Landrieu: Parents Best to Deal with TV Violence
Democratic Senator Favors Parenting Over Legislation
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 4/16/2007 12:46:00 PM
Las Vegas -- Parting company with some key Senate Democrats, Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.) said parents with access to the right information and technology were in the best position to shield children from television programming loaded with indecent and violent content.
"There are technologies that are available, so you are not censoring what people produce but you are giving parents the opportunity to guide their children in a way they think is appropriate," Landrieu said after being asked whether she supported a Senate bill that would restrict violent content on cable and broadcast television through Federal Communications Commission enforcement.
Using the NAB2007 site of Las Vegas to illustrate her point, she explained, "When you go to a city like this, there are clearly marked signs in the front of every building -- it's a striptease joint, it's a sleazy bar or it's kind of a stand-up place. Those signs are important because as a parent, I don't want to walk into the wrong place. That is what parents need to monitor this situation -- better labeling."
Last week, Senate Commerce Committee chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) said he wanted to pass a bill not yet introduced in the current Congress that would allow the FCC to ban violent content on broadcast TV from 6 a.m.-10 p.m. and "adopt measures" to protect children in cable homes from indecent and violent content.
The National Cable & Telecommunications Association has routinely opposed the bill on First Amendment and other grounds.
"I know there are constitutional issues, but somewhere, you have to make a move and proceed," Inouye told National Journal's CongressDaily. "If we sit around and wait until we believe we have the perfect bill, in the meantime, thousands will be murdered from lessons they learn on television."
Because she isn't a member of the Commerce Committee, Landrieu wouldn't come into direct contact with a TV-violence bill until it reached the Senate floor. Last year, she held up the nomination of Republican FCC member Robert McDowell for several months to win more money for Hurricane Katrina victims in her state.
"I haven't looked at the specifics of that bill so I can't comment specifically on it," she said. "I do think we have to give some focus to giving parents more control over what comes in to the homes through their radio or television."
The NCTA has advocated the use of blocking technologies to address parental concerns.
Unconvinced that technology is the answer, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) introduced TV-violence bills many times, but not in the present Congress.
In a report for Congress, the FCC completed a study that reportedly stated that TV-violence legislation can pass First Amendment muster, and that the a la carte sale of cable channels as an alternative to the bundling of dozens of channels into a single tier would help parents to control access by minors to inappropriate TV content.
Under previous versions of his bill, Rockefeller would permit the FCC to ban violent broadcast-TV content from 6 a.m.-10 p.m. and "adopt measures" to protect children in cable homes from violent and indecent programming. Although the FCC would need to exempt premium and pay-per-view cable fare, it would have the discretion to exempt news and sports. As a threshold matter, the FCC would need to define "gratuitous and excessively violent video programming."
Landrieu indicated her opposition to legislative mandates by repeating that parents should be the ones to determine what programming enters their homes.
"On the highway, I want be able to know that if I want to go Las Vegas, the sign has to be clear -- Las Vegas this way, Disney World this way," she said. "I think better signage, better labeling and better power by the consumer is what we need, as opposed to trying to determine what's violent and what's not, what's profane and what's not and what's, whatever, porn and not. It's always, when it gets down to it, about parenting."
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