Advocacy

It looks like green is the new color of parental guilt.

According to a new survey by iVillage and Today.com, a huge number of parents admit they could do more to help the environment, but don’t have enough money to go greener, inducing “green guilt.”

The survey found 94 percent of parents want to do more to help the environment, but almost half (43 percent) say lack of money keeps them from being their greener selves.  For the record, we would buy everything organic at Whole Foods if we could, right? It’s just that all those sweet peas and pesticide-free artichokes really add up.

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Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

Katherine Heigl, in a post-Grey’s Anatomy starring role, gets to the heart of her hate for testicles in this PSA for IHateBalls.com, a campaign to raise awareness about spaying and neutering your pets. Haha! She says testicles are “crinkly, wrinkly like an old muppet.” She’s got jokes. Or I’ve got the sense of humor of a 12-year-old.

Whichever it is, the campaign is part of the Jason Debus Heigl Foundation’s effort to end cruelty to animals. It’s is also a fundraiser, with proceeds paying for more animals to get spayed or neutered, which prevents overpopulation and, ultimately, the killing of unwanted pets.

[via TVGuide]

Today is World AIDS Day, but Bono made an appearance yesterday on The Daily Show to begin the commemoration. During his interview, he teased a big announcement that would likely come from President Obama today during an event in honor of the special day.

You can also find Bono and his fashion-statement-making sunglasses on the TIME website (and in the magazine) and with an op-ed in today’s New York Times. In that article, he talks about the hopelessness that greeted an HIV-positive diagnosis a decade ago. “Yet today, here we are, talking seriously about the ‘end’ of this global epidemic,” he writes. Wow.

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According to a New York Times article, the #OccupyWallStreet hashtag came into being on July 13, when Kalle Lasn, editor of Adbusters, and his colleagues created it. There was also this story on the Canada-based magazine’s site on that day. Soon after, the poster at left was designed.

The name of the story is “The Branding of Occupy Wall Street,” and since the movement got started, Adbusters has continued to talk up OWS, which falls in line with the magazine’s anti-consumerist focus. But it’s interesting that the Times gives so much credit to Lasn and Adbusters for branding a movement that media and critics have said for months has abeen hard to pin down.

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Weeks have passed and now, with protests spread around the world, Occupy Wall Street coverage occupies a good deal of space across the media. Both Ad Age and Mashable have, with the use of infographics, charts, and video, tried to illustrate just how pervasive discussion of the protests has been. Nevertheless, the question “What’s the goal?” lingers.

The Atlantic managed to publish a story on the topic that says it all and says nothing at the same time. In the story, filmmaker David Sauvage attempts to create a 15-second clip that captures OWS in the words of the protesters. Fifteen seconds is a really small window of time to try and capture just about anything. But here, in the end, it’s an especially glaring mish-mash of wants — from “accountability” to “equal rights.” A CNN poll finds that 40 percent of people don’t have an opinion about the protest even if an overwhelming majority feel that Wall Street workers are an overpaid group of liars.

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For every movie or TV show illegally downloaded, an innocent camera person or actor loses his or her job.

That is the message behind Creative America, a group organized to stop digital theft of film and television work. More than two million Americans in 50 states work in the creative industry, from directors to craft services. Those people’s livelihoods are at risk thanks to the ongoing problem of piracy.

This grassroots campaign, announced this week, is backed by labor unions, studios, and television networks. According to Creative America’s figures, websites offering stolen content attract 146 million visits per day and 53 billion visits per year. That adds up to half a million movies illegally distributed each day worldwide.

Supporters can sign up at creativeamerica.org, “like” or share the campaign on Facebook, and/or follow Creative America on Twitter.

How much power is there in social media? Well if Change.org is any example, a lot.

A Los Angeles student has used Facebook and Change.org to stop the deportation of her friend’s father, a man in Nevada she never even met. Jamie Alegra started a campaign against the deportation of Cesar Carlos Silva and garnered 594 online signatures.

Change.org said Alegra did it by bringing her laptop to school and collecting the signatures from fellow students and school faculty. The petition was called “An activist’s father needs your help. Don’t let ICE tear Astrid Silva’s family apart,” and succeeded in keeping Silva in the country.

Change.org is making a name for itself with more than 400,000 new members per month. Presently it’s got a petition asking Bank of America to stop it’s new $5-to-use-your-ATM-card fee that has 134,000 backers.

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PR firm Workhouse is showing their support for Occupy Wall Street with their emails and Facebook photo album filled with pictures from the protest. However, Workhouse CEO Adam Nelson was clear when he spoke with us on the phone: the firm is not providing services directly to the protesters.

Rather, it’s something that Nelson says is a “noble cause” that wasn’t getting very much media attention when their first email went out last Wednesday. The latest email, received today with the subject line “OCCUPY WALL STREET: Solidarity Kit” once again includes a link to the Facebook page of snapshots from the protest and the line, “The revolution has been editorialized.”

“The messaging on the ground is fascinating,” Nelson told us. Whether through the election or by other means, “these are issues that we will be confronting one way or the other,” he said.

The people taking part in the Occupy Wall Street protests have seen coverage of their live-in take off in recent days. Poynter.org has a tally of which outlets have covered it and how much. The post notes The Atlantic Wire’s interesting story about how the media has covered the protest by noting the non-coverage of it.

The uproar and ensuing investigation over one officer’s use of pepper spray on calm female protesters has now made headlines around the world. And a celebrity appearance will always get media attention; Susan Sarandon is supporting the effort and documentarian/author Michael Moore made an appearance earlier this week.

But journalists note that the slow build-up of coverage is, in part, a reflection of a major shortcoming of the Occupy Wall Street campaign (and any campaign that hopes to get media coverage): a lack of a clear goal.

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MTV‘s annual Video Music Awards — the coveted Moonman presentations — are now in their 28th year, set to air Sunday, August 28. Among the network’s most popular features — and still focused on music videos, of all things — the VMAs have also become a showcase of outrageous celebrity behavior, such as Kanye West’s rude intrusion during Taylor Swift’s speech, and the now-legendary Madonna-Britney kiss. These displays/publicity stunts tend to spur more post-show buzz than the actual award winners.

This year, MTV’s aiming to generate a different sort of post-VMA buzz, one that doesn’t rely on allegedly unplanned bad manners. The network last week announced the addition of a new award category, “Best Video With a Message,” meant to honor artists whose recent music videos featured a positive message or raised awareness of important social issues.

The category’s creation was a no-brainer, according to MTV president Stephen Friedman. “During the past year, we’ve seen a remarkable number of artists use their music to explore deeply personal experiences and issues they were passionate about to create powerful videos that resonated with and inspired millions of fans,” he said.

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