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May 11, 2007
The FCC Goes All Nanny
So the FCC is looking into regulating the level of violence on TV, including cable, although it admits that content edicts pose constitutional issues on when end as well as purely jurisdictional concerns as to whether the commission has the authority to regulate cable, service consumers pay for.
Violence makes an easier political target than sex, because these days liberals are in as high moral dudgeon about it as “family values” conservatives (See Jane Mayer’s tut-tutting on 24 in The New Yorker).
Let alone that there is more information than ever available for parents about TV, movies, games and other media, the FCC would have us believe that today’s parents are helpless doofuses overwhelmed by a media onslaught.
Consider this excerpt from recent online commentary by Reason’s Kerry Howley
Parents, writes Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein in a most poetic report addendum, “are like 17th century sailors subject to the whims of an angry sea.” FCC head Kevin Martin piles on, explaining that lost parent/sailors are legion. “Even parents who have TVs equipped with a V-chip need more help,” he writes. “According to a recent Zogby poll, 88% of parents did not use a V-chip or a cable blocking device.”
This is a curious leap of reasoning. When the public chooses not to use or consume some widely available good--the ill-fated Zune, for instance--we typically assume that consumer taste has been misjudged, the size of a potential market miscalculated. The V-chip and TV ratings system are held to a higher standard. Unlike the Zune, you’re required to own the V-chip with the purchase of a new TV. And if you choose not to use the chip you had no choice but to buy, we’re to assume you don’t understand it.
This much needs to be said: Today’s parents grew up with computers and electronic interfaces. The PC was introduced in 1983—25 years ago. And computers, in the form of those IBM 3270s, were in the workplace long before that. But let’s make it even simpler—Windows 95 was introduced 12 years ago and that virtually copied Apple's graphical user interface already established in the market. If you are a 30-year-old parent, that means you’ve been around easy-to-use personal technology since you were 18. If you’re 25, you’ve probably been pointing and clicking since high school.
So I don’t buy the FCC's argument that “parents-are-too-out-of-touch-to-understand-how-to-use-blocking-technology.” In fact I find it insulting. Geez, if you can set your cell phone on vibrate, you can set a filter on a cable box or TV.
No, the fact that many parents don’t use it is probably because it’s easier to directly control viewing choices like I do at my house, with the on-off button. The real problem is that the V-chip was a cumbersome, bureaucratic "solution" to a household problem that can be handled in a much more forthright way.
Posted by steve.titch at May 11, 2007 03:02 PM
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