Vote for Your Favorite Falsie
November 16, 2007 by Amy Spangler | 2 questions or comments
credits: iStockphoto
“2007 was a year full of deception, manipulation, prevarication, and Orwellian spin. But now it’s payback time! Every day, we at the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) are up to our ankles (and sometimes higher) in the corporate spin and government propaganda that PR firms keep churning out. We are all too familiar with the many ways that our information environment gets polluted. We have our “favorites,” to be sure—but now we want to hear what YOU think!”
Annually, since 2004, CMD issues the “Falsies Awards,” to recognize the people and players that take spin and propaganda to new lows. They would like each and everyone of you to help identify the worst of the worst in 2007. CMD has put together a juicy selection of nominees—now it’s time to cast your VOTE.
You’ll see that it was a tough year for women, with breastfeeding under attack, mercury-laden fish being pushed, and disease-mongering to sell a controversial vaccine. Fake news also continued to elbow its way onto your TV screens, and war propaganda was even harder to avoid than last year.
While every nominee is deserving of the award, the Infant Formula Council (see below) is a favorite of breastfeeding advocates. The deadline for entries is 5:00 p.m. CST on Friday, November 30, 2007, so vote today.
The infant formula industry and its trade association, the International Formula Council (IFC), continue to pursue marketing strategies designed to undermine breastfeeding, even though babies that are not breastfed suffer higher rates of health problems including sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), diabetes, lymphoma, leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease, obesity, high cholesterol and asthma.
Peggy O’Mara, the editor of Mothering Magazine, has noticed several IFC-affiliated “stealth” websites “that appear to be grassroots advocacy sites, but are actually mouthpieces for the formula industry.” The websites, MomsFeedingFreedom.com and Babyfeedingchoice.org are campaigning against proposed restrictions on the free bags of infant formula being given to new parents by hospitals.
BanTheBags, which supports a ban on free samples, observes that the sites “use classic formula company strategies, paying lip service to benefits of breastfeeding even as they promote formula. When breastfeeding is mentioned, it’s a chore and a bother.”
The formula industry was especially vocal about frank ads being developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to warn about the consequences of not breastfeeding. According to the Washington Post, the DHHS bowed to industry pressure and toned down the ads so significantly that after they aired, the rate of breastfeeding in the U.S. actually dropped measurably.
| Gold award | |
| Silver award | |
| Bronze award | |
| Dishonorable mention | |
| No prize |
The ballots are in and “Impeding Breastfeeding” was awarded the Bronze Falsie.
According to the Center for Media and Democracy, “Awarding a Falsie to groups spinning breastfeeding issues seems … well, especially appropriate. Apparently the folks at Ban the Bags, a campaign against formula company marketing in maternity hospitals, agree.
They posted a call for their members to participate in our Falsies Awards survey, and votes for the formula industry came pouring in. Is this spinning a survey on spin? Our judges were divided on that question, but ultimately decided to discount survey responses where people only voted on the ormula industry nominee.
There’s no question that the formula industry, represented by the International Formula Council (IFC), deserves the Bronze Falsie. The September / October issue of Mothering Magazine reported on stealth websites that “appear to be grassroots advocacy sites, but are actually mouthpieces for the formula industry. They include MomsFeedingFreedom.com, an IFC website that opposes restrictions on formula marketing in hospitals describing such restrictions as attacks on women’s access to information to make a legitimate choice.
In August 2007, the Washington Post reported on an IFC lobbying campaign that succeeded in getting the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to pull ads that dramatically illustrated the increased health risks faced by babies who do not breastfeed. The IFC portrayed the ads as “scaring expectant mothers into breast-feeding,” and hired a former Republican National Committee chair and former Food and Drug Administration official to lobby HHS. It probably didn’t hurt that most formula companies are divisions of large pharmaceutical companies that are among the most generous campaign donors in the nation.
For portraying accurate health information as alarmism and intrusive marketing campaigns as freedom - not to mention helping to keep U.S. breastfeeding rates well below those of European countries - this Falsie’s for you, IFC!