TESTIMONY BEFORE THE UNITED STATES SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE AND TRANSPORTATION
by
TIMOTHY F. WINTER
President, Parents Television Council
June 26, 2007
Good day Mr.
Chairman, Mr. Vice-Chairman and Senators. Thank you for inviting me to be here
with you this morning to discuss this important subject. And may I begin Mr.
Chairman and Mr. Vice-Chairman, by saying what a personal honor it is for me to
appear before this Committee, on whose staff I had the pleasure to serve under
your good friend and former colleague, Warren Magnuson.
My name is Tim
Winter and I am President of the Parents Television Council. With almost 1.2
million members across the United States, the PTC is a non-partisan, non-profit,
grassroots organization dedicated to protecting children and families from
graphic sex, violence and profanity in entertainment.
Many in the
Congress know of the PTC mostly as a vocal advocacy group, but the lion’s share
of our effort goes into research and education. The PTC staff monitors every
hour of primetime broadcast entertainment programming and a growing amount of
original programming on basic cable. PTC media analysts enter into a powerful
computer database every instance of sex, violence, profanity, disrespect for
authority, and other program content that parents might find harmful to their
children; and we make that information available free of charge on our website
so that parents and families can make more informed media choices.
So in the course of
our work, Mr. Chairman, we at the PTC see pretty much everything. And when it
comes to violence on television, the trend of what we are seeing today is not
only concerning, it is frightening. In fact none of us would even be here today
but for a level of media violence that approaches epidemic proportions.
This past January
the PTC released Dying to Entertain – our latest Special Report analyzing
the volume and degree of violence on primetime television. The television season
which concluded last year was the most violent that the PTC has ever recorded –
averaging 4.41 instances of violence per hour during prime time, or one instance
every 13½ minutes – an increase of 75% since the 1998 television season. Over
the course of a year, that means many thousands of violent depictions are
broadcast over the public airwaves at times when millions of children are in the
audience.
Between 1998 and
2006, violence increased in every time slot, including the so-called Family Hour
of 8 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Central Time. Last year nearly half (49%) of all
episodes which aired during the study period contained at least one instance of
violence. 56% was person-on-person violence. And 54% of violent scenes
contained either a depiction of death or an implied death.
In addition to the
marked increase in the quantity of violence, we are seeing several other
disturbing trends. First, the depictions of violence have become far more
graphic and more realistic than ever before, thanks in part to enhanced computer
graphics and special effects employed in television production today. Second,
there is an alarming trend for violent scenes to include a sexual element.
Rapists, sexual predators and fetishists appear with increasing frequency on
prime time programs. Third, we are now seeing the protagonist – the person the
audience is supposed to identify with – as the perpetrator of the most violent
acts. And lastly we are seeing more children being depicted as the victims of
violence.
Mr. Chairman,
violence has played an important role in dramatic story-telling for thousands of
years. But the state of television violence is nothing like it has ever been
before. As former FCC Chairman Newt Minow recently noted, “forty years ago I
said television was a vast wasteland; now it is a toxic dump.”
Even TV critics who
generally praise shows that “push the envelope” were aghast at how grisly the TV
networks’ 2005-2006 season offerings were. The Washington Post suggested
that the season was “dominated by a new brood of a relatively new breed: shows
that are horrific on purpose, with gore as graphic and grisly as in many a
monstrous movie.” Rolling Stone said “Welcome to prime-time-network and
basic-cable television, where a bumper crop of bloodthirsty police procedurals
and high-concept thrillers is making for perhaps the most violent, sadistic TV
season ever.” The Associated Press said, “The body count in prime-time
television these days rivals that of a war zone…[making] network TV home to an
astonishing amount of blood ‘n’ guts.”
We as a nation have
been talking about the problem of TV violence for a long time, and the industry
has been providing excuses for the same duration. The House of Representatives
held hearings more than 50 years ago to explore the impact of television
violence and concluded that the “television broadcast industry was a perpetrator
and deliverer of violence.” In 1972 the Surgeon General’s office conducted an
overview of existing studies on television violence and concluded that it was a
“contributing factor to increases in violent crime and antisocial behavior.”
That was in 1972. As I will now illustrate, the manner in which violence is
depicted today has changed drastically since 1972.
We have prepared
for your staff members a DVD with a sampling of scenes containing violence from
recent television programs. Let me describe to you a few highlights or, more
appropriately, a few low-lights:
WARNING:
The program description and video below contain explicit content. Our intent is not
to offend readers, but to offer an accurate description of the program.
To learn more about our Cable Choice
campaign CLICK
HERE.
During the May 22nd
episode of NCIS that aired during the so-called "family hour" of 8 p.m.
Eastern time (7p.m. CT/MT), a drug smuggler dies when the packets in his
stomach containing the drugs release deadly amounts into his system. The drug
dealer, who was waiting for the delivery, and the smuggler's sister, a desperate
junkie, go to the hospital and attempt to retrieve the drugs from the smuggler's
body.
The scene shows the dead smuggler having his midsection sliced open and his
blood-soaked organs pulled out of his body. The man's digestive tract is sliced
open and white powder spills over his bloodied torso. When a fight ensues, one
character stabs the drug dealer with a scalpel and another character shoots the
drug dealer. Then the junkie-sister is shown with her face buried in her
brother's bloody intestines as she snorts heroin off his dead body. This episode
was rated TV-14, with no V content descriptor indicating violence.
On an episode of
C.S.I. – which normally airs at 9:00 (8:00 Central and Mountain times) and
is often repeated at 8:00 ET/PT – a young man is murdered inside a mental
institution. Investigators discover that the killer was one of the nurses in
the mental ward and mother to one of the inmates. It turns out that the woman
had been having sex with her son for many years. The boy became a psychotic
serial rapist and was institutionalized. The woman continued to send her son
love letters while he was institutionalized and eventually took a job as a nurse
at the institution so that she could continue to have sex with him. When she
learned that her son was having sex with one of the male inmates, she killed her
rival by smothering him with a pillow, then had her son cover up her crime by
bashing the dead man’s head into the ground until it became a bloody,
unrecognizable mess. Another inmate comes along, rubs his hands in the blood,
and hungrily smears it all over his face as if he wants to devour it. The
episode actually began with this horrific scene of brutality and gore – so any
parent watching TV with their children who wasn’t fast enough changing the
channel, would have been subjected to this disturbing content. Because this
program airs before 10 p.m., as many as 2 million children are in the viewing
audience on any given week, according to Nielsen.
A program called
The Shield began on the advertiser-supported, expanded-basic cable network
FX, and now the program airs on broadcast stations nationwide in syndication.
This program has featured some of the most graphic violence and – in particular
– graphic sexual violence ever seen on television – including premium
subscription networks like HBO. In one episode, Vic Mackey – the series’
anti-hero, a corrupt cop – becomes enraged when he learns that Armadillo, a
Mexican gang leader, burned one of his informants to death by “necklacing” him –
placing tires around him so that he is immobilized, then dousing him with
gasoline and setting him on fire. Vic brutally beats Armadillo, repeatedly
kicking him and hitting him in the face with a heavy book as blood spatters on
Vic’s shirt and face. Vic drags Armadillo into the kitchen and turns on an
electric stove burner, then pushes Armadillo’s face into the red-hot coils of
the burner. He pulls Armadillo’s head back so that TV audience can see the
melting and charred flesh on his face. When Vic’s men finally pull him off,
Armadillo’s mouth is filled with blood, and Vic’s face is covered with
Armadillo’s blood.
In another episode
of The Shield, Police Captain David Aceveda is forced at gunpoint to
perform oral sex on a gang member. While holding the barrel of a gun to the
policeman’s mouth, the gang member asks him, “You ever suck a dick like a cell
bitch, cop man? Huh?" He threatens to kill the officer if he doesn’t perform
fellatio, and the officer is seen and heard gagging and whimpering in
humiliation. The gang member then gets one of his friends to take a picture of
the scene as he climaxes into the policeman’s mouth. In the following season,
Captain Aceveda repeatedly acted out violent rape fantasies with a prostitute.
These basic cable
examples appeared on the FX basic cable network. Ryan Murphy, the creator of
another FX series, Nip/Tuck, publicly stated that it might be his legacy
to make possible a rear-entry sex scene on broadcast television. And Senators,
if you subscribe to a cable or satellite service, you are forced to pay almost
$9.00 every year to the FX network so they can produce and air this kind of
material. And with tens of millions of Americans forced into the industry’s
bundling scheme, FX reaps hundreds of millions of dollars each year to produce
this material, and that is before they sell even one TV commercial. FCC Chairman
Martin has rightfully pointed out that “if a family must continue to pay for
programming even when they object to it, there is little or no incentive for
programmers to respond."
This Committee has
heard personally from cable distributors who would like to provide their
customers with an opportunity to pick and choose – and pay for – only the
networks they want. But they can’t. As DISH Network CEO Charlie Ergen, and
American Cable Association president Matt Polka have told you, the cable network
media conglomerates won’t allow it. So we must ask: are the cable industry’s
Washington insiders looking out for consumers and families, or are they
protecting a business model that not only forces unwanted content into tens of
millions of homes, but also makes them pay for it?
As troubling as
those content examples are, Mr. Chairman, I am equally disgusted by the seeming
contempt the industry has for anyone who would suggest reasonable
self-restraint. Last month the CEO of Time-Warner hypocritically warned parents:
"visit the Holocaust museum in Washington and you'll see what happens when
government gets control of the message.” Yet no one is arguing that government
should do any such thing. Are we to believe that the entertainment industry
views the overwhelming concern of millions of parents and families with that
level of disdain? If so, how can we believe anything they say about wanting to
help parents protect children?
Every time the
public – and our public servants – call for more responsible behavior, the
industry refuses to have a meaningful dialog or offer real solutions. Rather
than coming before you to address the negative impact their products have on
children, they turn the conversation into a Constitutional lecture and hire a
legendary scholar to speak for them. Rather than acknowledging the scientific
evidence manifested in over a thousand medical and clinical studies, they
underwrite their own research and point to its differing, but uncorroborated,
conclusion. And rather than focusing on their statutory public interest
requirements for using the public airwaves, they shift the conversation to
entertainment in general and invoke the always-sobering term, “chilling effect.”
Many TV executives have used this term publicly to denounce the FCC’s Janet
Jackson ruling and the impact it’s had on their business. But I wonder how
“chilling” things really are if, as we’ve read in TV industry trade papers, the
Fox broadcast network will be airing a program this fall where an amorous monkey
joins a man and woman in a sexual encounter.
But I suppose the
industry’s behavior should come as no surprise. Look at their track record.
After the Janet Jackson incident, television executives were quick to come
before the Congress to pledge zero-tolerance for indecency. Shortly thereafter
they filed a federal lawsuit which would allow them to use the F-word at any
time of the day, even in front of millions of children. And sadly they managed
to find two judges in New York City who agreed to that preposterous abuse of the
public airwaves.
In a slap in the
face to the Congress and to millions of outraged families, CBS will be arguing
in front of the Third Circuit in September that the Super Bowl striptease was
not indecent. To add insult to injury, a few years ago CBS’ parent company
signed a Consent Decree with the FCC admitting to violating broadcast decency
law, agreeing to pay a fine and submitting to a detailed compliance plan to
insure that indecent material would not meet its air during the times when
children are most likely to be in the audience. To this day, there is no hint
that CBS has implemented the terms of this Consent Decree.
Through efforts
like the “TV Boss” campaign, the industry promised you hundreds of millions of
dollars to educate parents on content-blocking technologies, yet all objective
data shows that parents still have no constructive grasp over the TV ratings
system or the technologies that are reliant upon them.
And speaking of the
rating system, let’s talk about parental controls for a moment. When the V-Chip
was introduced the television industry denounced it as censorial heresy. That
is, they denounced it until they found a way to manipulate what was supposed to
be a simple and transparent prophylactic device. Instead the industry turned the
V-Chip into a means for even more graphic content while using it as an excuse to
violate the broadcast decency law.
Our research into
the television ratings system has repeatedly concluded that the industry’s
application of it is arbitrary, inconsistent, capricious and self-serving. In a
study we released this past April, content ratings descriptors were either
inaccurate or missing 2/3rds of the time. During the study period,
not one single program on primetime broadcast television was rated TV-MA,
meaning that the networks felt all of their content was appropriate for children
as young as 14.
Mr. Chairman,
please understand that this is an industry that I love with every fiber of my
being. I spent most of my career – more than 20 years – working in the media
industry, the majority of which was in broadcasting and cable television. It is
a wonderful business, capable of producing not only enlightening, educating and
entertaining programming, but it is also a lucrative business with profit
margins that most industries can only dream of. But with the ability to deliver
a product directly into every home in America comes a duty to serve the public
interest. As Commissioner Copps stated in this very room, the term “public
interest” appears no less than 112 times in the original law that addresses the
use of the public airwaves. But by my count, the terms “Nielsen Ratings” or
“advertiser cost per thousand” or “earnings per share” never once appeared. I
have publicly stated a number of times that “public interest” and “corporate
interest” are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes the two do not see eye-to eye,
and when they don’t, it is the public interest which must prevail. I ask you,
Mr. Chairman, when does hurting children serve the public interest?
Nobody on Capitol
Hill needs help from me in reading data from a national poll, but last week we
all received information that needs to be carefully considered here today. The
highly respected Kaiser Family Foundation released data proving just how
concerned parents are about this matter. Even though the vast majority of
parents say they are closely monitoring the media behavior of their children,
parents are so concerned about the harmful content that still reaches their kids
that 66% favor new regulation to limit the amount of sex and violence during the
early evening hours. Let me say that again: 2/3rds of parents favor
new regulation. Clearly the status quo is not working.
Mr. Chairman, the
entertainment industry could help if it wanted to, but it doesn’t want to.
Producers should step back and reconsider their seeming urge for
“one-upsmanship” in their depictions of ever-more-graphic violent content.
Broadcasters could air graphic material later at night, when children are in
bed. And the cable industry could allow its customers to select and pay for the
cable networks they want to purchase.
The industry knows
graphic and indecent material is inappropriate for certain audiences and at
certain times. They embrace rules to prevent words and actions from being used
in their workplace which could be sexually harassing. In fact the content
samples above could constitute grounds for dismissal of a network employee if
he/she acted in such a way to a coworker. And the industry regularly
incorporates into employment agreements what is called a Morals Clause, allowing
them to fire an employee or an artist for broadly-defined behavior. Yet they
somehow justify delivering material like I’ve just described into living rooms
around the country.
When it comes to
behaving responsibly, sadly the industry is the model of inertia. Only when
forced by the public through you is there every any positive movement undertaken
by the industry.
Mr. Chairman, I
know in my heart that the industry is capable of solving this issue if they
truly wanted to. The people I worked with during my twenty-plus years in the
industry are brilliant and creative. In fact the industry did implement
solutions for decades in the past. But the question is: will they help to solve
this issue today? If the National Rifle Association can help the Congress pass
consensus gun control legislation, then I believe Hollywood can help the
Congress deal with this issue. Moreover, it must.
Representing more
than a million concerned families, we stand ready to work with you to forge real
solutions to these problems. I hope the industry will step up and join us.
Thank you.
►
To review the PTC’s latest research on violence during primetime
broadcast television,
click here.
►
For details about the PTC’s
research on the TV ratings system,
click here.
Parents Television Council,
www.parentstv.org, PTC,
Clean Up TV Now, Because our children are watching, The
nation's most influential advocacy organization, Protecting
children against sex, violence and profanity in
entertainment, Parents Television Council Seal of Approval,
and Family Guide to Prime Time Television
are trademarks of the Parents Television Council.
TESTIMONY BEFORE THE UNITED STATES SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE AND TRANSPORTATION
