Corporate promotion:
from the cradle to the grave

WE LIVE IN A CORPORATE culture. Corporations are influencing our lives from the cradle to the grave. What is worse is that we're letting them do this to our children, and if we don't watch out, we will be letting them restrict our free speech rights in the political arena.

Businesses, trade associations and other organizations target 30,000 commercial messages a day to children. And this is just through ads on TV, radio, billboards and the like. This does not include advertising on school buses, inside school hallways and on school bathroom walls.

Then there is the true corporate propaganda - that of corporate-sponsored educational materials. Here are some examples:

  • A "science" experiment from Prego that "proves" that Prego spaghetti sauce is thicker than Ragu.
  • Materials from Procter & Gamble that say that clear-cut logging - stripping hillsides of trees - is good for the environment.

    Consumers' Union's Education Services Department spent nearly 18 months studying how companies intrude commercials and one-sided information into the nation's schools. Highlights of the study were published in an article entitled "Selling To School Kids" in the Consumer Reports May 1995 edition.

    Though the report is three years old people are just beginning to become aware of this trend.

    Here is what Consumers' Union discovered:

  • "Commercially sponsored activities and materials blur the line between education and propaganda."
  • "Many of the sponsored materials on political or social issues fail to present differing points of view, to reveal who financed studies that support the sponsor's viewpoint, or to disclose information that reflects on the accuracy of the materials. The result is a distorted picture of the issues these materials cover."

    Consumers' Union recommends that "information targeted to kids must meet higher standards than information aimed at adults." To achieve this goal, it believes corporate-sponsored materials in the schools should be:

  • Accurate - consistent with established fact or prevailing expert opinion.
  • Objective, with a fair, balanced representation of various points of view.
  • Complete, so they do not deceive or mislead students, either directly or by omission.
  • Nondiscriminatory - free of content that could be considered derogatory toward a particular group.
  • Noncommercial, with the corporate name or logo used only for identification. Videos, worksheets, educational TV programs, and the like should neither contain ads nor be veiled ads themselves.

    Corporate attempts to silence workers

    Big Business and right-wing interests - including the Chamber of Commerce, the Republican National Committee, and the American Legislative Exchange Council - are pushing Proposition 226 in Calif., and similar versions of the "paycheck protection act."

    This anti-worker legislation would ban workers from politics, by forcing yearly worker-by-worker approval for union spending of any non-dues money on purposes other than collective bargaining. Federal law already bans spending of dues money on politics, and many states impose the same restrictions on state-level races. Union dues, however, may be used for such activities as voter registration or get-out-the-vote drives, and member education about election issues or candidates' records.

    Is this retribution for successful grassroots political campaigns? Many labor activists think so. "In Ohio, the proposed political campaign contribution limit is $2,500 for unions to contribute to ballot issues and candidates," said Local 450 President John Shimeck. "The governor is trying to limit labor's influence because of its success with the workers' compensation issue."

    "They want to tie our hands on what we can do, not what the corporations can do," added Miamisburg, Ohio, Local 7-4200 financial secretary Henry Cox.

    Although the election for Proposition 226 in Calif., is on June 2, you can count on Big Business and the ultra-conservatives to introduce this issue again.

    As conservative commentator Ken Hamblin said in his Denver Post column on May 3, "Whether you live on the Atlantic or the Pacific Coast, I can assure you that eventually Proposition 226 or its equivalent will be an issue in your home state."

    OCAW Reporter, May-June 1998