A Need for a Fresh Ending

Today Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will hold the entertainment industry up for some well-deserved, old-fashioned ridicule, obloquy and contempt. The occasion is a Senate Commerce Committee hearing prompted by a yearlong Federal Trade Commission investigation, which unassailably details how the industry has marketed ultraviolent fare to consumers under the age of 18.

Some legislators at today’s hearing will no doubt go overboard in reacting to the FTC report, proposing excessively zealous regulation that would tramp on constitutional free-speech rights and produce regulatory nightmares. We’ve been to that movie before; there has to be an effort to replace the stale ending with something fresh and productive.

Some critics have suggested tobacco-style lawsuits against the motion picture industry for using movie trailers, toys and other “Joe Camel”-like marketing to lure teenagers to watch movies ostensibly intended for adults. Instead, legislators should focus on jawboning Hollywood industry leaders toward better self-, not government, regulation.

Studio heads--who have one and all declined to appear before Congress--would retort that movies, recordings, videos and video games all have ratings systems. But the systems are rarely effective in keeping kids away. Many theaters are lax in barring underage customers from restricted movies, and FTC investigators found that most stores did not hesitate to sell children Mature-rated video games, which are the most appallingly violent few such games.

Today’s hearing will be useful only if it motivates everyone involved in the entertainment industry--from chain store owners to movie studios--to participate in self-regulation. Such a system should have specific goals, like seeing that clerks check IDs before selling or renting M-rated or R-rated video games and movies. Cable companies and TV networks should encourage and educate parents to use the V-chip, which can block shows according to their content rating and which comes with most new television sets. And the truth is, there are also some things better left unproduced.

Sid Ganis, former head of worldwide marketing for Sony’s Columbia Pictures and now a producer at the studio, certainly gets it. Ganis said Tuesday in the entertainment industry newspaper Daily Variety that while the 1st Amendment should protect Hollywood from more intrusive regulatory efforts, “as Thomas Paine wrote, ‘Freedom does come with responsibility.’ We know young kids are easily influenced; therefore, we have to check our responsibility over and over. Most of us know right from wrong, inappropriate from appropriate. Some few, however, don’t.”

That surely applies to the asleep-at-the-wheel parents who allow their children to rent and buy inappropriate videos and games. Would that Washington could do something to instill better parental guidance in the home. What Washington can do is remind those responsible for making violent “entertainment” and the like that self-imposed industry checks are the best antidote to meddling from government.