Obama Rejects Content Censorship
Presidential Candidate Says Parents, Armed With Technology, Should Take Lead
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 2/1/2008 4:17:00 AM
Washington -- Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said Thursday night that parents equipped with the right tools and technology should take the lead in shielding children from harmful TV programming.
“You know, the primary responsibility is for parents. And I reject the notion of censorship as an approach to dealing with this problem,” Obama said.
But he quickly added that parents can’t properly monitor their children’s media intake unle
ss they have the proper technology to screen out content inappropriate for minors.
“I do think that it is important for us to make sure that we are giving parents the tools that they need in order to monitor what their children are watching. And, obviously, the problem we have now is not just what's coming over the airwaves, but what's coming over the Internet,” Obama said.
Obama’s comments came in a Los Angeles debate with Democratic rival Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y) heading into the potentially decisive Super Tuesday primaries on Feb. 5. CNN, which televised the event from Hollywood's Kodak Theatre, also posted a transcript on its Web site.
In his remarks, Obama reflected both Hollywood’s antipathy toward governmental content control and parental concern that TV programming with content appropriate for adults is popping up without warning in shows viewed by millions of children.
“I'm concerned about sex, but I'm also concerned, you know, [with] some of the violent, slasher, horror films that come out -- you see a trailer, and I'm thinking, ‘I don't want my six-year-old or nine-year-old seeing that trailer while she's watching ‘American Idol,’” Obama said.
With the U.S. at war in Iraq and beset by economic uncertainty at home owing to slumping home prices, media regulation has not been a factor in the primary contests for either party. Although Obama addressed the media content issue, Clinton did not because she was immediately asked a new question about husband Bill Clinton’s role in her campaign.
Last fall, Clinton did enter the media-telecom policy arena by endorsing Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin’s proposal to ban cable operators from having exclusive service contracts with apartment building owners.
Obama expressed his concerns about TV content issues in the context of his own home. Although he wasn’t worried about what his two daughters were mostly watching today, he said he's concerned what they might see unintentionally when flipping through the channels.
“I've got a nine-year-old daughter and a six-year-old daughter. So I look at this not just as a legislator or a presidential candidate, but as a parent. And as a parent, yes, I am concerned about what's coming over the airwaves. Now, right now, my daughters mostly are on Nickelodeon, but they know how to work that remote,” Obama said.
In terms of industry-driven solutions, Obama wasn’t specific on what parents would need. For example, he didn’t mention the a la carte sale of cable channels as a solution as the FCC’s Martin so often has. [Republican frontrunner Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) has supported forcing cable operators to make their channels available on an individual basis.]
“For us to develop technologies and tools and invest in those technologies and tools, to make sure that we are, in fact, giving parents power -- empowering parents I think is important,” he said.
Obama’s live audience included such Democratic Party stalwarts as actor-director Rob Reiner and Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg. But that didn’t stop him from issuing a challenge about the marketing tactics used by the TV industry.
“The one other thing I will say is -- I don't mean to be insulting here -- but I do think that it is important for those in the industry to show some thought about who they are marketing some of these programs that are being produced to,” Obama said.
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I'm glad he's taking a very educated view on this and wants the parents to be responsible for their own children.
Rustam Sagatbayev - 11/4/2008 10:30:00 PM EST
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