One reporter's notebook
Raising one voice
I was watching network television the other night. About 90 seconds worth.
On one station, within 10 seconds, one cop said to the other how the crime was incest ... so I switched and watched a little longer, about 30 seconds, and a courtroom drama reached a climax, a white supremacist -- complete with the Heil Hitlers signs and the shaved heads -- was spewing vile.
I felt assaulted and left the main networks.
If you think that television is getting worse, you are right.
The rate at which some of our media are going into the sewer might surprise you. The Kaiser Family Foundation just this month issued the fourth in its series of reports about sex on television. The findings are almost stunning. In eight years, hardly any time at all, the amount of sexual content on television has doubled to being in 70 percent of all primetime shows, and discussed or shown five times per hour. These were on the major entertainment channels, network and cable. And the way in which sex is portrayed -- generally without responsibility or care for health -- has not really changed. Basically, people receive few messages about healthy sexual behavior, even as they are drenched in sexual depictions.
There is an old scholarly argument, which dates back about 40 years, that suggests that media have little influence on human action. But, in fact, this idea has been largely repudiated in media studies, so you can safely ignore it. Media do have effects, at the very least, on what we think about, and these go across broad ranges of issues.
However, trying to show causality between sex on television and problematic sexual behavior has not really been studied effectively, as best I can tell. The reasons they haven't been studied are, on reflection, obvious. How do you study such a thing in an objective way and still be ethical? You can't very well expose some young teens to sexual content and a control group to Barney and then measure the differences in their sexual behaviors after the fact. It would be like giving a group of people poison to see its effects as a scientific study. It just isn't ethical. According to Sparks, among the best research on the subject studied people's sexual behaviors and and correlated it with their television consumption. Insofar as there are scientific results, they show what you would expect, people who consume sexual content are more inappropriately sexually active and get pregnant out of wedlock. But, it is hard to separate which thing caused which result scientifically.
So we are left with our common sense assumptions. Media have effects and poisons are bad for us, therefore, sexual content has some poisonous effect. Does it really need a strong demonstration? Nearly one-third of American babies are now born out of wedlock. Clearly, this is an epic crisis to our social structure.
But, as Dr. King used to say, let us not wallow in the valley of despair. Though no one is really writing about it outside of Michael Medved, there is an obvious, if unspoken correlation between declining viewership and increasing sexual content among media. Maybe people are really watching less of this programming as it offends them, and that is an encouraging sign. It is important to avoid such programming as best as possible because it can have effects and may ultimately effect change in offerings.
Similarly, there are intelligent proposals to help make a difference. The consumers union is pushing a concept called a la carte programming. The idea of a la carte programming is that consumers should choose the programming they want as they choose cable television, not pre-set packages that include offensive programming to which they object. (In fairness, the consumer's union argument is not one based on decency as much as on choice.) Still, it offends me that when I bought a satellite package, I was subsidizing MTV with my monthly check, even as I tried to blocked its content. Why should I have to pay for something that offends me and then have to block it?
This idea of new kinds of programming formats is a first step to actually letting market forces and choice actually affect content. Wouldn't it be great if you could purchase, say, National Geographic channel, C-Span, BYU-TV, ESPN News and Toon Disney, while neglecting the latest offering from Spike TV? Wouldn't it be nice to feel safe in your living room again?
Indeed, just this week, the chairman of the Federal Communication Commission told the Senate that a la carte programming is a good idea.
Latter-day Saints have been encouraged to make their voices heard. As Congress discusses this idea, now is a good time to write your member of Congress to let your voice be heard.
Please, speak out for a la carte programming. That may well become the best way to convince programmers to change their ways -- where they live, in the pocket book.
Of course, my views should not be construed to represent anything other than my own views. They are NOT necessarily the views of my department, my university or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the sponsoring institution of my university.