Senator Brownback, What Are You Doing Working For Channel One?

Conservative and progressive organizations and scholars today
criticized Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) for his work as "chief Senate
apologist" for Primedia’s Channel One, an "anti-family corporation that
exploits children for commercial gain" by compelling them to watch
advertising in schools, including ads for violent entertainment.

The letter states that "Many parents detest Channel One because it
directly undercuts their authority. Essentially, Channel One is a
vehicle for advertisers to promote in schools what many parents wouldn’t
allow into their homes." The letter follows.

Dear Senator Brownback:

We are disappointed that you have become the chief Senate apologist for
Primedia’s Channel One, a marketing company that uses the schools to
bypass parental authority and promotes violent entertainment to school
children.

As you know, Primedia’s Channel One, under the guise of a news show,
delivers two minutes of advertising each schoolday to a captive audience
of approximately eight million children in 12,000 schools. Joel Babbit,
then-president of Channel One, explained in 1994 why advertisers like
Channel One: "The biggest selling point to advertisers [is] . . . we are
forcing kids to watch two minutes of commercials.

Many parents detest Channel One because it directly undercuts their
authority. Essentially, Channel One is a vehicle for advertisers to
promote in schools what many parents wouldn’t allow into their homes.
For example, in recent months, Channel One has advertised violent movies
such as "Supernova," "The Mummy," and James Bond "The World is Not
Enough."

You have spoken in public on behalf of parents against the promotion of
violent entertainment to children. We expected that you would seek to
support the authority of parents in this matter as well. Instead, we
find you working on the side of those who wish to bypass parents and
promote violent entertainment to vulnerable schoolchildren.

The opposition to Channel One is large and growing. For example, in
June, 1999, the Southern Baptist Convention, which represents the
largest U.S. Protestant denomination, passed a resolution urging
community leaders to remove Channel One from the schools.

Channel One is a big step in the wrong direction for children, schools
and taxpayers.

1. Channel One uses the compulsory attendance laws to force children to
watch ads.

2. Channel One wastes precious school time. Channel One consumes the
equivalent of one instructional week of school time each school year,
including one full day watching ads.

3. Channel One helps advertisers bypass parents to promote products
which parents may not approve of, such as exorbitantly expensive
athletic sneakers and violent movies.

4. Channel One wastes tax dollars spent on schools. A 1998 study by Max
Sawicky and Alex Molnar, titled "The Hidden Costs of Channel One,"
concluded that Channel One’s cost to taxpayers in lost class time is
$1.8 billion per year.

5. Channel One may harm children’s health. Channel One advertises
Snickers, Twix, M&M’s, Pepsi and other junk food to children in
classrooms. The Journal of the American Medical Association reported
last year that "Obesity is epidemic in the United States." Obesity is a
major public health problem. Given skyrocketing levels of childhood
obesity and diabetes, it is insanity for schools to encourage children
to develop poor eating habits.

6. Channel One — not parents or school boards — decides its ads and
program content. Channel One violates the principle of local control of
education. Parents should be able to choose who may affect their
children’s lives, not Channel One.

7. Channel One undermines parents’ efforts to teach positive values to
their children. Channel One teaches a curriculum of materialism, that
buying is good, and will solve your problems, and that consumption and
self-gratification are the goals and ends of life.

8. Channel One corrupts the integrity of public education and diminishes
the moral authority of schools and teachers. In effect, Channel One
appropriates the authority of schools and teachers and transfers it to
advertisers for these controversial products. Schools implicitly endorse
the products that Channel One advertises.

You defend Channel One because it delivers anti-drug messages to
children. Even if such messages were effective, there are other ways to
deliver anti-drug messages that do not undermine parental authority the
way Channel One does. Channel One’s blatant commercializing of the
schools outweighs — and perhaps even undercuts — any merit that its
anti-drug messages might otherwise have.

Parents need your help, Senator. We need you to help parents control
the influences on their own children. Please reconsider your position
on Channel One, and fight for parents and children — not an anti-family
corporation that exploits children for commercial gain.

Sincerely,

Bob McCannon, Executive Director, New Mexico Media Literacy Project
Robert McChesney, Research Associate Professor, U. of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign; author, Rich Media, Poor Democracy
Jim Metrock, President, Obligation Inc.
Mark Crispin Miller, Professor of Media Ecology, New York University
Gary Ruskin, Director, Commercial Alert
Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum
Rev. Donald E. Wildmon, President, American Family Association