McDonald’s Corp. CEO Jim Skinner came out swinging Thursday when asked about Ronald McDonald and whether the burger chain hooks children with junk food.

Skinner, speaking at the company’s annual shareholder meeting at McDonald’s headquarters outside Chicago, said that newspapers ads Wednesday calling for Ronald’s retirement had prompted an outpouring of support to his office, with parents and customers asking Skinner “to defend their right to choose.”

A group called Corporate Accountability International paid for the ads, which said Ronald is encouraging unhealthy eating habits and contributing to childhood obesity and related diseases such as diabetes.

At the meeting, shareholders defeated a proposal the group had helped craft asking McDonald’s to issue a report on its responses to childhood obesity. The proposal received 6 percent support, according to preliminary results released by the company.

Nick Guroff, a spokesman for Corporate Accountability International, called it “an extreme success for a first introduction” and said the results will force McDonald’s executives “to take these concerns — as much as they diminished them at their shareholder meeting and otherwise — very seriously.”

When Deborah Lapidus, an organizer with the activist group, said McDonald’s is interfering with political efforts to curb marketing unhealthy food to children, Skinner replied that “this is about choice.”

“We believe in the democratic process and our government officials believe in the democratic process,” he said to applause from the audience of McDonald’s shareholders. “This is about choice, this is about personal, individual right to choose in the society we live in. That’s where we play, that’s where you play, and we have every right to do so.”

Skinner also got applause when he called Ronald, the burger chain’s smiling spokesclown, “an ambassador for good” and noted that he is the face of Ronald McDonald House Charities.

“He does not advertise unhealthy food to children,” Skinner said. “We provide many choices that fit with the balanced, active lifestyle. It is up to them to choose and their parents to choose, and it is their responsibility to do so.”