education Committee, asking them to hold
hearings on Channel One; and,
* 	Channel One's partners, asking them to sever their partnership with
Channel One.

	Following is the letter to U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee
Chairman Ted Stevens:		

Dear Chairman Stevens:

	We ask that the Senate Committee on Appropriations stop all federal
funding of the controversial in-school marketing company called Channel
One. 

	Channel One, under the guise of a news show, delivers two minutes of
advertising each schoolday to a captive audience of approximately eight
million children in 12,000 schools.  

	 The U.S. Government is a major advertiser on Channel One.  The Office
of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), the U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force
and the U.S. Marines advertise on Channel One. 

	Channel One is a big step in the wrong direction for children, schools
and taxpayers.  It is deserving of your committee's attention for the
following reasons:

1.	Channel One uses the compulsory attendance laws to force children to
watch ads.  Joel Babbit, then-president of Channel One, explained in
1994 why advertisers like Channel One: "The biggest selling point to
advertisers [is] . . . we are forcing kids to watch two minutes of
commercials."   

2.	Channel One wastes precious school time.  Channel One consumes the
equivalent of one instructional week of school time each school year,
including one full day watching ads.

3.	Channel One helps advertisers bypass parents to promote products
which parents may not approve of, such as exorbitantly expensive
athletic sneakers and violent movies.

4.	Channel One wastes tax dollars spent on schools.  A 1998 study by Max
Sawicky and Alex Molnar, titled "The Hidden Costs of Channel One,"
concluded that Channel One's cost to taxpayers in lost class time is
$1.8 billion per year.  

5.	Channel One may harm children's health.  Channel One advertises
Snickers, Twix, M&M's, Pepsi and other junk food to children in
classrooms.  The Journal of the American Medical Association recently
reported that "Obesity is epidemic in the United States." Obesity is a
major public health problem.  Given skyrocketing levels of childhood
obesity and diabetes, it is insanity for schools to encourage children
to develop poor eating habits.

6.	Channel One -- not parents or school boards -- decides its ads and
program content. Channel One violates the principle of local control of
education.  Parents should be able to choose who may affect their
children's lives, not Channel One.

7.	Channel One undermines parents' efforts to teach positive values to
their children.  Channel One teaches a curriculum of materialism, that
buying is good, and will solve your problems, and that consumption and
self-gratification are the goals and ends of life.

8.	Channel One corrupts the integrity of public education and diminishes
the moral authority of schools and teachers.  In effect, Channel One
appropriates the authority of schools and teachers and transfers it to
advertisers for these controversial products. Schools implicitly endorse
the products that Channel One advertises.

	The opposition to Channel One is large and growing.  For example, in
June, 1999, the Southern Baptist Convention, which represents the
largest U.S. Protestant denomination, passed a resolution urging
community leaders to remove Channel One from the schools. 

	We urge you to include provisions in the relevant appropriations bills
prohibiting ONDCP, the Navy, Air Force, Marines and all other federal
government entities from advertising on Channel One.

	We are grateful for your kind attention to this matter and look forward
to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.  Please direct your
response to Mr. Jim Metrock of Obligation, Inc. at (205) 822-0080 or Mr.
Gary Ruskin of Commercial Alert at (202) 296-2787.

Sincerely,

Patricia Aufderheide, Professor, American University
Charles W.F. Bell, Programs Director, Consumers Union
Dr. Brita Butler-Wall, Assistant Professor of Education, Seattle
University; author, A Parent Guide to Commercialism in Schools
Coral Ridge Ministries
Gloria DeGaetano, Director, GrowSmartBrains.com; co-author, Stop
Teaching Our Kids to Kill 
Roy F. Fox, Assoc. Prof. of Eng. Ed. & Lit., U. of MO-Columbia; author,
Harvesting Minds
Thomas C. Frank, author, The Conquest of Cool
George Gerbner, President and Founder, Cultural Environment Movement;
Dean Emeritus, Annenberg School of Communication
Todd Gitlin, Professor of Culture, Journalism and Sociology, New York
University; author, The Twilight of Common Dreams
Jane M. Healy, Ph.D., author, Failure to Connect
Michael F. Jacobson, co-author, Marketing Madness
Sut Jhally, Founder and Executive Director, The Media Education
Foundation
Timothy J. Kasser, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Knox College
Jean Kilbourne, author, Deadly Persuasion
Diane Levin, Professor of Education, Wheelock College; author, Remote
Control Childhood
Jane & Laurence Levine, Co-founders, Kids Can Make A Difference
Bob McCannon, Executive Director, New Mexico Media Literacy Project
Robert McChesney, Research Associate Professor, U. of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign; author, Rich Media, Poor Democracy
Bernard McGrane, Associate Professor of Sociology, Chapman University;
author, The Un-TV and the 10 Mph Car
Jim Metrock, President, Obligation, Inc.
Mark Crispin Miller, Professor of Media Ecology, New York University
Tom Minnery, Vice President, Focus on the Family
Alex Molnar, author, Giving Kids the Business
Neil Postman, Chairman, Department of Culture and Communication, New
York University; author, Amusing Ourselves to Death
Hugh Rank, Professor Emeritus, Governors State University; author, The
Pitch
David Reynolds, M.D., President, Alabama Chapter, American Academy of
Pediatrics
Gary Ruskin, Director, Commercial Alert
Juliet Schor, Senior Lecturer on Women's Studies, Harvard University;
author, The Overspent American
Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum
Betsy Taylor, Executive Director, Center for a New American Dream
Frank Vespe, Executive Director, TV-Free America
David Walsh, Ph.D., President, National Institute on Media and the
Family; author, Selling Out America's Children
Donald E. Wildmon, President, American Family Association

<---------------letter ends here------------->

	During a 12-month period of 1998-99, Channel One spent over $1 million
in an expensive, failed lobbying effort to prevent a congressional
hearing on how Channel One harms children, schools and taxpayers.  The
Channel One hearing took place on May 20, 1999, before the U.S. Senate
Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions.  Testimony from that
hearing is available at
<http://www.essential.org/alert/channel_one/index.html>.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP:

1) Ask Members of the Senate and House Appropriations Committees who
represent you to stop all federal funding of Channel One.  To find the
phone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail addresses of Members of Congress,
see <http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html>.

Members of the Senate Appropriations Committee are:

Republicans:
Ted Stevens, Chairman, Alaska 
Thad Cochran, Mississippi
Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania
Pete V. Domenici, New Mexico 
Christopher S. Bond, Missouri 
Slade Gorton, Washington 
Mitch McConnell, Kentucky 
Conrad Burns, Montana 
Richard C. Shelby, Alabama 
Judd Gregg, New Hampshire 
Robert Bennett, Utah 
Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Colorado 
Larry Craig, Idaho 
Kay Bailey Hutchison, Texas
Jon Kyl, Arizona

Democrats:
Robert Byrd, Ranking Member, West Virginia 
Daniel K. Inouye, Hawaii
Ernest F. Hollings, South Carolina 
Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont 
Frank R. Lautenberg, New Jersey 
Tom Harkin, Iowa 
Barbara A. Mikulski, Maryland 
Harry Reid, Nevada 
Herb Kohl, Wisconsin
Patty Murray, Washington 
Byron Dorgan, North Dakota
Dianne Feinstein, California
Richard Durbin, Illinois

Members of the House Appropriations Committee are:

Republicans:
C.W. Bill Young, Florida, Chairman
Ralph Regula, Ohio
Jerry Lewis, California 
John Edward Porter, Illinois
Harold Rogers, Kentucky		
Joe Skeen, New Mexico
Frank R. Wolf, Virginia
Tom DeLay, Texas
Jim Kolbe, Arizona
Ron Packard, California
Sonny Callahan, Alabama
James Walsh, New York
Charles H. Taylor, North Carolina
David L. Hobson, Ohio
Ernest J. Istook, Jr., Oklahoma
Henry Bonilla, Texas
Joe Knollenberg, Michigan
Ed Pastor, Arizona                
Dan Miller, Florida
Jay Dickey, Arkansas
Jack Kingston, Georgia
Rodney P. Frelinghuysen, New Jersey
Roger F. Wicker, Mississippi
George R. Nethercutt, Jr., Washington
Randy "Duke" Cunningham, California
Todd Tiahrt, Kansas
Zach Wamp, Tennessee
Tom Latham, Iowa
Anne Northup, Kentucky
Robert Aderholt, Alabama
Jo Ann Emerson, Missouri
John E. Sununu, New Hampshire
Kay Granger, Texas
John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania 
Virgil H. Goode, Jr., Virginia

Democrats:
David R. Obey, Wisconsin
John P. Murtha, Pennsylvania
Norman D. Dicks, Washington
Martin Olav Sabo, Minnesota
Julian C. Dixon, California
Steny H. Hoyer, Maryland
Alan B. Mollohan, West Virginia
Marcy Kaptur, Ohio
Nancy Pelosi, California
Peter J. Visclosky, Indiana
Nita M. Lowey, New York
José E. Serrano, New York
Rosa L. DeLauro, Connecticut
James P. Moran, Virginia
John W. Olver, Massachusetts
Carrie P. Meek, Florida
David E. Price, North Carolina
Michael P. Forbes, New York
Chet Edwards, Texas
Robert E. "Bud" Cramer, Jr., Alabama
Maurice D. Hinchey, New York
Lucille Roybal-Allard, California
Sam Farr, California
Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., Illinois
Carolyn C. Kilpatrick, Michigan
Allen Boyd, Florida                               

2) Ask your governor to take all steps within his or her power to remove
Channel One from the schools in your state. Governors addresses and
phone numbers are available at:
<http://www.nga.org/Governor/GovernorsAddress.htm>.

3) Send copies of the Channel One coalition letters to members of your
local school board (letters are at
<http://www.essential.org/alert/channel_one/index.html>) Ask them to
remove Channel One from your local schools immediately.  For help in
removing Channel One from your local schools, call Gary Ruskin of
Commercial Alert at (202) 296-2787 or Jim Metrock of Obligation, Inc. at
(205) 612-3376.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT CHANNEL ONE:
See Commercial Alert's web page on Channel One
<http://www.essential.org/alert/channel_one/index.html>.

Commercial Alert opposes corporate exploitation of children and the
excesses of commercialism, advertising and marketing.

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PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY
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Gary Ruskin | Commercial Alert 
1611 Connecticut Ave. NW Suite #3A | Washington, DC 20009
Phone: (202) 296-2787 | Fax (202) 833-2406
http://www.essential.org/alert/ | mailto:gary@essential.org
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