Children's Media: Cut Sex & Violence; Add Education

By Mark S. Nadel

The most effective way to protect children against sex and violence on television and the Internet is to empower parents to block out programs they find inappropriate for their children. While the "V-chip" proposal recently endorsed by Congress and President Clinton would give parents an easy way to block out TV shows rated "violent," the manner proposed for rating shows suffers from a serious constitutional infirmity.

Congress could rectify that defect by permitting each program producer to rate its own programs -- rather than using the rating of a government-designated organization -- but parents deserve a better option. The alternative mechanism described below would not only permit them to block out nonviolent material that they found inappropriate, but it would also permit them to limit their children to only those programs rated "educational" by an organization that the parents trusted. This latter option would almost certainly improve the quantity and quality of educational material produced and broadcast to all TV households.

Under the proposed option, parents would simply select a preferred editor service, as they now select a babysitter, and their TV or computer would automatically block out all material found inappropriate by that chosen editor. For example, a "Christian Coalition" service might block out any sexually suggestive material or even positive portrayals of homosexuals; an "atheist" service could block out all religious programming; and a "feminist" service could block out all sexist programs. Parents could also combine multiple services.

These services would foster quality educational children's programming, because editors could offer to block out anything that was not educational, with different versions for different age groups. A Cambridge, Massachusetts company called OKTV is already offering such educational editing services, and if a significant number of parents used these services, market demand would direct media executives to produce children's programs that pleased parents' chosen editors. The quality programs would then be broadcast and available to all TV households.

Ideally, parents would be able to limit their children exclusively to material that met the parents' individual tastes. Yet few parents have the time to evaluate the hundreds of television programs offered each week, and fewer if any could evaluate the thousands of Internet sites, with many new ones added each day. Moreover, parents would need to sit and watch with their kids or enter their preferences into some device to block the inappropriate material. Editors can provide these services more efficiently.

Parents can already load "Surf-Watch" or CYBERsitter software into their home computers to deny children permission to reach Internet locations containing material that the software editors consider to be undesirable. And on-line service providers, like Prodigy, already permit their Internet subscribers to block access to a continuously updated list of sites that contain items the on-line service editors consider inappropriate.

Such editors provide a service analogous to the one most adults currently rely on from a trusted newspaper, radio, or television news editor: screening out what the editors find unworthy of attention. Obvious candidates to provide similar services with respect to television programs would be the editors of TV Guide, newspapers, church groups, and even local PTAs. And such editors could offer multiple variations of their services to satisfy the tastes of different parents. Such services might even be provided free by churches and PTAs.

For television programs, parents would need a device that could easily receive an editor's data and then block the indicated programs. OKTV now uses a chip technology in TV set-top units. A related technology already built into some television sets enables those sets to capture and store TV programming guide information now broadcast over the airwaves by "Starsight," and to display it when subscribers to this new service request it. Moreover, Starsight now has agreements with the makers of 75-percent of the television sets and VCRs sold in the U.S. to include this technology in their products.

Editors could distribute their blackout lists via the airwaves, like Starsight, or they might disseminate them on the magnetic strips of credit card-like "edit" cards, which could be enclosed in weekly magazines, Sunday newspapers, or the mail, or even brought to schools for students to pick up. Such cards could transmit data with a swipe through a "reader" attached to or part of a TV set. The data could also be sent by phone and modem, or over vacant cable TV bandwidth. Blocking might even be done by a video program local distributor at its video origination office.

These approaches would not stop children from finding new Internet sites before their parents' chosen editors discovered and blocked them or from visiting friends whose parents used more liberal blocking services or no blocking at all. Kids could also discover the access codes or passwords that enabled their parents to override the blocking service. Yet these imperfections are no more serious than those tolerated with respect to children's access to sex or alcohol.

Some might also be concerned that this approach could aggravate a problem confronted in the musical "South Pacific:" empowering parents to teach their children to hate and fear the very same people that the parents hate. Yet the technologies discussed above would only block material from homes. Schools and teachers would still have First Amendment rights to expose children to whatever that state or school board found important to an understanding of today's multicultural world.

While both the "V" chip option, modeled on a 1993 proposal by Congressman Edward Markey, and a similar mechanism supported by the computer industry would be simpler than the editor service discussed above, they also have significant shortcomings. Both force parents to rely on each industry to rate its own material, and neither helps parents to affirmatively stimulate the production of quality children's programming nor to block out inappropriate programs that are neither violent or indecent.

Of even more concern, none of these approaches would fully aid parents who could not or simply did not employ an appropriate babysitter or editor. To address this problem, the Senate Commerce Committee recently passed a bill to prohibit broadcasts of violent programming at times when children were likely to be watching. Yet this creates two other difficulties. First, the First Amendment protects the rights of producers and adult consumers of violent material. It is hard to imagine any court upholding a law that prohibited prime time television news reports of violence or broadcasts of video classics like "The Ten Commandments." Even if the law attempted to prohibit only "violence inappropriate for children," it is difficult to conceive of how such a standard would be applied to cartoons and fairy tales. The serious debate triggered over the violence in "The Lion King" would likely be more the norm than the exception.

Finally, attempting to force Internet site operators to limit the availability of adult material would probably lead those offering such data to transfer their sites to foreign locations. Children seeking indecent material would then simply reach out to foreign world wide web sites.

In conclusion, proposed government regulations to protect children from sex and violence in the media are both flawed and inadequate. Not only can private sector editors help parents exclude inappropriate material more effectively and comprehensively, but they can help parents stimulate market demand for quality children's programming.

Mr. Nadel is an attorney in Washington, D.C. who writes on communications law + policy. 9-14