Parents to Congress: Let Us Decide What Our Kids Watch

My question to all those people who want to regulate TV is this: how far would you go? Would you crack down on nudity? cussing? Sex as a whole or just the way it is portrayed? Would you go back to the days of two beds for married couples? Would you try and turn all teenagers into well behaved door mats that are always home by curfew and finish their homework on time and never have sex and don't look anything like real teenagers? The only well behaved teenager on TV these days is Clark Kent in "Smallville", and let's face it, he's not very realistic (besides the lifting cars over his head and seeing through walls thing, I mean).

There is already an attempt to pull smoking out of the movies, this will kill a great deal of realism from the experience and hurt an already hurting industry. Would you turn TV into some great big morality lecture? That opens the flood gates to all kinds of debates about whose morals get portrayed. Is that really the road we want to go down, where we go from entertainment to telling people what their lives should look like?

"I haven't given much publicity to TV Watch, a group advocating for parents who want themselves, not the government, to decide what's appropriate for their kids to watch."

um, Justin.... this group isn't "advocating for parents blah blah blah." The group is advocating for themselves, and using "parents" as a front. Its sole function is to be an astroturf version of an actual grassroots parents organization, the Parents Television Council.

and their survey is complete BS... for instance you cite their finding that "83 percent of parents are satisfied with the effectiveness of the V-Chip and other blocking tools." Now that is REALLY interesting, insofar as 67% have never used the v-chip. In other words, the finding you cited isn't exactly useful information...

More to the point, the Kaiser study appears to track more closely with how parents really feel. When asked "which concerns you more?", by 51%-42%, parents were more concerned with "offensive content on TV" than with "excessive government control over TV broadcasts." Even though this question was skewed by the use of "excessive", more parents were concerned with offensive content than government control. And according to the survey, only 34% strongly disagree with the statement "The current parental controls and rating systems have failed. It’s time for the government to step in and do more." (another 26% somewhat disagree...)

Groups like TV Watch don't really deserve all that much attention -- they are simply front organizations for large corporations whose only concern is profits.

Groups like the Kaiser Foundation, and PTC, which aren't a front, do deserve attention.

oh, and BTW, this statement "the Kaiser Foundation ...which reported that 2/3 of parents would support further government regulation of TV content (though it didn't specify what those regulations would be)" is false. The question that was asked pertained specifically to "new regulations that limit the amount of sex and violence in TV shows during the early evening hours".

BTW, I'm opposed to government restrictions on television content UNLESS it is aimed specifically at children. (defining "aimed specifically at children" would be a problem, but like pornography, I know it when i see it! And I'd like to see all advertising aimed at children be banned.

My objection to this post is really just in the fact that you featured "findings" from a corporate group fronting itself as "parent advocates" that was based on an enormously biased survey. There is much better data out there (like the Kaiser study) that deserves more attention -- the TV Watch study is essentially useless.

@Paul: You're right--I absolutely should have specifically mentioned networks' participation in TV Watch; that's added. (A list of coalition member groups and individuals is here.) "Grassroots" is a relative term--the PTC itself is an offshoot of the Media Research Council--but I didn't want to send the impression that TV Watch was that.

I do still consider it a group that advocates on behalf of parents opposed to regulation, who clearly do exist. And I thought I was pretty clear in the post that ultimately I take a lies-damn-lies-and-statistics view of these sort of polls. But, evidently I wasn't.

Also, I'm not Justin, but I'll tell him you say hi.

" And I thought I was pretty clear in the post that ultimately I take a lies-damn-lies-and-statistics view of these sort of polls. But, evidently I wasn't. "

you did, and I meant to acknowledge that (but I'd gotten to my 'shut up already' point). I wanted to make it clear that the caveats were more than "be beware" -- I wanted to make sure that people knew the TV Watch study was BS.

"Also, I'm not Justin, but I'll tell him you say hi."

geez, James, Jay, Justin, Joe...all you white-male middle class "J name" Time blogger look alike to me!

The other option for parents to control what their kids watch is not to have a tv in the house. We don't.

We watch "TV" by playing rented DVDs on our computers. no ads, no content we don't aprove of. Well, except maybe that time we got home and found Charlotte's Web (yuck) in the Congorama box.

But of course, that is way too radical for most people. And even though i don't like having a tv in my own house, i do think that the people shouldn't have to give up their tvs up just to control what their kids are watching. the rating system should be required on all new sets and parents should be allowed to block access to whatever they deem inappropriate for free.

"the rating system should be required on all new sets and parents should be allowed to block access to whatever they deem inappropriate for free."

That is essentially what the V-chip does--depending, of course, on what you find inappropriate, which is always the rub when it comes to this issue.

"Part of what parenting involves is recognizing that the world doesn't revolve around you."

James--Let me just say that you are a breath of fresh air. Of course, I used to live in the neighborhood where this run-in between parents and non-parents occurred: http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2005/11/moms_out_to_lun.html

i feel that parents are stupid for not letting kids watch tv shows that they watch like mtv and adult swim