Peggy Charren

Who is Peggy Charren?

Peggy Charren founded Action for Children's Television, a national child advocacy organization, in 1968, in an effort to encourage program diversity and eliminate commercial abuses in children's television programming.

In 1989, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded her its Trustees' Award. Her work with ACT culminated in the passage of the Children's Television Act of 1990, and she received a Peabody Award in 1991. In 1992, she disbanded ACT, announcing that it had met the objectives she had set out to accomplish. In 1995, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Although denounced as an advocate for censorship by her critics, including animation writers Steve Gerber and Mark Evanier, Charren has insisted she is an outspoken critic of censorship, and has cited her stance against the American Family Association's campaigns to ban various programs. She sits on the Board of Trustees of public broadcaster WGBH in Boston, Massachusetts.

Peggy lives in Massachusetts with her husband Stanley, a wind power entrepreneur who serves on Harvard's Kennedy School of Government Environment Council.