Source: ABCNews.com
By: Company Press Release
Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore says he would propose new laws to protect children from violent entertainment, as the Federal Trade Commission releases a report criticizing the movie, music and video-game industries.
“It’s hard enough to raise children today without the entertainment industry making it more difficult,” Gore said in a statement today. “We believe in giving parents better information and more tools to help them protect their children from inappropriate material.”
Gore and his running mate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, said that if elected, they would give entertainment-industry leaders a six-month deadline to adopt voluntary controls over their products.
If the industry did not begin self-policing, the vice president warned, he would recommend that the FTC take action on the grounds of “deceptive advertising” for marketing “inappropriate” material to young people.
“We’re calling for industry self-restraint,” Gore said this morning on Oprah Winfrey’s TV talk show. “It’s not about censorship, it’s about citizenship, and that includes corporate citizenship.”
The Democratic candidate pressed the issue on the campaign trail.
“Parents have a right to play a meaningful role in sheltering their children from adult and mature material and explicit violence that their children … are just not ready to handle,” Gore told students, parents and educators at a town hall meeting at an elementary school in Belleville, Ill. “I call on these industries for an immediate ceasfire – to stop targeting advertising for adult material to young children.”
Industry Backs Democrats:
Gore’s threat comes at the start of a week in which the Democratic ticket will rake in nearly $7 million from the entertainment industry thanks to a series of star-studded fund-raising concerts, capped by a concert Thursday at Radio City Music Hall in New York.
In response to Gore’s comments, the campaign of his Republican opponent, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, said the vice president was “reaching new levels of hypocrisy” with his broad denunciation of show business.
“Suddenly, Al Gore is telling Hollywood to clean up its act after aggressively cleaning out their wallets for the past year,” said Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett.
In the past, Gore has supported programs to “empower parents” such as the V-chip and the TV ratings system. But he has not endorsed government restrictions on the entertainment industry, even though his wife Tipper, a founder of the Parents’ Music Resource Center, has advocated the labeling of rock music with explicit lyrics.
Lieberman has long been an outspoken critic of sexual content and violence in entertainment.
Ari Fleischer, a spokesman for Bush, indicated Sunday that Bush would prefer to see the issue handled without government intervention.
Fleischer said the Texas governor “believes the entertainment industry has to take personal responsibility for the products it provides to our children. And parents also have a role to play. We’re all in this together.”
The Senate Commerce Committee plans to hold a hearing Wednesday on the findings, with Lieberman scheduled to attend. He and committee chairman John McCain – who challenged Bush for the GOP nomination – backed a measure last year that requested the study.
Commissioned by Clinton:
The FTC report states that movie, video game and music industries aggressively market to underage youths violent films and products that carry adult ratings, say sources familiar with the report’s contents.
The report adds that even movies rated R – which require an adult to accompany children under 17 to the theater – and video games that carry an M rating for people age 17 and over are routinely targeted toward younger people.
The conclusions of the FTC study are derived in part from documents submitted by the industry itself, including marketing plans that demonstrate the efforts of companies to advertise to young audiences materials designated for adults, said the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The movie and video game industries have voluntary age-based rating code systems. The recording industry has a more general label that warns of explicit content in music.
The study, the product of a yearlong investigation ordered by President Clinton after a series of school killings, includes a survey of marketing practices and found most of the R-rated films and M-rated video games examined included promotional efforts targeting underage audiences.
The report does not advocates legislation, but calls for more effective self-regulation by the entertainment industry and enforcement of rating codes by retailers and theaters.
Industry Question Findings:
Industry leaders questioned what conclusions the government could draw from scrutinizing Hollywood.
“If we are causing moral decay in this country, we ought to have an explosion of crime,” Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, said Sunday. “The exact opposite is happening.”
Video game makers stress that more than 70 percent of their customers are over 18. According to the Interactive Digital Software Association, the industry trade group, adults buy nine of every 10 video and computer games sold in the United States. Only 7 percent of video games sold and rated since 1995 fall into the mature category.
But public interest groups said the new study could expose efforts by the industries to circumvent their own labeling system. For example, creating children’s toys based on an R-rated movie enables the industry “to go right ahead in a very surreptitious ways to market to kids,” said Kathryn Montgomery, president of the Center for Media Education.
Some retailers have pledged to increase enforcement of the game code. Kmart announced last week that it would stop selling M-rated games to anyone under 17, using a bar code scanner that will prompt cashiers to ask youths for identification. Wal-Mart said it would adopt a similar policy.
Other chains, including Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck and Co., have stopped selling the M-rated games altogether.
