CCFC NEWS - Summer, 2006
IN THIS
ISSUE:
CCFC's 5th Annual Summit: David Elkind Joins
All-Star Lineup; Time Running out on Early Bird
Registration.
Consuming Kids: Marketing in
Schools and Beyond
Wheelock College & Judge Baker Children's Center, Boston
October 26-28, 2006
Only three weeks left for early
bird registration- save $50
by registering today!
$125 General Admission
$75 Students (w/ valid student ID)
Registration includes
An Evening with Raffi
and Friday/Saturday continental breakfast and lunch
Early bird registration ends July
15, 2006. Register now at
http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/events.htm
CCFC is pleased to announce that Dr.
David Elkind will give a special talk on Saturday, October
28. Dr. Elkind, a professor at Tufts University, is the
author of many important books on child development
including The Hurried Child.
Other confirmed summit speakers
include:
Enola Aird, The Motherhood
Project; Brita Butler Wall, Seattle School Board
President; Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Lesley University;
Walter Eddie, Boys Club of New York; Lisa Fager,
Industry Ears; Allen Kanner, The Wright
Institute; Joe Kelly, Dads and Daughters; Jean
Kilbourne, author of Can't Buy Me Love; Diane
Levin, Wheelock College & author of Remote Control
Childhood; Susan Linn, author Consuming Kids;
Alex Molnar, Commercialism in Education
Research Unit, Arizona State University; Michele Simon,
Center for Informed Food Choices; Velma LaPoint,
Howard University and many, many more! Moderated by Alvin
F. Poussaint, MD.
Register now at
http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/events.htm.
The summit kicks off at the Judge
Baker Children's Center on Thursday, October 26 at 7:30 PM
with
An Evening with Raffi, including the presentation of the
2nd Annual Fred Rogers Integrity Award. Friday
will feature presentations on topics such as Marketing
Sex, Violence, and Values; Commercialism, Race and
Class; and Commercialism and Spiritual Communities.
Saturday's program has a special emphasis on marketing in
schools and features a keynote presentation by Alex Molnar,
noted author, advocate and researcher. We will also
examine effective advocacy strategies for reclaiming
childhood from corporate marketers.
Scholarships available: Please
inquire at
ccfc<at>commercialfreechildhood.org
CCFC to Present Raffi with Fred Rogers Integrity Award
Can’t make the entire summit? You
can still attend
An Evening with Raffi on October 26, 2006 at the Judge
Baker Children's Center in Boston. An Evening with
Raffi includes:
-
Presentation of Fred Rogers’
Integrity Award to Raffi by CCFC.
-
A presentation - in word and song -
by Raffi on his Child Honoring philosophy.
-
A
book signing of Raffi's recently published anthology,
Child Honoring: How To Turn This World Around
(co-edited with CCFC summit presenter Dr. Sharna Olfman).
-
A reception with light refreshments.
Tickets are $25 (free for registrants for
CCFC's 5th Annual Summit)
Click here to purchase tickets or call
(617)278-4280 to order by phone.
In over three decades of
entertaining children, Raffi has steadfastly refused all
commercial endorsement offers, and his company has never
directly advertised or marketed to children. He is a
passionate advocate for a child's right to live free of
commercial exploitation. For more information, please
visit:
http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/events/raffi.htm.
Park Service Scales Back Solicitation and Advertising Plan
— No Naming Rights or Corporate Ads Inside National Parks
Last December, we
asked you to send letters to the National Park service to
protest a plan to aggressively seek corporate sponsorship of
park projects and facilities. Many of you responded and we
happy to report that those letters made a difference. In
May, the Park Service announced that it was significantly
scaling back its’ plans to commercialize our national
parks. While the new plan is far from perfect, it is better
than what was originally proposed. To learn more, please
visit:
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=682.
CCFC
MEMBER NEWS:
Share, Spend, Save Releases
“Financial Sanity Kit”
CCFC member organization
Share, Spend, Save has created a new “Financial Sanity
Kit,” an interactive DVD that leads youth and adults through
thought-provoking and habit changing conversations about
money. Share, Spend, Save helps people understand the
connection between money, values and habits in today's
hyper-consumer culture and, in turn, provides
resources/tools to assist them in achieving financial
sanity. Research suggests that when people shift from a
spending mentality to one that focuses on sharing and saving
they will evidence healthier values and more happiness. For
more information, please visit
http://www.sharesavespend.com/.
Center for a New American Dream
offers “Tips for Parenting in a Commercial Culture.”
CCFC member the
Center for
a New American Dream just updated its popular "Tips for
Parenting in a Commercial Culture" booklet and is offering
it for free in PDF format. (A hardcopy version on 100%
post-consumer recycled paper is also available for $4). The
32-page guide includes tips, strategies, statistics,
profiles and resources for anyone looking to protect kids
from the negative effects of commercialism. The guide
features CCFC's Susan Linn, Joe Kelly and Enola Aird. Don’t
miss out on this great resource. Visit
http://www.newdream.org/kids to download your free copy
and send the link to parents, teachers and friends.
DADs: New See
Jane Research Shows Males in G-Rated Movies are Dominant,
Disconnected and Dangerous.
Our youngest
children learn alarming lessons about men and boys from the
movies they watch over and over, according to a new report
released today at the National Press Club by Oscar® winner
Geena Davis’ See Jane program (www.SeeJane.org),
part of CCFC member organization Dads & Daughters (www.DadsandDaughters.org).
Among the findings:
-
G-rated movies, whether animated or
live-action, are dominated by white male characters and
male stories. Male characters outnumber females 3:1.
-
Male characters are only half as
likely as females to be parents. The fathering and
relationship picture is even bleaker for male characters
of color.
-
Nonwhite males are hard to find in
G-rated movies. They make up only 14.5% of male
characters, but are 35.5% of the male US population.
-
Almost twice as many nonwhite males
as white males are portrayed as physically aggressive or
violent.
-
Among male characters, 44.1% are
physically aggressive or violent, compared to 36.9% of
females. With three times more male than female
characters, the actual number of physically aggressive
males is much higher than the number of physically
aggressive females.
“For every
thinking parent, these findings are disturbing,” according
to Joe Kelly, President of Dads & Daughters and author of
four fathering books. “G-rated films impact children
profoundly because the average US child owns 20 DVDs or
videos and watches at least one of them each day.
For easy-to-use
tips and to read the full report, visit
www.SeeJane.org.
EVENTS
Media Education in a Violent Society
Wheelock College, Boston, MA
July 12-15, 2006
CCFC Co-Founder
and Steering Committee Member, Dr. Diane Levin, will be
co-teaching the 4-day Summer Institute, “Media Education in
a Violent Society,” on July 12-15 at Wheelock College in
Boston. Now in its 12th year, the Media
Institute provides an in depth exploration of the role of
media, media violence and commercial media culture in
society and how it impacts children and youth. It also
looks at how we can work with children and youth to lessen
the impact both at home and school, including media literacy
curriculum, as well as how we can influence policy. Diane
is the author of Remote Control Childhood: Combating the
Hazards of Media Culture. Gail Dines, the other
instructor, is the co-editor of Gender, Race and Class in
the Media.
For more
information about the Media Institute go to:
http://wheelock.edu/professional/prof_summer.asp
Or, contact Diane Levin at
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, actor David Straithairn, Sut Jhally, Jean Kilbourne,
Amy Goodman, Bill McKibben, Robert McChesney, John Stauber,
Diane Wilson, Jeff Chester, DADs president Joe Kelly, CCFC’s
Josh Golin and more than one dozen other prominent media
educators and citizen/activists!
To register,
please
http://www.acmecoalition.org.
RESOURCES
Commercialism
in Canadian Schools: Who’s Calling the Shots?
This report from
the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives details and
analyzes the results from a national survey of commercialism
in Canada’s public schools. The report – the first of its
kind – documents the nature and extent of commercial
activities in elementary and secondary schools and the
degree to which public funding is being replaced or
supplemented by private funding sources, including school
fundraising, advertising, partnerships and sponsorships,
corporate-sponsored educational materials and user fees.
You can read the report at
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/Reports/2006/05/Commercialism/index.cfm?pa=7AC00557
Help get soda and junk food out
of schools: “The Great Cola Conspiracy” A funny and
provocative flash video from Parents’ Action for Children
As part of Parents’ Action for
Children’s “Stir It Up” Campaign, parents across the country
are working together to get junk food out of our schools.
The campaign’s new flash video, which can be viewed online
for free, focuses on the issue of soda in schools.
Did you know that
a child who drinks 2 cans of soda a day is consuming four
pounds of sugar every month? View the video at
http://stiritupamerica.com/colavideo.html.
More Reasons Why CCFC’s Campaign to Stop the Deceptive
Marketing of Baby Videos is so Important
The Media
Family: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers,
Preschoolers, and Their Parents
This new report
from the Kaiser Family Foundation offers a comprehensive
look at the media use of children ages 6 months to 6 years
of age. Among the findings:
-
In a typical day more than eight in
ten (83%) children under the age of six use screen media,
with those children averaging about two hours a day.
-
61% of babies one year or younger who
watch screen media in a typical day for an average of one
hour and twenty minutes.
-
19% of children ages 1 year or
younger, 29% of children ages 2-3 years, and 43% of those
ages 4-6 years have a television in their bedroom.
-
Of particular note: Parents who
believe that television is educational allow their
children to watch more television.
The complete
report is available at
http://www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia052406pkg.cfm.
Meanwhile, Michael
Eisner, the former head of Walt Disney, has acquired Team
Baby Entertainment, the makers of DVDs designed to introduce
babies to mom and dad’s favorite college athletic teams.
Titles include “Baby Irish” for the University of Notre Dame
and “Baby Longhorn” for the University of Texas. According
to
Team Baby’s website, the DVDs are “informative,”
“entertaining,” and - you guessed it - “educational.”
Also this month:
HBO's Classical Baby won the prestigious Peabody Award. The
Award was given at the Peabody Awards Presentation Luncheon,
sponsored by CocaCola. According to the program notes,
Classical Baby gives "parents, and their babies high-quality
art, music, and dance exposure at one of the most crucial
stages in a child's brain development." The award was given
for its "charm, beauty, imagination, and educational
value."
You can help us
stop the deceptive marketing of media for babies by
clicking here.
Book Reviews
No Child Left
Different, the fourth in Sharna Olfman's Childhood in
America, series raises critical concerns about childhood,
the pharmaceutical industry, and how unfettered corporate
interests combine with the romance of a quick fix to
undermine children's health. Over the past 15 years, there
has been a 300 percent increase in the use of psychotropic
medications for children and youth under the age of 20. This
volume traces the emergence of this phenomenon and
critically examines the establishment of drugs as the
treatment of choice--rather than last resort--for children
and teens diagnosed with mental illnesses. Sharna, and one
of the book’s contributors, Michael Brody M.D, will be
giving a workshop at the summit on this very topic.
Child
Honoring: How to Turn this World Around, edited by
Raffi Cavoukian and Sharna Olfman, is a powerful, and highly
readable collection of essays detailing a path to global
restoration through caring for and about children. This
remarkable anthology outlines the unprecedented threats to
life at this defining moment in history, and offers a novel
and systemic remedy for societal transformation based on
honoring our youngest and "most valuable players.”
Contributing authors include Barbara Kingsolver, Joel Bakan,
Susan Linn, Joan Almon, and Penelope Leach. Raffi, Sharna,
Susan and Joan will all be at CCFC’s summit October 26-28,
2006.
In the News
For the latest
news about marketing to children check out “In
the News” on CCFC’s website. Doing research? Our news
archives are updated several times a week. Topics include,
“Food Marketing,” “Tweens,” Marketing Violence,” and “Babies
and Toddlers”.
If you haven’t
been checking “In the News” regularly, here’s some of what
you missed:
Have the heirs of Barbie hit limit for risqué dolls? By
Sara Miller Llana. A analysis of CCFC’s successful
campaign to stop Hasbro from marketing the highly sexualized
Pussycat Dolls to six-year-olds.
M&M math for fat kids. By Catherine Price. A
disturbing exposé of junk food product placement
masquerading as educational materials.
Soda Deal with Clinton Foundation Latest PR Stunt. By
Michele Simon. The director of the Center for Informed Food
Choices, takes a hard look at the beverage industry’s recent
announcement that they are pulling sodas out of schools and
makes a compelling argument why self-regulation is not
enough.
Things We Wish We
Didn’t Know
The Black Eye
Peas, a popular hip-hop band, star in a new series of online
films about reclaiming hip-hop from corporate media and
returning the music to its more authentic roots. Not a bad
premise, but in reality the series is really just one long
ad for Snickers: Product placement is everywhere, the group
lives in a Snickers’ factory, and they even get superpowers
when they eat a Snickers’ bar. You can see for yourself at
http://www.instantdef.com/.
Coca-Cola has
developed a new line of vending machines that allow users to
take digital photos and download ring tones for mobile
phones, part of the company’s plan to interact more directly
with consumers.
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
-
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policies that will help protect children from corporate
marketers.
-
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