FTC Tunes Into Violence in Children’s Media

Inside the Federal Trade Commission’s monolith of cement and steel, some of the agency’s finest lawyers are reading not only Legal Times but Billboard, Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter.

They are poring over lists of more than 15,000 films rated since 1968, watching MTV videos and perusing gory computer games. Next month, they plan to take a field trip to San Luis Obispo to hear actor Ernest Borgnine at a forum on violence in the movies.

Four months into the $1-million study that grew out of last spring’s Colorado high school massacre, the 85-year-old trade watchdog--the small but powerful agency that first went after Microsoft Corp.--is immersed in behind-the-scenes Hollywood, working to sort fact from fiction in one of the most challenging controversies to surround the entertainment industry in years.

Government attorneys have asked for the sort of confidential information that industry officials say even the studios do not see. They want to examine the Motion Picture Assn. of America’s ratings files on the top-grossing PG-13 and R-rated movies of 1997 and 1998--including “Face/Off,” “Lethal Weapon 4” and “Armageddon.”

A half dozen of the FTC’s most experienced legal minds, one economist and a Stanford marketing professor are deciphering how movies are rated for violence, who decides which violence is inappropriate for children and how those decisions are made. They are finding imaginative ways to penetrate an entertainment world that they confess to know little about, asking student interns to mail-order dark video games and cruise teen Web sites from home so there will be no government footprints.

All the while, FTC officials are working to assure a nervous Hollywood that this is a benign government “study” of the marketing of violence to children, not a McCarthyist throwback to the days of subpoenas, loyalty oaths and blacklists.

“It’s a new area for us and we have a lot to learn,” said Mary Koelbel Engle, FTC project director of the study. “All we are going to do is report. We are not going to say it’s right or wrong to target 14- or 15-year-olds [in marketing violent products]. Just whether or not it is being done.”

Even so, whatever findings the FTC produces by the end of next year almost certainly will frame the political debate over violent music, movies and video games that some industry critics believe are inspiring children to kill.

So far, the commission’s initial queries about matters confidential have raised some hackles and at least one finding in the industry’s favor.

What had been portrayed by President Clinton and Congress as an especially alarming advertisement for a video game was not really an advertisement at all, FTC lawyers determined. “More Fun Than Shooting Your Neighbor’s Cat” turned out to be a headline for a story in an electronics magazine.

“That only reinforced our objective,” Engle said. “We want to do a professional study and not make any assumptions. There are lots of rumors and innuendo in terms of how things are being marketed. We want to get the facts straight.”

The fact-finding process already has been met with some resistance from a creative, sometimes neurotic industry unaccustomed to federal meddling, reluctant to cooperate but afraid to stonewall.

When the FTC asked to see the ratings board files, MPAA President Jack Valenti protested, insisting that they are--like the names of the Los Angeles-area parents who rate the films--secret. The FTC gave assurances that it would respect confidentiality but has made clear that it intends to look anyway, agency officials said.

The agency’s vigorous agenda soon will take it to the files of major studios, recording companies and computer game manufacturers, officials said. Of particular interest:

* Memos, focus group research and strategies that may show efforts to market to children the movies, music and videos that the industry has rated for mature audiences.

* What access children have to violent products in record stores, theaters and movie rental outlets.

* The marketing of action figures derived from PG-13 films--such as “Men in Black”--but tailored to children 5 and up.

* Previews for R-rated movies that are shown before G-rated features are screened.

The commission has looked into Hollywood before in investigations of unfair competition. But the marketing of violence strikes at the heart of content, which is protected by the 1st Amendment, and puts the agency into precarious legal territory.

So far, the latest bicoastal encounter resembles a polite but awkward dance between two unwilling partners. “It’s a tar baby. Nobody wanted to do this,” said a Washington attorney familiar with the study. “The FTC didn’t want this. The industry didn’t want this. It skates very close to the 1st Amendment.”

It is by no measure a typical case for an independent agency accustomed to examining corporate mega-mergers and cracking down on Madison Avenue deception. This is a classic clash of East Coast meets West Coast, wingtips going toe-to-toe with Italian loafers.

“There are culture gaps,” said Marty Kaplan, who has circulated in both venues as a former speech writer for onetime Democratic presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale and as a producer for Disney Studios. “Hollywood is still the wild West, the Yukon and the frontier. And Washington is, certainly in principle, button-down. But when you look beneath the surface, you have Washington undoing its buttons notoriously and Hollywood full of MBA cadres getting ready for the next quarterly meeting with the analysts.”

Even industry types averse to government interference agree that the trade commission, which monitors every sort of industry from fur-makers to funeral parlors, is capable of eventually figuring out Hollywood.

“The FTC will ultimately discover that the studios, like any other business, are accountable to bottom lines and looking to make products that are both economically beneficial but have some quality,” said one Hollywood lobbyist in Washington. “I don’t think the culture chasm is so great that it can’t be bridged over time.”

A previous FTC foray into the area of children’s advertising was a searing experience for the agency. Twenty years ago, the commission considered banning all television advertising of products to children under 8 and all advertising of sugar products to children under 13 unless accompanied by a tooth-decay disclaimer. The Washington press branded the FTC the “national nanny” in what came to be known as “the kid vid” debacle. The agency was nearly stripped of its funding.

“No one wants to go through kid vid again,” Engle said. “There are enough people still at the agency who personally know about it. The lessons have been learned. We are cognizant of going too far.”

If the FTC has an aim in all this, it is to get the industry to self-regulate by reining in violence in products that appeal to children.

“It is creative expression, and for the government to look at how it is marketed treads very close to the 1st Amendment,” Engle said.

“The industry’s concern is that no matter what we say or how we report our findings, Congress will turn it around and use it as a basis for legislation. Then all bets are off. But that’s all the more reason for the industry to come up with a system that works.”