Ten Tears Ago... Scholars Attack Channel One

Scholars Attack Public School TV Program
[SOURCE: New York Times 1/22/1997, AUTHOR: William Honan]
In separate research, professors from Vassar and Johns Hopkins sharply attack Channel One, the 12-minute television program seen daily by an estimated eight million public school students in the United States, as an advertising vehicle loaded with superficial, biased and sometimes hurtful programming. "It's real function is not journalistic but commercial," Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media studies at Johns Hopkins University, said in a paper entitled "How to Be Stupid: The Teachings of Channel One." "It is meant primarily to get us ready for the ads," he writes. "It must keep itself from saying anything too powerful or even interesting, must never cut too deep or raise any really troubling questions, because it cannot ever be permitted to detract in any way from the commercials."
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F70810FE355F0C71...
(requires TimesSelect subscription)

* Today, Channel One bills itself as "the leading source of news and information for young people." The 12-minute news broadcasts are delivered daily to more than 7 million teens in middle schools and high schools across the country, approximately 30 percent of teenagers in the U.S.
http://www.channelone.com/static/about/