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November
9, 2005
Contact: Dr. Susan Linn (617.278.4282)
For Immediate Release
Children’s Advocates Urge Former President Clinton to End
Nickelodeon Partnership
Citing Nickelodeon’s recent attempts to undermine policies to
protect children from predatory marketing, the Campaign for a
Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) has launched a letter-writing
campaign calling on former President Clinton to sever his
relationship with Nickelodeon. The William J. Clinton Foundation
recently joined with Nickelodeon in the Alliance for a Healthy
Generation, a new campaign to curb childhood obesity. President
Clinton is scheduled to appear at a special town meeting on
Nickelodeon on Sunday, November 13.
“It’s great that President Clinton is encouraging children to
eat right and exercise, but that message will most likely be
lost in the deluge of junk food advertising that children see
every day,” said CCFC’s co-founder Dr. Susan Linn, author of
Consuming Kids. “The best thing he could do for children and
families is to use his considerable influence to advocate for
policies that would protect children from food marketers.
Unfortunately, his partner in the Alliance is actually trying to
undo some of the few safeguards already in place.”
Viacom, Nickelodeon’s parent company, is going to court to get
the Federal Communications Commission to jettison its rules on
advertising and marketing to children as they apply to digital
television. Among other safeguards, these rules will ensure that
programs broadcast for children will not show unlimited
advertisements of commercial websites and will prohibit the
advertisement on television of websites that contain
“host-selling,” that is, websites on which popular characters
from the very same children’s television programs pitch products
to children.
“The FCC has acted appropriately to limit the amount of
advertising on children’s programming, including the advertising
of websites that are of a commercial nature or contain
host-selling,” said Professor Angela Campbell of the Institute
for Public Representation at Georgetown University Law Center,
who is serving as legal counsel to a coalition of organizations
defending the FCC’s rules against Viacom’s legal challenge. “If
Viacom is successful in its legal challenge, we can expect that
marketers will increase their use of television and websites in
combination to bypass parents and target children directly with
ads for unhealthy food and other potentially harmful products.”
Nickelodeon is already one of the leading purveyors of junk food
marketing to children, aggressively promoting foods high in fat,
sugar, salt and calories to children on television, on the
Internet, in films, in their magazines, in live performances and
through brand licensing of its most popular characters,
including Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants.
Click here to
read CCFC's letter to President Clinton
To send
your own letter to President Clinton, please visit
http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ccfc/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=1476
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 consumerism. For more information, please visit:
www.commercialfreechildhood.org
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