IP Democracy: Obese Kids or Free Speech: Food Ad Debate

(Washington, DC) There’s no question that the U.S. is facing a major health crisis when it comes to obesity, particularly the alarming rise in childhood obesity, but the issue is how to solve it. One answer put forth is to ban the enormous amount of junk food advertising aimed at children, but that solution would come only at some potentially high cost to our free speech rights.

A team of legal experts debated this issue today during The Media Institute’s Communication Forum lunch devoted to the topic of commercial speech and First Amendment rights. “The First Amendment does present a hurdle and it does seem like an insurmountable hurdle to me,” Mary Engle, Associate Director in Charge of the Advertising Practices Division at the FTC, said.

The FTC, charged with overseeing deceptive advertising, just finished a workshop on how well the food and media industries are policing themselves in terms of junk food product pitches aimed at children. The FTC is urging that the industries police themselves on this highly charged issue.

“There’s a lot of non-speech-related ways for the government to promote health to children,” Engle said.

Georgetown University Law Professor Angela Campbell thinks legislation could be crafted that would ban junk food advertising aimed at children while still passing First Amendment muster. “I think it’s appropriate because parents really can’t protect their children” from food industry pitches.

Product placements in kids TV programming are already banned, which is as it should be, Campbell said, because youth-targeted product placements are inherently deceptive. “The deception is that the kids don’t even know they’re being manipulated.”

Bill MacLeod, Former Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, thinks that even product placements deserve First Amendment protection because they hold informative value. “I would posit that product placement has infomrative value” because they enhance consumer knowledge of choices that exist in the marketplace.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on July 25, 2007 4:13 PM to IP Democracy