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August 21, 2008
Contact: Josh Golin (617.278.4172;
jgolin@jbcc.harvard.edu)
For Immediate Release
CCFC Praises France Baby TV Ban; Urges
FTC Action in the US
Yesterday, France’s broadcast authority
announced that it was banning French channels from marketing TV
shows to children under three years old. According to a ruling
published by the High Audiovisual Council: “Television viewing
hurts the development of children under 3 years old and poses a
certain number of risks, encouraging passivity, slow language
acquisition, over-excitedness, troubles with sleep and
concentration as well as dependence on screens.” The ruling
will also require cable operators who air foreign channels with
programming for babies to broadcast warnings that say: “Watching
television can slow the development of children under 3, even
when it involves channels aimed specifically at them.”
The following is the statement of CCFC’s
Dr. Susan Linn on the French ruling:
“We applaud France’s decision to stop
television channels from targeting infants and toddlers. The
ruling rightly recognizes the risks of fostering screen
dependence upon babies. It also sends an important message
that, in France, the wellbeing of infants and toddlers is more
important than the bottom line of companies such as BabyFirstTV
that exploit our youngest and most vulnerable children by
falsely claiming to parents that their programming is
educational.
France’s historic ruling highlights the
failure of the United States to effectively regulate the
predatory baby media industry. It has been more than two years
since the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood filed a
Federal Trade Commission complaint against BabyFirstTV for false
and deceptive marketing, yet
the FTC has still not responded. On French television,
programming for babies has been banned. In this country, we
cannot even prevent the producers of television for babies from
deceiving parents.”
The Campaign for a Commercial-Free
Childhood is a national coalition of health care professionals,
educators, advocacy groups and concerned parents who counter the
harmful effects of marketing to children through action,
advocacy, education, research, and collaboration among
organizations and individuals who care about children. CCFC
supports the rights of children to grow up – and the rights of
parents to raise them – without being undermined by rampant
commercialism. For more information, please visit:
http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org. |
