I’ve always felt it would take a wheelbarrow to get some of these corporations up on their hind legs.
After years of coming under assault in Washington on accusations of indecent programming, U.S. television networks have decided to fight back.
With no allies among either the Democrats or the Republicans on the Federal Communications Commission, nor any significant ones in Congress, the four broadcast networks, joined by the Hearst-Argyle Television group of stations, embarked late last week on a low- risk strategy of turning to the courts.
There, they are hoping to find a solid majority – perhaps ultimately on the Supreme Court – of liberal and libertarian judges who are more sympathetic to their First Amendment arguments.
Late last week, the networks filed lawsuits in federal appeals courts in Washington and New York to challenge indecency rulings against CBS, ABC and Fox involving coarse language….
“The FCC overstepped its authority,” the networks said in a joint statement Friday, “in an attempt to regulate content protected by the First Amendment, acted arbitrary and failed to provide broadcasters with a clear and consistent standard for determining what content the government intends to penalize.”
Recent decades witnessed ever-diminishing numbers of bona fide media folks actually running media providers. But, let’s face it — even bean counters have to grow some backbone when it becomes clear that our government is dedicated to fulfilling the wishes of our most backwards constituencies. Reactionary voters have a lot more voice than folks who believe in the Bill of Rights — but, have little or no political representation in Washington.
sex and violence is not the problem on television, the problem is that american parents are fat, stupid lazy people who simply want to ignore their children and leave them to die a slow intellectual death in front of an electrical appliance.
and the only reason politicians go after these networks is because doing so plays well in peoria.
turn off the tv and read your kid a book
i am rooting for the networks.
when i was a kid there was good programming: The Brady Bunch, Little House on the Prairie, The Twilight Zone…
And now there are a half-dozen Discovery networks, David. What’s your point?
While the worst stuff you can find on TV is worse than it was at any arbirtary point in the past, now you have more control over filtering it out, at least in your own home anyway. Any modern cable or satellite service has parental controls built into the box. You can filter by rating or block out entire channels.
Of course, what happens outside your home is a completely different story. I can understand people wanting to protect their children from the other ways bad influences can get in, but people’s definitions of what is bad varies, plus not everyone wants to live in a nerf world for the sake of your kids.
I don’t have a solution that will make everybody happy. I don’t think there is one. I think the current approach of rating things instead of censoring them is the best, even if the ratings are imperfect.
I’m rooting for the networks also, even though we don’t even have a TV in our house. We’ve been without one for over 2 years now and we’ve yet to miss it…including my 12 year old son.
Take away our internet access and there would be a problem.
“Reactionary voters have a lot more voice than folks who believe in the Bill of Rights — but, have little or no political representation in Washington.”
I believe that you’re coming from a good place Eideard, but I don’t feel that this statement is a healthy one to hold. Reactionary voters are those led by sensationalist media outlets such as FOX who are just doing the bidding of the big whigs at the corporations and various PAC’s. Their consent has been long ago been engineered, now it’s just manufactured. The statement that I’ve quoted of yours seems to imply that you don’t believe that the majority of people (though they lack the ability to differentiate the Bill of Rights with the Constitution) should have the right to representation because they lack education or because they are reactionary. This is a dangerous slide into elitism. All should have the right to vote and each vote should hold no more value than any other no matter the voter’s background. However, if I’ve misunderstood your intention, please shine some light on it for me. Thanks. BTW, thank you for your contributions to such a great site.
Same for me blank. People like us must scare “them”. Perhaps that’s why they want censorship relaxed, they think that’s the only way they can compete with the internet.
Geez david, You sound like you want the good old days of Knight Rider and The A-Team.
Ther are really good shows out there like The Sopranos and Deadwood. The networks are just trying to compete. I’m rooting for them.
Gee, Eideard is Jesus associating you with Fox? I would think you’d consider that insulting?
I do agree with his last sentence though.
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“Any modern cable or satellite service has parental controls built into the box. You can filter by rating or block out entire channels.”
But how many people use this just like securing their wireless networks at home?
Like you Greg I don’t have a solution either.
Unless you have the manual right in front of you, setting the wireless security settings on a router is rather arcane to all but expert computer users. Plus not everyone knows they even have to. It works without it and typically that’s all they want, for it to work.
By contrast, the people concerned about what their children see have a very big interest in controlling it, and it’s an order of magnitude easier to set up. It should be right there in the menus, no manual required. If they can’t figure it out, they should be calling their provider to help them. Really, there’s no excuse not to learn how to use it.
Although it’s not perfect as kids can watch TV at a friend’s house, rating content and giving people the tools to self-censor it strikes me as the best compromise between parental control and allowing adults to view whatever they want.
“Any modern cable or satellite service has parental controls built into the box. You can filter by rating or block out entire channels.”
But how many people use this just like securing their wireless networks at home?
Because some people also want to control what YOU can watch. The best example is the (in)famous Janet Jackson breast exposure. Like, how is a 2 second shot from a distance while she was moving classified as “obscene”. Forget the part about it is God’s natural feeding method for infants.
They feel empowered to know they have influence. They crave it as an addiction. Anything even hinting their warped view of the world might be off base needs to be stamped out. They go by names like The Moral Majority, PTL Club, or Focus on the Family.
I remember when there were congressional herrings about cable television, a congressman made the comment “yeah, I could censor the shows myself by turning it off, but I should have to.” It seems like they know better, but just don’t care.
anyone else think america was more progressive in the 90s?
Actually…..I can’t really think of a time when America(politically) was truely progressive.
Progressives and Liberals have been in office, and even President, but I think most voters in this country have always been more conservative. Even during Roosevelts 3 terms…..he managed to get some socially liberal/progressive things through, but he was still a war monger, moderate to moderate conservative on most things. He came into office in extrodinary times and made some moves that gave him a lot of political wiggle room for many years.
>You can filter by rating
That only works if the networks cooperate. Most of the time they put up bogus ratings, and some networks don’t even give out the complete ratings.
AB CD: Then fight against the networks on that. Demand more accurate and more complete ratings. Most people seem to be fighting to have it banned altogether instead.