Industry Defends Music Videos Against Sex, Violence Criticism

A warning published in a medical journal this week concerning the possible dangers of music videos to younger children has sent the video industry and its clients, music video programmers and the major record companies to the ramparts.

Industry officials are defending their business from criticism raised in the current issue of the American Academy of Pediatricians’ newsletter that music videos contain an excess of sexual and violent imagery.

“We feel we’ve done more than a responsible job of policing ourselves,” said Barry Kluger, vice president of press affairs for MTV Networks. Citing the recent introduction on MTV and VH-1 of live broadcasts of rock charity events for social and environmental causes, Kluger added, “We’ve been showing there are two sides to the rock ‘n’ roll coin.”

“Our particular production house is working very hard in this area,” said Joni Sighvatsson, a production executive with Propaganda Films, a leading video producer. “We have always pitched our tents with movies rather (than) TV programming, and movies too are putting less sex and violence into their stories.”

Dr. Victor Strasburger, an Albuquerque, N. M., pediatrician who helped prepare the doctors’ position paper, does not necessarily disagree. “We know there’s a lot of sex and violence out there in the society--you can’t shield your children from everything,” he said in a telephone interview this week.

Instead, he and his colleagues wonder why there is so little counter-programming--public service announcements for contraceptives, AIDS education and the like--to help moderate the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll mythology.

“The penetration of the adolescent market by MTV and other music video outlets is now 50%,” noted Strasburger. “Why can’t we use this to some advantage, to some kind of educational end? Instead, kids are picking up the idea that instant gratification is the only game in town.”

Strasburger said the genesis for the music video warning to parents--in which the academy suggests that parents watch music videos with their children and try to moderate the negative influences of the images--came about only recently, when repeated “back-channel efforts” to correct the perceived sexist slant of videos went unheeded.

Both Kluger and Sighvatsson agreed in principle with the academy’s concerns. “There’s no doubt in our minds that parents have to take a more decisive role in this problem,” Kluger said.

At the same time, however, both Kluger and Sighvatsson said producers and networks can’t respond to the pressure from every group that has a suggestion that affects their programming.

“It’s very much a ‘Pandora’s box’ sort of question,” Sighvatsson said. “Once you ask people to approach making videos with this list of concerns, you are asking in all sorts of other related problems. Instead, we have found that allowing uncompelled good taste to be exercised by the video producers and the record companies, the videos we have made (Steve Winwood’s “Roll With It” and many Sting videos, for example) manage to be provocative without being controversial.”