Bennett, Allies Open Fire on Daytime TV Talk Shows : Culture: After battling gangsta rap, the former drug czar and two senators, launch drive to get rid of programs they say are demeaning.

Influential political figures whose intense battle against gangsta rap helped pressure Time Warner Inc. to unload its rap music label have a new target: daytime TV talk shows.

At a Washington press conference Thursday, William J. Bennett, the nation’s former drug czar and current co-director of Empower America, and Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) launched a campaign to get rid of the televised talkfests that they claim debase American culture and cause harm to children.

“The worst of television is the daytime talk shows,” Bennett said at the conference, naming several programs hosted by personalities such as Ricki Lake, Jenny Jones, Sally Jessy Raphael, Jerry Springer, Montel Williams and Maury Povich.

Though Bennett and others stopped short of threatening censorship or formal boycotts of the programs or their sponsors, they called upon the shows to stop featuring titillating subject matter while urging the public to stop participating on the shows and watching them.

The strategy in addressing the talk shows is to create “a hue and cry across the land” that will persuade the shows’ producers, advertisers and viewers into changing their ways, Bennett said.

Still, the campaign as yet has not approached the level of intensity that Bennett and others maintained when they pressured Time Warner about its marketing of rap music that they insisted “celebrates the rape, torture and murder of women.”

The anti-rap onslaught by Bennett; C. Delores Tucker, chairwoman of the National Political Congress of Black Women; Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and other politicians forced Time Warner’s hand, prompting the company last month to unload the successful Interscope Records, home to such popular rap artists as Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre.

Daytime talk shows have a notably larger audience than does gangsta rap. Of the targeted shows, “Jenny Jones,” “Ricki Lake” and “Montel Williams” last week ranked among the most popular syndicated talk shows in the country. Jones and Lake both attracted about 4.3 million households, and the three shows also ranked among the top 10 syndicated shows among women aged 18 to 34--an extremely popular demographic slice for advertisers.

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Bennett and Lieberman emphasized that they were not targeting “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “Regis and Kathie Lee” or other talk shows that they said did not lean as much toward the sensational.

Bennett’s new campaign marks the second major attack against daytime talk shows in a year. Controversy erupted in March after a “Jenny Jones” show in which a gay man, Scott Amedure, confronted a heterosexual guest, Jonathan Schmitz, whom he said he desired sexually. Three days later, Schmitz shot Amedure.

“In these shows, indecent exposure is celebrated as a virtue,” Bennett declared. “It is hard to remember now, but there once was a time when personal or marital failure were accompanied by guilt or embarrassment. But today, these conditions are a ticket to appear as a guest on the Sally Jessy Raphael show, the Ricki Lake show, the Jerry Springer show, or one of the dozen or so like him.”

While the anti-talk advocates admitted that no specific data exists to document the effect such shows may be having on viewers, Lieberman insisted that “the proliferation of perversion on daytime television is affecting our entire society by the example it sets, pushing the envelope of civility and morality in a way that drags the rest of the culture down with it. It is a vicious circle, fueled by the competition among talk show hosts to be the most sensational, and one with no apparent end in sight.”

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Producers of the shows reacted to the complaints with silence or denials that their programs are causing any harm. One producer said his show provided harmless entertainment, in addition to offering a forum for people who were having a hard time working out their personal problems.

“I don’t think daytime talk shows are putting drug dealers or gang members on the street,” said Richard Dominick, executive producer of “Jerry Springer.”

“There is not a pregnant teen who blames Ricki Lake for getting pregnant, and Susan Smith didn’t kill her children because she watched Jerry Springer.”

Dominick added: “We take real people with real lives and real issues and put them on TV. These shows are one of the only forums left for an average person to go and speak their mind. That’s what makes this country so great.”

“We are proud of our show,” said Povich in a statement. “I think the goals William Bennett has laid out for making a positive difference in the lives of our viewers are the goals we try to reach everyday.”

Bennett and Lieberman cited several examples of what they called inappropriate shows: On “Jerry Springer,” a male guest admitted to sleeping with his girlfriend’s mother. “Jenny Jones” featured a segment in which a husband who had been seeing a prostitute for two years was confronted by his wife.

A Montel Williams show played host to a 17-year-old girl who bragged about sleeping with over 100 men. On “Geraldo,” a pimp threatened to “leave my [expletive] ring print” on the forehead of an audience member as scantily dressed prostitutes sat near him.

Lieberman also noted that several of the shows were produced by giant media entities similar to Time Warner, including 20th Century Fox Film Co., Columbia-TriStar Studios and Tribune Co..