December 2010

A new Johns Hopkins report chastises alcohol advertisers for failing to keep booze ads away from teens, even though the study's results show the industry making some progress in living up to its self-imposed standards.

It follows closely another university report that found a decline in youth binge drinking. Industry rules prohibit alcohol ads on TV shows where more than 30% of the audience is below the legal drinking age. Last year, 23,718 ads -- or about 7.5% of all alcohol ads -- failed to meet the standard, down from 8.6% in 2008, according to the study by the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Yet the center points to other data that it says show an increase in alcohol marketing exposure to teens. The report -- which examined the nearly 2.7 million alcohol TV ads it says were placed from 2001 to 2009 -- zeros in on people ages 12 to 20 whom the center says are most at risk of taking up alcohol as a result of ads. Of that population, 91% were exposed to alcohol TV ads in 2009, seeing an average of 366 ads, according to the study. That's up from the 90% of the age group that had exposure in 2001, who saw an average of 217 ads.

Computer and Communications Industry Association President Ed Black said that the Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality proposal "could be improved enough so some of the glaring loopholes" in the measure are closed.

Still he predicted either way the proposal is likely to face legal challenges. Black would not say whether his group or others critical of the proposal would take action to block it in court if the FCC approves a weak network neutrality proposal. Black and Center for Democracy and Technology Senior Policy Counsel David Sohn met with reporters to discuss network neutrality and other tech issues being tackled at the FCC and that may come up in the 112th Congress. Neither Black nor Sohn expect Congress will be able to solve the thorny issue of whether to impose rules to ban broadband providers from discriminating against or prioritizing Internet content, saying the ball is in the FCC's court at this point. Black said he does not believe the proposal goes far enough to protect the openness of the Internet, pointing in particular to its exemption for wireless broadband. Wireless "is such a big part of the future" that it must be brought under what he views as "light-tough net neutrality rules," Black said.

The Health IT Policy Committee, panel that advises the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, has endorsed steps to help healthcare providers identify and address hospitals, clinics, labs and other organizations electronically through directories. The Health IT Policy Committee also approved broad recommendations for rules of the road for governing the nationwide health information network (NHIN) in order to draw more participants.

The NHIN is a set of standards and services that enables mostly large providers to share patient data securely through the Internet. The two sets of recommendations act as building blocks for health information exchange to coordinate and improve the quality of patient care, members of the policy committee said at its Dec. 13 meeting. The committee’s information exchange work group described the features and policies for starting up entity-level provider directories to support health information exchange for meaningful use of electronic health records starting in 2011, said Mickey Tripathi, panel chair and CEO of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative.

In the midst of global climate change talks last December, a top Fox News official sent an email questioning the "veracity of climate change data" and ordering the network's journalists to "refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question." The directive, sent by Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, was issued less than 15 minutes after Fox correspondent Wendell Goler accurately reported on-air that the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was "on track to be the warmest [decade] on record."