The Parents Television Council, the nanny state-loving organization opposed to “television indecency,” is apparently above reproach.
First, it wants to pressure Congress, advertisers and the FCC to excise “offensive” programming from television “to ensure that children are not constantly assaulted by images of sex, violence and profanity on television and in other media.” But in doing this – often by underhanded means later reported in the media – it doesn’t expect criticism. It’s not as if it’s violating the First Amendment, its members argue.
It insists that it is simply exercising its First Amendment right, like the NAACP or the Anti-Defamation League; organizations that do not receive nearly as much reprobation for their media campaigns as the PTC does.
Well, allow me to exercise my First Amendment right: That’s utter bullshit.
The PTC claims that its critics misrepresent its mission and goals. To argue this point, it trots out its least controversial position: Support for a la carte cable choice. This would allow cable subscribers to pick and choose which channels they want. To most people this sounds great; it sounds wholly uncontroversial; it lends itself to the libertarian, pro-consumer notion of market choice. Hell, I don’t want to pay for QVC, or the Hallmark Channel, or Lifetime. Sign me up!
But the PTC’s approach to the problem is untenable. For 70 years, telecom regulation birthed, fed and clothed the mushrooming cable industry, with its lobbyists and corporate interests. As Virginia Postrel wrote in a 2000 edition of Reason Magazine, “In the name of the ‘public interest,’ cable companies were taught, and in some cases required by law, to screw their subscribers. They learned instead to please the powers that doled out their franchises and protected them from competing technologies.” These competing technologies, primarily satellite service and the Internet, have gained a foothold over the years as a result of relaxed regulations. The PTC may espouse the consumer-friendly, uncontroversial notion of choice, but it still insists that the best – nay, the only – way to give consumers choice is through Congressional decry. Perhaps the PTC hopes that the shifty political interests of the cable conglomerates will acquiesce to the shifty political interests of its nanny state supporters. Either way, consumers will remain screwed.
To boil the PTC’s position down to its most innocuous “campaign” – giving consumers more choice – is to perform a terrible disservice to the public. The PTC has a multitude of other campaigns, which are far more controversial. For example, the PTC rails against broadcast indecency – a tenuous and entirely subjective legal concept first enumerated in 1978, in the case of FCC v. Pacifica Broadcasting. In that decision the Supreme Court ruled against the broadcasting of “indecent” material over the public airwaves. However, in 2004, Robert Corn-Revere, a former FCC official, told Congress that it was questionable whether today’s court would even re-affirm the Pacifica decision.
The PTC also has an “advertiser campaign,” in which it attempts to convince advertisers to discontinue support for mature, adult-oriented cable programs; the PTC uses this tactic to attack shows like “Nip/Tuck,” which are not under the purview of the FCC. Their video game campaign intends to stomp out sex and violence in games like “Grand Theft Auto”. Hillary Clinton is a supporter of this sort of crackdown. If it takes a village to raise a child, then the PTC is the village idiot.
The PTC Web site presents a hodgepodge of straw-man arguments and the mischaracterization of television content (if these shows were half as deviant as the PTC portrays them, I’d watch more TV). It insists that it doesn’t care about programs shown after 10 p.m., but clearly it does. Its two biggest television show campaigns are against “Rescue Me,” Dennis Leary’s award-winning show about New York City firefighters, shown at 10 p.m. on FX, and “Nip/Tuck,” the critically acclaimed black dramedy, also shown at 10 p.m. on FX.
Why listen to an organization that lies? In 2002, World Wrestling Entertainment landed a $3.5 million out-of-court settlement against the PTC for libel, after the PTC falsely claimed that the WWE was responsible for the deaths of four children, supposedly because of imitating wrestling moves. The PTC used these false “facts” in fundraising mailings for its own financial gain. I’ve never been a fan of wrestling or its steroid-abusing uber-promoter Vince McMahon, but I’ve got to hand it to the WWE: They laid the smack down on the PTC and they did it without the use of their massive forearms.
Most famously, when Janet Jackson exposed her unappealing breast during the 2003 Super Bowl, 99.8 percent of the complaints filed with the FCC came from the PTC, according to “Mediaweek.” The organization has an extremely easy-to-use FCC complaint function on its Web site (www.parentstv.org), though alas, the FCC has yet to act on any of my complaints against “7th Heaven.”
The PTC Web site features a cartoon of a hulking, crazy-eyed watchdog, labeled PTC, standing alert next to a sleeping night watchman, labeled FCC. It’s time to do what you always do when a vicious, rapacious dog ruthlessly attacks: You put it to sleep. There are numerous ways to protect children from the supposed scourge of televised sex, violence, and profanity. We don’t need the mollycoddling nanny staters to intervene.
[email protected]