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Tuning out Channel One

So much for “Kill Your Television.” According to ADBUSTERS, two Ohio teenagers went to jail after refusing to watch Channel One, a television program (with commercials) that’s shown in schools across the United States. When DJ and Carlotta Maurer walked out of their classrooms to protest mandatory viewing of Channel One, the principal called them truants, and sent them to Wood County Juvenile Detention Center for the day.

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2/20 – Big oil’s big schemes Commercial Alert and Obligation, Inc., two groups that have been critical of Channel One’s programming, came to the Maurers’ defense. They wrote a letter to Ohio governor Bob Taft, asking him to remove Channel One from public schools. While the governor has yet to respond, the school in question is in negotiations with the Maurers, who said they have religious objections to television.

According to Primedia, Channel One’s parent company, shows like Channel One News and other “quality information and award-winning programming” from the company reach 8 million teenage viewers every school day.

Read the ADBUSTERS article here.

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We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

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If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

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