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TV violence bill heads to Senate next week
Thu May 10, 2007 7:31PM EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller is set to introduce legislation next week aimed at protecting children from violent television programming, an aide to the senator said on Thursday.
The bill is likely include some of the recommendations from a recent government report that concludes Congress could craft laws to regulate violent content without trampling on constitutional protections for free speech, the aide said.
Rockefeller, who has complained that violent television content is reaching “epidemic proportions,” is a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, which is scheduled to hold a hearing on media violence next Thursday.
“(The bill) will be dropped before the hearing. It is imminent,” said the aide, who asked not to be named and declined to describe what the legislation would include.
In 2005, Rockefeller, of West Virginia, tried to move legislation that would protect children from media violence. But it failed to advance.
The report by the Federal Communications Commission last month found that exposure to violence in the media can increase aggressive behavior in children, at least for a short while. Its recommendations included limiting violent television content to certain hours of the day.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has said the problem could be addressed by forcing the cable and satellite industry to offer “a la carte” programming, which would let parents choose which specific channels come with their television packages.
But media company executives say the government has no business telling them what to air and any regulations would be found unconstitutional by the courts.
Currently the FCC does not have the authority to regulate violence on the airwaves, although it does have the power to regulate obscenity, sexual content and profanity.
Members of Congress had asked the FCC more than three years ago whether the agency could define violent programming that is harmful to children and regulate it without infringing on free speech.
Reuters/Nielsen
One of the many freedoms that Americans seem to take for granted is the liberty to say what we like. This freedom was given to us in the First Amendment. This part of the Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or the press. (Boyer, Purity in Print, 98).” Censorship is “the changing or the suppression or prohibition of speech or writing that is condemned as subversive of the common good” (Garry, An American Paradox, 187)
In this article, it talks about how children watch an average of three to four hours of television on a daily basis. It describes how the television can be