Can you imagine a public school teacher, during school, handing out advertising material for a private company? Taxpayers again took a body blow by the resourceful Channel One marketing team.
During the recent disastrous "OneVote" mock election (less than 900,000 students participated), Channel One distributed ballots that were little more than an advertisement for Digitalbackpack.com, yet another dot.com trying to make it big. As much as pushing the mock election, Channel One anchors pushed this new advertiser, in print, on the web and on the air.
Jim Metrock said, "Can you imagine a public school teacher working for a private company? Can you imagine them making sure every student got a card promoting Digitalbackpack.com? That use to get a teacher fired, but now things are so confused that it appears anything goes. A school could easily hold a mock election without the help of Channel One. Channel One thinks teachers are totally clueless. They think teachers can’t engage their students in current events without Channel One’s help. Evidently many schools with Channel One ignored this tasteless advertising gimmick. The fact that Channel One would use this mock election as a smokescreen to create advertising revenue is disappointing."
Taxpayers pay public school teachers. When a teacher is told by a principal to work for a private company, with no pay, during school time, then taxpayers have a right to be up in arms. Obligation encourages citizens to find out if your secondary schools still have Channel One. If they do, demand that it be removed immediately. Also ask if the schools made teachers hand out the Digitalbackpack OneVote ‘ballots’. If they did, tell the school board that you do not want this to happen again.
Obligation’s Main Page One Channel One
News About Channel One 2002 (Jan – Jun)
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