NEWS RELEASE from MORALITY IN MEDIA, Inc.
NEW YORK (July 12, 1999)–Morality in Media announces the launching of a nation-wide campaign to urge family-oriented supermarket chains to stop displaying magazines with sexually blatant cover headlines at check-out counters.
As children and their mothers pass through the check-out counters, they see sexually explicit headlines from many national women’s magazines. Here are three examples from recent issues of Cosmopolitan:
Sex Tricks He’s Never Seen Before: The Outrageous ‘Rock’ Technique and 21 Other Moves that Will Make His Thighs Go Up in Flames!Sex-Clusives! 1000 Men Confess the Squeezes, Licks & Teases They Long For and the Most Important Inch on a Man’s Body
Sex Rules — 10 Make-Him-Throb Moves So Hot You’ll Need a Fire Hose to Cool Down The Bed
In a recent letter announcing the campaign to more than 350 national and regional supermarket chains, Morality in Media President Robert W. Peters wrote, “We believe strongly that such material should not be in your stores at check-out counters where innocent children and vulnerable adolescents see it. I hope you agree.”
Mother and freelance writer Renee Schafer Horton described the problem this way (Dallas Morning News, Nov. 15, 1997):
“I no longer feel safe taking my children grocery shopping with me. I am on guard as far as TV shows, video rentals, and even library books are concerned. I just never thought I would have to worry that the grocery store checkout line was rated R.”
In future months Morality in Media will continue contacting the heads of the supermarket chains and will be checking to see which chains openly display magazines with prurient headlines on their covers. MIM expects to create a nationwide shopper protest.
Morality in Media is a national interfaith organization with headquarters in New York City. Founded in 1962 to combat illegal hardcore pornography, MIM also speaks out to focus national attention on other practices contributing to the erosion of morality and decency.
07/12/1999