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December 3,
2004 Why
Broadcast Decency Laws Matter To Our Children By
Congressman Joe Pitts “If you don’t like
what’s on your TV, turn it off.” That’s
the line I most frequently hear when the content of television programming
is called indecent or inappropriate for public airwaves. My best response is: if
you don’t like the standards elected officials have placed on content
broadcast over public airwaves, change the law.
Under that law, the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has jurisdiction over public
broadcast airwaves. Networks,
channels, companies and others receive licenses from the FCC to broadcast
material over these airwaves. The
FCC can impose fines of up to $27,500 on broadcasters who violate federal
decency laws which have withstood court challenges and the test of time.
However, the FCC has been inconsistent in enforcing them.
This year, a plan to
strengthen penalties on broadcasters who break the law stalled in the
Senate. An effort to attach an
unrelated provision to the bill doomed the bill to failure.
We will not give up, however. This
bill and efforts to maintain sensible decency standards are important not
for adults who are offended by certain material, but for our children. Psychologist Dr. Phil
McGraw is an expert on family psychology and child development.
Known to his fans as “Dr. Phil,” his daily television program
often features troubled families addressing issues long left unresolved. During a recent
appearance on NBC’s Today, Dr. Phil discussed the challenges facing children in
today’s world. The first
thing he identified was the proliferation of images depicting sexual and
violent acts. From video games to
movies, television to radio, today’s kids are confronted with material
that previous generations never had to face.
The problem with this, according to Dr. Phil, is that children do
not know how to make sense of these images.
“Their brains aren’t
even through growing until their early-20’s.
And the last part of the teen-age brain that grows is reasoning and
logic. So we can’t let them
make the decisions that they’re making today.
And that’s a problem,” Dr. Phil told Katie Couric on Today. Biologically children
simply cannot distinguish between right and wrong to the same extent
adults can. Their brains can
take in information, but cannot use judgment to determine whether that
information is worth keeping or, in this case, whether that behavior is
worth modeling. Dr. Phil’s comments
were underscored by a study recently released by the RAND Corporation.
The study found that children who watch a
lot of TV with sexual content are twice as likely to be sexually active as
those with little exposure to televised sexual behavior. “The
impact of television is so large that even a moderate shift in the sexual
content of adolescent TV watching could have a substantial effect on their
sexual behavior,” said Rebecca Collins, a Even
when other factors that influence decision making were considered,
television had the strongest impact. It
is not difficult to understand. Sexuality
is pervasive on television, present in more than two-thirds of all
programming from innuendoes to actual depictions of intercourse. The study found that as a result TV "may create
the illusion that sex is more central to daily life than it truly is and
may promote sexual initiation as a result."
Kids become absorbed with characters in their favorite shows and
begin to model their behavior. They
are simply doing what their role models do.
Sadly, the study found that doing what their favorite characters do
results in regret: many teens wish they had waited longer.
In a culture
increasingly devoid of positive role models, television is filling the
void. Parents can and should
replace television as the primary source of wisdom and information.
They should be the first line of defense against negative
influences and the first source of education and guidance.
“Talking
about television can give parents a chance to express their own views
about sex, and viewing shows with their kids will also help parents
identify any programs they want to designate as off-limits,” Dr. Collins
said. However,
the government can support parents and protect kids by enforcing decency
laws and being tough on broadcasters who abuse the privilege of using
public airwaves. #
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