June 28, 2005
Today’s House Hearing on Private Sector Involvement in Schools is a Whitewash
Today, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Education Reform is conducting a hearing on “How the Private Sector is Helping States and Communities Improve High School Education.” Following is Commercial Alert Executive Director Gary Ruskin’s statement on today’s hearing:
“While nearly all would agree that schools need more “support,” “private sector involvement” in the schools these days largely means corporate marketing to captive students, or using schools as public relations props and backdrops.”
“Missing from today’s hearing will be any examination of the more insidious aspect of the commercialization of schools, such as: how corporations take away school time for corporate marketing, or how their in-school marketing has helped to generate an epidemic of childhood obesity, or how corporate wrongdoers like Microsoft use the schools to drum up some good public relations.”
“If businesses really want to help “reform” local high schools, they can pay their taxes, stop negotiating special tax breaks, and give back their corporate welfare.”
More information about today’s hearing is available at: http://edworkforce.house.gov/mediaadvisory.htm
Commercial Alert is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy. For more information, see our website at: http://www.commercialalert.org.
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)
June 21, 2005
Harkin Amendment Would Require FTC to Study Food Advertising to Children
The U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science approved an amendment by U.S. Senator Tom Harkin today to require the federal Trade Commission to produce a report on food advertising to chidren by July 1, 2006.
Our Members of Congress should do much more than just require the FTC to study food marketing to children. For example, they should ban the marketing of junk food in public schools, and eliminate all federal tax subsidies for marketing to children under 12 years of age.
Nevertheless, the Harkin amendment is a step forward in reducing the incidence of childhood obesity in the United States. Kudos to Senator Harkin for winning the amendment.
The amendment says: "Childhood Obesity.-The Committee is concerned about the growing rate of childhood and adolescent obesity and the food industry’s marketing practices for these populations. The Committee directs the FTC to submit a report to the Committee by July 1, 2006, on marketing activities and expenditures of the food industry targeted toward children and adolescents. The report should include an analysis of commercial advertising time on television, radio, and in print media; in-store marketing; direct payments for preferential shelf placement; events; promotions on packaging; all Internet activities; and product placement in television shows, movies, and video games."
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 12:25 PM | Comments (3)
June 14, 2005
USDA Won't Enforce Rules Against Junk Food Sales in Schools
The junk food industry won a major victory yesterday, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture rejected a petition that it enforce its own competitive foods rule, which prohibits public schools from selling “foods of minimal nutritional value” during mealtimes in school cafeterias. The rule was designed to promote the health of school children, but enforcement today is lax to non-existent. In the petition, Commercial Alert requested simply that the USDA enforce the rule as written. But the USDA has said “No.”
Stanley C. Garnett, director of USDA’s Child Nutrition Division, wrote to Commercial Alert that “At this time, we do not intend to undertake the activities or measures you recommended in your petition.”
“It is outrageous that the USDA is refusing to enforce its own rules against selling junk food in public schools,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert. “They have turned their back on American children, who are suffering from an epidemic of obesity.”
The USDA’s decision comes just days after the Justice Department slashed the penalty it seeks in a lawsuit against the tobacco industry from $130 billion to $10 billion.
“Last week, the Bush administration caved in to tobacco industry, and this week they caved in to junk food industry,” Ruskin said. “For the Bush administration, big corporations come first, and our children’s health comes last.”
The USDA denied Commercial Alert’s petition for rule-making, despite overwhelming public support for restricting the sale of junk food to schoolchildren. A Wall Street Journal poll in February, 2005, found that 83% of American adults believe “public schools need to do a better job of limiting children's access to unhealthy foods like snack foods, sugary soft drinks and fast food.”
In March, the USDA admitted in a report that it does not know whether schools are complying with prohibitions against the sale of foods of minimal nutritional value during school mealtimes. The report stated, “it is unclear to what extent federal and state regulations [against the sale of foods of minimum nutritional value] are enforced at the local level”.
Foods of minimal nutritional value are defined as soda pop, water ices, chewing gum, and certain types of candies, such as hard candies, jellied candies, licorice and marshmallows.
Executives and lobbyists from companies that produce junk food for schoolchildren generously contributed to the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign. Rangers, who bundled at least $200,000 to the Bush/Cheney ’04 campaign, include:
• Jose P. “Pepe” Fanjul, vice chairman, president, and COO, Florida Crystals Corp., a top U.S. sugar producer;
• Richard F. Hohlt, Hohlt & Co., lobbyist for Altria, which owns about 85% of Kraft Foods;
• Robert Leebern Jr., president, federal affairs, Troutman Sanders, lobbyist for Coca-Cola; and,
• Barclay T. Resler, vice president for government and public affairs, Coca-Cola.
Pioneers, who bundled at least $100,000 to the Bush/Cheney ’04 campaign, include:
• Kirk Blalock, Fierce Isakowitz & Blalock, lobbyist for Coca-Cola Enterprises
• Marc Lampkin, Quinn Gillespie, lobbyist for Coca-Cola
• Joe M. Weller, chairman and CEO, Nestle USA
Junk food producers also gave large contributions to President Bush’s inauguration this year. Altria Corporate Services (majority owner of Kraft Foods) gave $250,000, while Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola gave $100,000 each.
In his State of the Union address, on February 2nd, President Bush told Congress, "Over the next several months, on issue after issue, let us do what Americans have always done, and build a better world for our children and our grandchildren."
“President Bush says he wants to help children, but his resolve has been pretty flabby where the junk food lobby is concerned.” Ruskin said. “This administration just hasn’t shown the gumption to stand up to these people. It talks Main Street but walks K Street,”
The refusal to enforce the competitive food rule is just the latest in a long series of favors for the junk food industry. For example, the Administration has opposed restrictions on junk food marketing to children. It worked hard to weaken the World Health Organization’s global anti-obesity strategy, and went so far as to question the scientific basis for “the linking of fruit and vegetable consumption to decreased risk of obesity and diabetes.”
Former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson even told members of the Grocery Manufacturers Association to “‘go on the offensive’ against critics blaming the food industry for obesity,” according to a November 12, 2002 GMA news release.
In January, Lynn Swann, chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, was paid to appear at a public relations event for the National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA), a vending machine trade group.
Commercial Alert’s petition to USDA is available at: http://www.commercialalert.org/fmnvpetition.pdf.
The USDA’s response to Commercial Alert’s petition is at: http://www.commercialalert.org/usdaresponse.pdf.
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 01:54 PM | Comments (5)
June 08, 2005
Professor, Is This a Textbook Case of Ad Creep?
Yesterday, the Toronto Star had an excellent article on McGraw-Hill's idea to put ads in university textbooks.
"Reach a hard to get target group where they spend all their parents' money," says a McGraw-Hill brochure touting its planned ads. "Do you really think 18-24 year olds see those on-campus magazine ads? Do you really think they could miss an ad that is placed in a very well-respected textbook?"
Want to keep textbooks commercial-free? Send McGraw-Hill an email from their contact page.
Following is yesterday's article in the Toronto Star.
Publisher pushes textbook ads; McGraw-Hill targets students; Critics warn plan could backfire
by Rick Westhead
The first thing Tamy Zubyk sees when she wakes up and peels the curtains back in her Ryerson University dormitory room is the sea of flashing, dazzling billboards that pepper Toronto's downtown skyline.
From then on, the 21-year-old says she spends the rest of her day being targeted by ads in subways, on storefronts — even in the women's washrooms at Ryerson, which feature ads alongside hand dryers and on the inside of the toilet stall doors. The classroom is one of the few advertising-free zones for Zubyk and Canada's other 785,000 university and college students.
Perhaps not for long.
For the past several months, McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., one of the country's largest publishers of university textbooks, has been quietly trying to coax companies into buying advertising space in their texts.
"Reach a hard to get target group where they spend all their parents' money," says a McGraw-Hill brochure touting its planned ads. "Do you really think 18-24 year olds see those on-campus magazine ads? Do you really think they could miss an ad that is placed in a very well-respected textbook?"
The Whitby-based publisher, which has made presentations about its prospective textbook ads to more than a dozen advertising agencies, says in its brochure that ads can be purchased nationally or regionally, and "can be so targeted, you can even buy a specific major.
"We've never offered this before and we'll only offer it to the right organizations," McGraw-Hill's brochure says. The company plans initially to charge as much as $1.40 per book, and the ads would be inserts, instead of being placed permanently alongside text.
Several media planners whose companies weren't involved in the ad push said McGraw-Hill's efforts are likely to backfire.
"Textbooks are one of the last bastions," said Randy Stein, a partner at Grip Media Ltd., a Toronto ad agency. "There are some things that should remain pure and sacred. What's next, university professors with logos on their blazers like NASCAR?"
McGraw-Hill business development specialist Diana MacDonald said in brief interview that university students are already targets of ads.
So-called "frosh packs" aimed at first-year students include dozens of company brochures, she said, adding that banks often try to pitch prospective account holders by paying for exclusive rights to place automated teller machines on a school's campus.
In a subsequent statement to the Toronto Star, MacDonald wrote that the publisher's textbook ads have two purposes: to bring "beneficial corporate and social awareness campaigns to the attention of students" and to "generate revenue to support programs which help professors and teachers cope with the rapid changes in their environment."
MacDonald said marketing wouldn't affect the price of the textbooks and that "all of the funds we receive from the direct to student marketing program will be directed to support the (Institute for the Advancement of Teaching in Higher Education) and conferences that are organized" by the publisher.
"Advertisers are carefully chosen to ensure their products and offerings provide value to students and maintain an ethical presence," she wrote.
"Social issues are also promoted through the same means to provide awareness in areas such as drinking and driving, federal government initiatives to encourage students to vote, and health departments' promotion of immunization programs such as meningitis."
The publisher is pitching to advertisers at the same time as it is trying to weather a recent sales decline.
With corporate roots dating back to 1829 when the Methodist Church established Canada's first publishing company, McGraw-Hill Ryerson last year sold about 1 million textbooks and reported revenue of $88 million, a 7 per cent slip from the $95 million the company generated in 2002.
McGraw-Hill is a subsidiary of McGraw-Hill Cos., a U.S. publisher that also owns credit-rating company Standard & Poor's Corp. and Business Week magazine.
The publisher's higher education division reported a 2 per cent sales increase in 2004, printing textbooks on topics such as English, psychology, business and engineering.
Several ad agency executives said the ads would probably face a backlash similar to when soft-drink companies placed vending machines inside schools.
"This is just a minefield," said David Gibb, general manager of ad agency J.Walter Thompson. "The reaction would be horrible. It'd be a disaster."
Rebecca Rose, president of the Ryerson Students' Union, said McGraw-Hill's portrayal of students "as mooching off their parents" in the brochure was inappropriate and insulting.
Heather Campbell, a 24-year-old sociology student at the University of Toronto, agreed, adding "this is supposed to be a place of learning ... textbooks should be free of corporate influence."
McGraw-Hill isn't the first company that has coveted school-aged consumers and their parents.
Procter & Gamble is trying to lure Grade 5 American students by presenting a number of schools with a package of reading materials, a video and product samples that include an Old Spice deodorant stick for boys and a Secret stick, plus Always maxi-pads, for girls.
Students like Ryerson's Zubyk, who's admittedly influenced by ads — "I see a McDonald's ad, I crave McDonald's" — said McGraw-Hill's plans are a disturbing sign of the times.
"We're faced with it all day. I think it's just getting to be too much."
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 04:18 PM | Comments (3)
June 02, 2005
N is for NAFTA, S is for Social Security Privatization and T is for Tax Cuts
Yesterday, Sesame Workshop announced that it has teamed up with Merrill Lynch to teach kids about globalization and financial matters.
Maybe this is part of the new corporate takeover of public television. Merrill Lynch employees were big donors to the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign.
As a part of the Sesame Workshop plan, "Merrill Lynch employees in North America, South America, Asia and Europe" will teach children in "pre-schools, community centers and child care agencies in their communities."
And what will they teach? To support tax cuts for the wealthy, social security privatization, lower taxes on savings & investment, etc.?
Here's today's Reuters article about the Sesame Street/Merrill Lynch effort.
Merrill Funds Sesame St to Boost Money Know-How
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. investment bank Merrill Lynch is expanding its ties with "Sesame Street" to help boost children's financial literacy and improve their awareness of global cultures.
Building on a joint three-year program to boost financial know-how among children, Merrill Lynch on Thursday launched the WorldwideKids initiative with Sesame Workshop, the non-profit educational organization that produces the TV series "Sesame Street."
The Wall Street firm is giving $5 million to the five-year program to produce research materials to teach children good financial habits and expand their global perspective.
"The sooner you become familiar and comfortable with the concepts, the better able you are to be a responsible and successful citizen," Merrill Lynch's Chief Executive Stanley O'Neal told Reuters in an interview.
"The world is no longer a world of fixed interest rates or very slow moving interest rates, fully amortizing mortgages and easier choices in terms of retirement plans. It is much more complicated and much more personal."
O'Neal said Merrill Lynch joined forces with Sesame Workshop because no other group so effectively and memorably captured the minds of children, working with youngsters in about 120 countries since it was founded in 1968.
Sesame Workshop's chief executive, Gary Knell, said WorldwideKids would give educators, caregivers and parents access to information on DVDs, the Internet, and printed resources to boost youngster's understanding of money.
These materials will be distributed through partnerships with local community-based organizations and companies.
"We are building a foundation for financial literacy. Learning that you can't always get what you want is an important lesson in life," said Knell late Wednesday as the program was announced at a gala evening in New York.
Posted by Gary Ruskin at 04:43 PM | Comments (3)
