NEWS RELEASE
For More Information Contact: Gary Ruskin (503) 235-8012
For Immediate Release: September 8th, 1998
Nader Starts Group to Oppose the Excesses of Marketing, Advertising and Commercialism
Ralph Nader launched a new project today, called Commercial Alert, to help families, parents, children, and communities defend themselves against harmful, immoral or intrusive advertising and marketing, and the excesses of commercialism. Commercial Alert will counteract commercialism in homes, schools, and communities across the country.
“Corporate predators are preying on children and families,” Nader said. “They use advertising, marketing, and psychological manipulation to sell junk food, cigarettes, violent television and movies, and other harmful products, and lure youngsters into the addictions of alcoholism, smoking, gambling and overconsumption.”
“Corporate predators transmit tawdry commercial values into homes and schools, undermining home values, pitting children against their own parents, and pulling families apart,” Nader said.
Commercial Alert will serve as a clearinghouse for people who want to take action against corporate predators, and the debasements of advertising and commercialism. It will encourage people to develop habits of living that are less frenzied, deeper and more meaningful than what the hucksters of Madison Avenue are selling. It will also encourage people to reduce their time as TV gazers and spend more time fulfilling their talents and potential.
“Commercialism is a pestilence that is laying waste to our families, schools and universities, journalism, holidays, sports and entertainment,” said Gary Ruskin, director of Commercial Alert. “It is coarsening hearts, minds, and communities across the country.”
Earlier this year, Professors Nancy Carlsson-Paige of Lesley College and Diane Levin of Wheelock College wrote of every American child’s “automatic membership in a media-saturated popular culture that glorifies violence through images, actions, and models marketed to children via television, toys, and other products, videos, video games, and Hollywood films. On TV alone, children see 32 acts of violence every hour and over 1,000 murders a year. Teachers and researchers have been warning for more than a decade that this violent culture marketed to children has harmful effects, both in the present and for the long term.”
Commercial Alert will focus particular attention on corporate efforts to market harmful products to children, such as violent movies and video games, overmedication, and television laden with violence, sex and addiction. “That powerful corporations focus on our children to seduce them into such destructive experiences is the height of callous profiteering,” Nader said. “It’s time we put a spotlight on this strategically organized corporate assault on our children and families.”
Commercial Alert’s web address is http://www.commercialalert.org.
-30-