Not content with two minutes for commercials, Channel One started putting advertising messages into the “news” portion of Channel One News. The practice continues.
Cingular Wireless not only runs regular thirty-second ads on Channel One, but they also sponsor the “Question of the Day” which is in itself an ad for Channel One’s web site channelone.com. Students who respond to the question of the day and are randomly picked win a Nokia phone and three months of cell phone service. Cingular’s desire is to use Channel One to get middle school students interested in having their own cell phone. Students then are to nag their parents for the Cingular service. Parents may have no idea that their public school is pushing ownership of cell phones on kids as young as 11.
Obligation has urged Channel One on-air personalities to resign instead of participating in this open violation of journalism standards and the Channel One contract with schools. All current Channel One anchors have gleefully pushed Cingular phones during their newscast.
The main thing to take from this is that if anyone in your school system ever mentions that Channel One contains only two minutes of commercials, please correct them. The truth is that Channel One has a MINIMUM of two minutes of advertising.
