V Is for Vacuous Censorship : TV: The government’s V-chip to block violent shows will require government ratings.

The presidential campaign has stirred up some troubling political winds that are headed, ominously, in the direction of the entertainment industry. Indeed, Hollywood seems to be a favorite scapegoat of both ends of the ideological spectrum this election season. First, Sen. Bob Dole castigated Hollywood for “dealing in nightmares of depravity”--this in a year when the Golden Globes for best pictures went to “Sense and Sensibility” and “Babe.” Then President Clinton launched his frontal attack, asking Congress to require the so-called V-chip in TV sets “so parents can screen out programs which they believe are inappropriate.”

Congress did so in the sweeping telecommunications bill passed last Thursday.

Like all would-be censors, Clinton and Dole assure us that the legislation is not a form of censorship. Well, of course it is. In order to trigger the V-chip, a show must be given a rating, whether by the industry or by the government. Shows that are rated V for violent content--”ER”? “Schindler’s List”? “NYPD Blue,” of course--necessarily can expect to have narrower potential audiences and so will become harder to get made in the future.

Even more worrisome than the president’s proposing a solution to on-screen violence are the assumptions behind it. At a recent conference in Nashville, which both the president and vice president attended, Al Gore said: “The link between television violence and violence in the streets is exactly analogous to the link between cigarette smoke and cancer.”

The first problem with this proposition is that it is obviously not true. Pro-chip politicians have seized on studies, such as the National Television Violence Study released this week, asserting that violence on TV increases violence in society. But the same television shows that air in Detroit are seen across the river in Windsor, Canada, and yet Detroit has 30 times as many murders per capita as does the province of Ontario, which includes Windsor. The same comparison could be made between rural areas in America generally and the large urban centers that are the centers of the nation’s violence; or, for that matter, between different areas of the same city, say, Brentwood and South-Central Los Angeles. Television shows that allegedly produce violence in one neighborhood don’t in another. Obviously there’s more to the causes of violence than is dreamt of by the V-chip philosophers and pop psychologists.

But what if we began to act on their assumptions? If television violence were the actual cause of the violence that is killing so many of our young people, why not ban it? Wouldn’t that be the kinder, gentler, nobler thing to do? If anyone thinks that this “solution” is farfetched, consider those smokers now cowering in the doorways of office buildings. Would anyone have predicted that five years ago?

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the current wisdom is the evident fact that the sages--no matter what the political affiliation--obviously don’t go to many movies or, outside of C-Span and PBS, watch much television. Five of the six top-grossing films in 1995 were “Apollo 13,” “Toy Story,” “Pocahontas,” “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls” and “Casper.” “There are fewer violent subjects,” Robert Redford remarked about this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which is considered an indicator of cinematic trends. “There are more subjects having to do with the more intricate parts of human relationships and the dynamics of families,” festival director Geoffrey Gilmore agreed.

Television is also performing more pacifically than the political commentary would indicate. According to a study by UCLA’s Center for Communications Policy, only 10 of 121 network prime-time television series airing last season raised frequent concerns about violence. “In prime-time series, there is very little ‘killing,’ and the graphic violence shown in the past . . . is rarely seen today,” said study director Jeffrey Cole. At Gore’s Nashville conference, Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, noted that of the 60 top-ranked network television shows, hardly any are violent. Unfortunately, neither the vice president nor the reformers in attendance seemed daunted by this fact.

Nonetheless, the V-chip provision and its rating board will now become law. Some free-speech-minded officials, such as Rep. Jack Fields (R-Texas), chairman of the House Telecommunications and Finance Subcommittee, believe that it will be found unconstitutional. But in the meantime, the libertarians among us will regret yet another heavy-handed move to do what’s politically expedient, what the emotion of the moment seems to demand. We agree with Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who noted that parents already have a V-chip: “the on-off switch.”