Child Advocate: Those Marketing to Kids Should Not Police Themselves
by Ed Thomas
October 4, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin will head a task force of government officials, television programmers, marketers and health professionals in 2007 to study media impact on childhood obesity and possible legislative approaches to address the problem, if necessary. But Dr. Susan Linn, Ph.D., of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, an advocate who fights excessive child-targeted marketing, questions the makeup of the task force and some members' eagerness to avoid government regulation. In fact, she says this new study group on the link between media marketing and child health is actually the result of the failure of some of the groups represented to police themselves in the area of youth-oriented marketing.
Linn says the task force known as "Media and Childhood Obesity: Today and Tomorrow" came about because grassroots organizations made enough noise about increased targeting of children through advertising in all media that the FCC finally heard. "It is a concrete example of the fact that grassroots advocacy is making a difference when it comes to marketing to children," she contends.
That same sort of advocacy helped highlight the fact that some 20 to 30 years of self-regulation by company marketers and media programmers has failed to provide the results needed to protect children against related dangers to children's health, such as childhood obesity, a problem now looming large on the horizon of public concern.
"The epidemic of childhood obesity, of which food marketing is a factor, has escalated just exponentially," Linn emphasizes. And not coincidentally, she points out, food advertising has escalated as well, which is why she feels the future members of the FCC-led task force need to acknowledge that self-policing by the marketing industries has clearly not worked.
"All kinds of marketing to children has escalated under self-regulation," the CCC spokeswoman asserts. "Self regulation has failed," she says, "and I think that any conversation about what to do about marketing to children and the link to childhood obesity has to include that point of view."
