Page 141 - SpringBoard_ELA_Grade7_Flipbook

aCTIvITy 2.8
continued
Gathering evidence from a News article
My Notes
Chunk 4
15 Last month, Christina Cunningham, a fulltime mother from Port St. Lucie, Fla.
happened to look over as two of her daughters — ages 9 and 7 — were signing onto the Webkinz website. On the log-in screen, an ad flashed for BabyPictureMaker. com, which nudges consumers to download pictures of two people — promising to send back a picture of what a baby they might have together would look like.
15 “This is not acceptable,” says Cunningham, who shooed her kids away from the site and fired off an e-mail to Webkinz. When she didn’t hear back, she sent another. Again, she says, she received no response. But McVeigh says Webkinz e-mailed Cunningham responses, twice. A frustrated Cunningham contacted Campaign
for a Commercial-Free Childhood. The group contacted Webkinz, which removed the ad. “We will make sure to open an investigation into the matter and take the appropriate steps,” spokeswoman McVeigh assured the group in a letter.
Chunk 5
The fast-food connection
16 Webkinz declined to share the outcome of this investigation with USA TODAY — nor would it explain how the ad got on the site. “We’re fully committed to a responsible approach regarding advertising and the advertisers we allow on the site,” says McVeigh, in an e-mail.
17 But in the eyes of some parents, no one goes more over the top in marketing to kids than the big food sellers — particularly sellers of high-sugar cereals and high- fat, high-calorie fast food.
18 That’s one reason the Obama administration is proposing that food makers adopt voluntary limits on the way they market to kids. These proposed voluntary guidelines, to be written by a team from four federal agencies, have set the food and ad industries howling — even before they’ve been completed.
19 “I can’t imagine any mom in America who thinks stripping tigers and toucans off cereal boxes will do anything to address obesity,” said Scott Faber, a spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, at a May hearing.
20 But Wayne Altman thinks the voluntary guidelines are critical. He’s a family physician in the Boston area who has three sons ages 13, 5 and 4. He’s particularly concerned about Ronald McDonald. “We know that children under 8 have no ability to [distinguish] between truth and advertising,” he says. “So, to have this clown get a new generation hooked on a bad product just isn’t right.”
21 Because of the obesity, heart disease and food-related illnesses fed partly by savvy food marketers such as McDonald’s, Altman says, “We have a generation of children that is the first to have a life expectancy less than its parents.”
22 Plenty of others think as Altman does, even though Ronald is regularly used to promote Ronald McDonald House Charities. Ronald also shows up in schools. He’s got his own website, Ronald.com, where the clown promises that kids can “learn, play and create while having fun.” And he’s the focal point of a new social-media campaign that nudges kids to download their own photos with images of Ronald and share them with friends.
114 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 7
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