TV Ratings Initiative Enters a Twilight Zone of Values

First came the V-chip. Now comes the V-word. V for values.

As President Clinton and the nation’s entertainment moguls convene at the White House today to take the first tender steps toward devising a ratings system for television, they are setting the stage for an unprecedented national discussion over what images--indeed, what values--are appropriate for the airwaves. It is territory that is largely uncharted.

And it is fraught with land mines.

“What is violence?” asked L. Brent Bozell, chairman of the Media Research Center, which publishes the Family Guide to Prime Time Television. “Is sexual content an issue? And if the V-chip is meant to program out violence, are we going to decide that John Wayne movies should not be viewed by children? What about ‘Schindler’s List’?”

Indeed, in a society that is radically divided on other so-called values issues--prayer in schools, abortion, gays in the military--it is difficult to imagine just how a ratings system will work and whether anyone will be able to agree on it.

Will shows that gracefully explore such delicate topics as homosexuals raising children receive the same ratings as programs that feature explicit heterosexual sex? Where will the Saturday morning cartoons fit in? What about sports such as boxing? What about the Miss America pageant? Who will rate the shows and how many sets of ratings will there be? Will the Christian Coalition have one ratings guide, the American Civil Liberties Union another?

“All of this is opening up a can of worms,” said Martha Dewing, who edits a newsletter that evaluates children’s videos. “Any image that you look at reflects values. The values of the producer of ‘Pulp Fiction’ are implicit in that film. If you look at ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ there are values throughout that reflect Walt Disney. I don’t think we think about that. We just turn it on.”

Today’s Hollywood powwow on Pennsylvania Avenue marks an important turning point in what has been a largely unsuccessful effort to impose ratings restrictions on the most powerful force in American culture today. The turnabout reflects the growing sense among Americans that the nation has lost its moral underpinnings--and that somehow television and the movies are at fault.

That shift has been relatively fast in coming. Four short years ago, Vice President Dan Quayle was ridiculed for complaining that the character Murphy Brown had a child out of wedlock on prime time. Today, there isn’t a politician in Washington--from Clinton to House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) to Sen. Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who nine months ago delivered a highly publicized speech attacking Hollywood--who isn’t anxious to jump on the anti-media bandwagon.

The TV executives attending today’s meeting--among them such well-known industry fixtures as Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Ovitz--are participating under duress. Despite characterizations of the new ratings system as voluntary, the industry is being forced to take action as a result of a new telecommunications bill.

The new law requires that, within two years, all new television sets bought in the United States be equipped with V-chips, electronic devices that let consumers block out offensive programming. It also gives broadcast networks one year to devise their own television ratings system--or face having the Federal Communications Commission devise one for them. The idea is that the ratings could be linked to the V-chip, so that parents will have a guide to limit what their children watch--and the technology to do it.

Yet as the politicians pat themselves on the back, industry critics predicted that ratings and the V-chip will do little to improve television’s lack of wholesome family shows.

These critics said they fear that not enough will be done to return television to the days when there were good guys and bad guys and the good guys won. Many advocate a return to the “family hour,” in which the first hour of prime-time programming would feature only those shows deemed suitable for families.

“V-chip, shmee-chip, it’s not going to work,” scoffed Michael Josephson, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Josephson Institute of Ethics. “To believe that we can find a mechanical solution to this problem is naive. How are you going to keep this stuff away from young kids if the purveyors of the media won’t exercise discretion? I don’t know whether there should be a family hour or not but the idea is that society wants to say: ‘Can we have some safe havens?’ ”

In a press statement issued Wednesday, Dole raised similar concerns.

“It is one thing to produce programs that children shouldn’t watch and to inform parents of the content of those programs,” the senator said. “But it’s another thing entirely to produce programs that parents are proud to let their children watch. That is an important distinction I hope Hollywood understands.”

Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Media Education, an advocacy group that works to improve children’s programming, said that his group is urging Clinton not to focus too heavily on technology. “He is letting them off the hook,” Chester said, “if he just focuses on getting the networks to commit to a ratings system and relying on the V-chip.”

Moreover, some critics argued that a ratings system could backfire, increasing the amount of sex and violence on television by providing cover for producers in the same way that the surgeon general’s warning on cigarette packs provides license to the tobacco industry to market their product.