TV violence
The FCC report on television violence came out last week. In the words of Commr. Adelstein: “Are we saying 'Law and Order' should be banned during hours when children are watching? It's anyone's guess after reading this.” Good reason story here, Christian Science Monitor story here.
As the stories note, it's an “oddly anachronistic” report, hand-wringing about the effects of TV violence on children in an era in which parents (for whatever reason) don't choose to use the many filtering/managing tools that are available to them. You might conclude that (1) television's importance is diminishing because there are so many other sources of entertainment available, and (2) parents don't really think that there's a link betwen violent entertainment and violent behavior. Or don't care.
The Commission is calling for Congress to “implement a time-channeling solution that would more effectively protect children from violent programming and/or mandate other forms of consumer choice that would better support parents’ efforts to safeguard their children from exposure to violent programming.” But “time-channeling solutions” are content-based regulations that are heavy-handed and thus most likely unconstitutional. Treating broadcast differently than other forms of media no longer makes sense. Is broadcast content “uniquely pervasive”? ”uniquely accessible to children”? It's certainly not scarce these days. Pacifica has been an embarrassment from the beginning, and it's not clear that we'll be any less blundering when it comes to violence.
What's violence, anyway? I wince at almost everything. If someone with my sensibilities is put in charge of this operation, we'll be stuck with nothing but Charlotte's Web all day long. That can't be appropriate.
Come to think of it, Charlotte's Web is actually pretty painful. You have to worry about Wilbur being slaughtered the whole way through. Forget it, it's off the list
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