Thursday, March 4, 2010

Social Initiative Proposes 'R' Rating for Smoking in Movies

Bottom line: Smoking kills.

Another bottom line: Movies influence behavior.

Smoking in movies encourages smoking which leads to people dying. That’s why Smoke Free Movies has proposed that movies showing smoking should receive an ‘R’ rating from the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) – the same rating that already applies to movies showing extensive violence and death.

Smoke Free Movies is a project started at the University of California/San Francisco. Its idea is backed by a consortium of NGOs, including the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, and the American Medical Association. Recently, an advertisement advocating for the new ‘R’ rating criteria ran in the New York Times.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

The Power of the People or Not?

Today's full page ad from JP Morgan Chase promoting the "Chase Community Giving" program on Facebook says that over two million Facebook users voted on the distribution of $5 million in grants. We also learn that an "Advisory Board" helped determine the winning charities.

So what first sounds like a bold move of using democratic process to give away a chunk of cash is then nulled by the control of this Advisory Board. We have to assume the Advisory Board gets the final say. Or does it? Maybe Chase executives get the final say as to which charities received donations. We are left needing to dig a little deeper to see how transparent this supposed cause marketing/corporate citizen/corporate social responsibility program really is. In the meantime, we applaud Chase for promoting philanthropy and for even being willing to include the public some way, some how.