Hollywood Simply Can No Longer Abdicate Its Responsibility to Kids

The signatories are announcing this appeal at a press conference today in Washington, D.C.

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American parents today are deeply worried about their children’s exposure to an increasingly toxic popular culture. The events in Littleton, Colo., are only the most recent reminder that something is deeply amiss in our media age. Violence and explicit sexual content in television, films, music and video games have escalated sharply in recent years. Children of all ages now are being exposed to a barrage of images and words that threaten not only to rob them of normal childhood innocence but also to distort their view of reality and even undermine their character growth.

These concerns know no political or partisan boundaries. According to a recent CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll, 76% of adults agree that TV, movies and popular music are negative influences on children, and 75% report that they make efforts to protect children from such harmful influences. Nearly the same number say shielding children from the negative influences of today’s media culture is “nearly impossible.”

Moreover, there is a growing public appreciation of the link between our excessively violent and degrading entertainment culture and the horrifying new crimes we see emerging among our young: schoolchildren gunning down teachers and fellow students en masse, killing sprees inspired by violent films, teenagers murdering their babies only to return to dance at the prom.

Clearly, many factors are contributing to the crisis--negligent parenting, ineffective schools, family disintegration and the ready availability of firearms. But, among researchers, the proposition that entertainment violence adversely influences attitudes and behavior is no longer controversial; there is overwhelming evidence of its harmful effects. Numerous studies show that degrading images of violence and sex have a desensitizing effect. Nowhere is the threat greater than to our at-risk youth--youngsters whose disadvantaged environments make them susceptible to acting upon impulses shaped by violent and dehumanizing media imagery.

In the past, the entertainment industry was more conscious of its unique responsibility for the health of our culture. For 30 years, television lived by the National Assn. of Broadcasters television code, which detailed responsibilities to the community, children and society and prescribed specific programming standards. For many years, this voluntary code set boundaries that enabled television to thrive as a creative medium without causing undue damage to the bedrock values of our society.

In recent years, several top entertainment executives have spoken out on the need for minimum standards and, more recently, on the desirability of more family-friendly programming. But to effect real change, these individual expressions must transform into a new, collective affirmation of social responsibility on the part of the media industry as a whole.

We, the undersigned, call on executives of the media industry--as well as CEOs of companies that advertise in the electronic media--to join with us and with America’s parents in a new social compact aimed at renewing our culture and making our media environment more healthy for our society and safer for our children. We call on industry leaders in all media--television, film, music, video and electronic games--to band together to develop a new voluntary code of conduct, broadly modeled on the NAB code.

The code we envision would affirm in clear terms the industry’s vital responsibilities for the health of our culture; establish certain minimum standards for violent, sexual and degrading material for each medium, below which producers can be expected not to go; commit the industry to an overall reduction in the level of entertainment violence; ban the practice of targeting of adult-oriented entertainment to youth markets; provide for more accurate information to parents on media content; commit to the creation of “windows” or “safe havens” for family programming, including a revival of TV’s “family hour” and, finally, pledge significantly greater creative efforts to develop family-oriented entertainment.

We strongly urge parents to express their support for this voluntary code of conduct directly to media executives and advertisers with telephone calls, letters, faxes or e-mails and to join us in becoming signers of this appeal via the Internet at www.media-appeal.org. And we call on all parents to fulfill their part of the compact by responsibly supervising their children’s media exposure.

We are not advocating censorship or wholesale strictures on artistic creativity. We are not demanding that all entertainment be geared to young children. Finally, we are not asking government to police the media.

Rather, we are urging the entertainment industry to assume a decent minimum of responsibility for its own actions and take modest steps of self-restraint. And we are asking parents to help in this task by taking responsibility for shielding their own children and also by making their concerns known to media executives and advertisers.

Hollywood has an enormous influence on America, particularly the young. By making a concerted effort to turn its energies to promoting decent, shared values and strengthening American families, the entertainment industry has it within its power to help make an America worthy of the third millennium. We, as leaders from government, the religious community, the nonprofit world and the private sector, along with members of the entertainment community, challenge the entertainment industry to this great task. We appeal to those who are reaping great profits to give something back. We believe that by choosing to do good, the entertainment industry can also make good, and both the industry and our society will be richer and better as a result.

STEVE ALLEN

WILLIAM J. BENNETT, co-director, Empower America

DAVID BLANKENHORN, president, Institute for American Values

FREDERICK BORSCH, bishop, Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles

BILL BRIGHT, founder and president, Campus Crusade for Christ

SISSELA BOK, distinguished fellow, Harvard Center for Population Studies

L. BRENT BOZELL III, chairman, Parents Television Council

SEN. SAM BROWNBACK (R-Kan.)

JIMMY CARTER

LYNNE V. CHENEY, senior fellow, American Enterprise Institute

STEPHEN R. COVEY, co-founder and vice chairman, Franklin Covey Co.

MARIO CUOMO, former governor of New York

JOHN J. DiIULIO, JR., professor of politics, University of Pennsylvania

DON EBERLY, director, the Civil Society Project

AMITAI ETZIONI, professor, George Washington University

VIC FARACI, senior vice president, Warner Brothers Records

GERALD R. FORD

WILLIAM GALSTON, professor and director, Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland

ELIZABETH FOX-GENOVESE, professor of humanities, Emory University

MANDELL GANCHROW, president, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations

NORTON GARFINKLE, chairman, Oxford Management Corp.

ROBERT GEORGE, professor of jurisprudence, Princeton University

GEORGE GERBNER, telecommunications professor, Temple University; dean emeritus, Annenberg School for Communications, University of Pennsylvania

PATRICK GLYNN, director, Media Social Responsibility Project, Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies, George Washington University

OS GUINNESS, senior fellow, the Trinity Forum

ROBERT HANLEY, actor, writer, director; founder and president, Entertainment Fellowship

STEPHEN A. HAYNER, president, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship

GERTRUDE HIMMELFARB, professor emeritus of history, City University of New York graduate school

MARK HONIG, executive director, Parents Television Council

JAMES DAVISON HUNTER, professor of sociology and religious studies, University of Virginia

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON, dean and communications professor, Annenberg School for Communications, University of Pennsylvania

NAOMI JUDD

JACK KEMP, co-director, Empower America

CAROL LAWRENCE

SEN. JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN (D-Conn.)

SEN. JOHN McCAIN (R-Ariz.)

E. MICHAEL McCANN, district attorney, Milwaukee County, Wis.

THOMAS MONAGHAN, president, Ave Maria Foundation

RICHARD JOHN NEUHAUS, president, Institute on Religion and Public Life

ARMAND M. NICHOLI, JR., associate clinical professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

SAM NUNN, former U.S. senator from Georgia

NEIL POSTMAN, professor, New York University

ALVIN POUSSAINT, director, Judge Baker Children’s Center, Boston

GEN. COLIN POWELL (ret.)

EUGENE RIVERS, co-chair, National Ten Point Leadership Foundation

GEN. NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF (ret.)

GLENN TINDER, professor of political science emeritus, University of Massachusetts

C. DELORES TUCKER, chair and convening founder, the National Political Congress of Black Women

JOAN VAN ARK, actress, producer, director

JIM WALLIS, editor, Sojourners magazine; leader, Call to Renewal program

DAVID WALSH, president, National Institute on Media and the Family

JERRY M. WIENER, emeritus professor psychiatry and pediatrics, George Washington University

ELIE WIESEL, professor in the humanities, Boston University

JAMES Q. WILSON, professor emeritus, UCLA

ALAN WOLFE, professor, Boston University

DANIEL YANKELOVICH, president, the Public Agenda