Ramblings From Justin Penney

On today's "All Things Considered" there were two interesting stories about values and media. I'll update the link once it gets archived by NPR but in case I don't get to it, today is January 11, 2005.

The first story about values was titled "Families Wrestle with Concerns on TV Indecency." They talked with two politically different families about their values and how they project them toward TV. It was interesting to hear about such prudish people. Both of these families actually mute the TV during beer commercials!

During the leadup to this show they said that 60% of families that responded to this poll that they were looking at were concerned about sexual situations on TV but only 53% were concerned about violence. The U.S. is severely screwed if this is our priority in teaching moral values. Basically it's saying, at least to me, that sex is worse that violence. That while 99.999% of adults will participate in sex that we need to protect kids more from this than violence which I'm assuming is practiced by a much lower percentage of the adult population. Think if we practiced violence like we practiced sex.

The second story was an interview with Tipper Gore regarding her push for the explicit content warning labels that she pushed through. It's interesting to hear her take on it. I don't completely disagree with rating things so parents can make informed decisions but I did and do understand the fear of a rating being used nearly as censorship. When was the last time you saw an NC-17 movie? The MA rating for video games is just now being used in any noticable way. When you combine a quick judgement, like a rating, with a heavy handed morality, like the evil empire of Wal-Mart, you create and not officially sanctioned environtment of censorship.

# posted by Justin @ 7:17 PM