June 28, 2002
Entertainment Industries Still Marketing
Adult-Rated Products to Children, FTC Report Finds
Industry Self-Regulation is Clearly Not Working, Parent Group Says
Spokesperson
Available for Interview
June 28, 2002 -- Almost two years after a
landmark Federal Trade Commission report found that the movie, video game
and music industries were “pervasively and aggressively” marketing
adult-rated products to children, a follow-up report concludes today that
industry advertising practices have shown “little change.”
“It is clear that
violent, adult-rated movies, video games and music are still being marketed
to children,” said Daphne White, executive director of The Lion & Lamb
Project. “Industry self-regulation has amounted to very little over the
past two years, and there is no indication that the situation will
improve.”
The Federal Trade
Commission report found “little change in the practices of all three
industries with regard to advertising violent R-rated movies, M-rated games,
and explicit content labeled recordings in media popular with teens.” The
FTC also found that although R-rated movies and M-rated games are less
likely to be advertised in media with a large percentage of teens in
the audience, they continue to be advertised in programs with a large
number of teens in the audience.
“Industry
self-regulation has not worked with companies like Enron, it hasn’t worked
with accounting firms like Arthur Anderson, and it hasn’t worked with
businesses like WorldCom,” White says. “Why should the entertainment
industries be expected to regulate their member companies when
self-regulation has resulted in such spectacular failures?”
The FTC praised the
movie industry for progress made in some areas, but the fact remains that
Hollywood continues to market adult-rated movies through the most
effective medium available to them, which is television. “The movie
industry continues to advertise R-rated films on television shows that are
very popular with teens,” the FTC found.
The report found that
the video game industry continues to advertise Mature-rated games in
both teen magazines and popular teen websites. The video game industry’s
highly-touted self-regulatory standards “would appear to rein in only the
more extreme examples of under-17 targeting, while leaving largely intact
the ability to reach a substantial teen audience,” the report found.
The music industry,
with the exception of one major recording company, has been the most
intransigent and the FTC found “virtually no change in industry practices”
since the 2000 report.
Every major
public health organization in the country— including the American Medical
Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of
Pediatrics, and the American Academy of Child &Adolescent Psychiatry— has
concluded that media violence is one of the ways that children learn violent
attitudes and behaviors.
Despite the
scientific consensus – and the lack of significant marketing changes over
the past two years – the Federal Trade Commission continues to put their
faith in industry self-regulation.
Daphne White, an
outspoken activist against violent entertainment targeted to children, is
available for interviews in reaction to this report. White, who has
testified before Congress on this issue, founded The Lion & Lamb Project in
1995. She can be reached at 301-654-3091.
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