Jane Doe

Professor Runyon

English 102

April 13, 2004

A Call for a New Ratings System

Despite continuing complaints from some parents concerning their perception that the current age-based rating system for television programs is ineffective, not everyone agrees that the television rating system needs to be revised or replaced.

            In fact, some people are adamantly against a new rating system because they see no need or value for a new one. Their belief is that a new rating system will be expensive to implement and will likely create a system as confusing as the current one. While a new system possibly could still create some confusion about the ratings, many parents are willing to take the risk . According to the article “New TV Ratings,” parents are in favor of new legislation because it will take the guessing out of what a child watches (“New TV Ratings”). The current rating systems obviously lacks clarity, and an effort must be made to create one that parents could more readily understand. Under a new system, parents would definitely know what their child is watching. The guessing would be gone on a television show’s content.

Sissela Bok addresses another opposition to a new rating system. She says that the television industry is not responsible to play "parent" to a child and provide content ratings. Parents already have the most powerful control over what their children watch on TV--the on/off button (Bok 135). This position may be the belief held by many, but James Steyer reports it does not agree with many legal precedences. He argues that the United States Supreme court has consistently upheld decisions and efforts to promote positive viewing to the public (Steyer 132). These actions demonstrate the government’s acceptance of its responsibility to protect the innocence of its citizens. The United Nations has also shed light on the protection of the innocence of children. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child in 1989 articulated this official position: "The state shall ensure the accessibility to children of information and material from a diversity of sources and it shall encourage the mass media to disseminate information which is of social and cultural benefit to the child, and take steps to protect him or her from harmful material" (Bok 118). The television industry may claim that protecting children by providing information to parents is not their responsibility, but these cases prove otherwise. The television industry needs to promote positive viewing like the Supreme Court has upheld. Part of this positive viewing is providing parents with necessary ratings so they can make decisions about what their child can and cannot watch. The U.N. article requires protecting a child from harmful material. The television industry needs to do their part to help protect our children. If providing better content ratings means playing “parent,” then so be it. Not providing better ratings proposes a risk of breaking the clearly established rights of a child.

Critics of changing the television industry’s rating system to one similar to the movie rating system may be correct in saying that the motion pictures industry’s rating system may also be confusing. We have all seen movies rated PG-13 that probably should have been rated R. Nevertheless, while the movie rating system has flaws, the system still has some clear cut advantages. One of the advantages is that theaters can ask for an age identification before a patron is admitted into the theater. This concept is similar to the age-based rating system of the television industry, but has a greater success rate because of its direct monitoring. Another advantage of the movie rating system is the availability of the movie ratings. Movie ratings are printed explicitly everyday for a parent to review in the newspaper. Also, movie reviews are printed in the newspaper or available online for a parent to review the content of the movie. Many may point fingers at the motion picture industry’s rating system, but they seem to be having a greater success than the television industry. The motion picture industry makes information more readily available to all parents.

The television industry may cry censorship and infringement of rights, but a new rating system is nothing of the sort. Laws have been passed that require certain magazines and videos to be sold in brown paper wrapping. How is this any different? The laws were made for the protection of citizens against indecent material. The television rating system was put into place to protect children from programs not appropriate for their age group. The only problem is the rating system is not doing this.

Works Cited

Bok, Sissela. Mayhem: Violence as Public Entertainment. Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1998.

"New TV Ratings: Censorship." Current Events 12 Sept. 1997:3. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. OCTC LRC. 3 Feb. 2004 <http://www.epnet.com/<.

Steyer, James P. The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the Media's Effect on Our Children. NewYork: Atria, 2002.