Well, you can't accuse them of going after the small targets:
Advocacy groups and parents are suing the Nickelodeon TV network and cereal maker Kellogg Co. in an effort to stop junk food marketing to kids. The plaintiffs are citing a recent report documenting the influence of marketing on what children eat. Ads aimed at kids are mostly for high-calorie, low-nutrition food and drinks, according to the government-chartered Institute of Medicine.Wakefield, Massachusetts, mother Sherri Carlson said she tries her best to get her three kids to eat healthy foods. "But then they turn on Nickelodeon and see all those enticing junk-food ads," Carlson said. "Adding insult to injury, we enter the grocery store and see our beloved Nick characters plastered on all those junky snacks and cereals."
The Center for Science in the Public Interest is involved; not surprisingly, the CSPIScam website is not impressed:
Today the better-living-through-litigation squad at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) held a press conference to announce an audacious new lawsuit against two companies involved with advertising food during children's television programs. At $25 per "violation," CSPI threatened that "the verdict could be in the billions of dollars."Of course, the actual grounds for the lawsuit are dubious at best. Plaintiff Sherri Carlson charged that "'all those enticing junk-food ads' make her children want to eat 'junky snacks and cereals' instead of 'healthy foods.'" Going out on a limb here, perhaps her kids want these foods not because of ads, but because they're children.
CSPI's lawsuit makes the following three assumptions:
1. Television can't be turned off;
2. Parents have no control over what food they buy; and
3. Parents cannot tell their children to go outside and play.None of these is true...
Adding to the ridiculousness of CSPI's press conference was Executive Director Michael Jacobson's repeated citation of an Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on advertising and children. What Jacobson omitted in his diatribe is the fact that the IOM report doesn't provide any evidence to support his argument.
But don't take our word for it...
No one's saying it's easy to be a parent these days. I doubt Kellogg and Nickleodeon are the reason that kids are getting fatter, yet it sounds like CSPI is trying to make them the reason some lawyers will be getting richer.
(Hat tip: Reginleif.)
Posted by kswygert at January 30, 2006 07:39 PM