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For Immediate Release
August, 22 2014, 02:45pm EDT
Contact:
Josh Golin (617-896-9369; josh@commercialfreechildhood.org)
Creator of Controversial Your Baby Can Read! Series Settles FTC Charges
3-year CCFC campaign against false and deceptive marketing ends with a decisive victory for families
BOSTON
Today, the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with Dr. Robert Titzer, creator of the controversial Your Baby Can Read!, a $200 video series that encouraged parents to put infants as young as three months in front of screens. The settlement is the final chapter in Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood's long effort to hold the makers of Your Baby Can Read! accountable for its false and deceptive advertising.
In 2011, CCFC and its attorneys at Georgetown University's Institute for Public Representation filed a FTC complaint documenting how the marketing of Your Baby Can Read! was rife with false and unsubstantiated claims about infant learning. In 2012, the FTC filed false advertising charges against Your Baby Can LLC and Dr. Titzer. Your Baby Can and former CEO Hugh Penton agreed to settle the FTC's charges, but Dr. Titzer formed a new company, The Infant Learning Company, and continued to claim Your Baby Can Read! could teach babies as young as nine months to read. As part of the new settlement, Dr. Titzer and The Infant Learning Company are now barred from using the phrase "Your Baby Can Read." Both defendants are prohibited from making any unsubstantiated claims about the performance of any product that teaches reading and Dr. Titzer is barred from endorsing any product unless he has a reasonable basis for its marketing claims.
"Today's landmark settlement with the creator of Your Baby Can Read! is a huge victory for families and a great ending to our three-year campaign," said CCFC's Executive Director Dr. Susan Linn. "We commend the FTC for their unwavering determination to hold the makers Your Baby Can Read! accountable for deceiving parents. We are particularly pleased that the insidious brand name 'Your Baby Can Read!' has been retired for good. The Commission's actions should serve as a needed wake-up call to media marketers who falsely hype the educational benefits of their products and exploit parents' natural tendency to want the best for their babies."
Fairplay, formerly known as Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, educates the public about commercialism's impact on kids' wellbeing and advocates for the end of child-targeted marketing. Fairplay organizes parents to hold corporations accountable for their marketing practices, advocates for policies to protect kids, and works with parents and professionals to reduce children's screen time.
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"A security person came and said, ‘We’ve detained you both because we’re concerned that you pose a national security threat to Canada,'” Falk explained to Al-Jazeera in a Saturday interview from Ottawa in the wake of the incident that happened at the international airport in Toronto ahead of the scheduled event.
“It was my first experience of this sort–ever–in my life,” said Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author or editor of more than 20 books, and formerly the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories.
Falk, who is American, has been an outspoken critic of the foreign policy of Canada, the United States, and other Western nations on the subject of Israel-Palestine as well as other issues. He told media outlets that he and his wife, also an American, were held for over four hours after their arrival in Toronto. They were in the country to speak and participate at the Palestine Tribunal on Canadian Responsibility, an event scheduled for Friday and Saturday in Ottawa, the nation's capital.
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“We know they were here to attend the Palestine Tribunal. We know they have been outspoken in documenting and publicizing the horrors inflicted on Gaza by Israel, and advocating for justice,” Woo said. “If those are the factums for their detention, then it suggests that the Canadian government considers these acts of seeking justice for Palestine to be national security threats–and I’d like to know why.”
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No one works hard enough to justify being a billionaire. pic.twitter.com/Ezvf5fPLfv
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[image or embed]
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