Senate
blasts 'culture of carnage'
09/13/00- Updated 04:43 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senators decried
the level of sex and violence in movies, videos and TV
shows Wednesday and warned entertainment industry
executives to clean up material aimed at children or
face federal regulation.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the
Democratic vice presidential nominee, expressed dismay
at ''a culture of carnage'' fostered by the industry.
Lynne Cheney, former head of the National Endowment
for the Humanities and wife of Republican vice
presidential nominee Dick Cheney, echoed many of
Lieberman's concerns about youth exposure to sex and
violence.
But she also took a swipe at the
Democratic presidential ticket, asking them to deliver
her message of accountability when they attend a
fund-raising event Thursday with Harvey Weinstein,
co-chairman of Miramax Films.
The heads of major movie studios
declined invitations to testify before the Senate
Commerce Committee, prompting Chairman John McCain to
call for another hearing in two weeks.
''Their hubris is stunning,'' said
McCain, R-Ariz. ''I have never seen such a thing
before.''
He has asked the chiefs of Time
Warner, Walt Disney Co., Newscorp, Viacom, Miramax and
others to speak at the follow-up hearing.
The industry's top lobbyist, Jack
Valenti, denied that the executives intentionally
avoided the hearing.
Their absence ''is not because they
are ducking and running,'' said Valenti, head of the
Motion Picture Association of America. ''It's because
they literally have other things on their schedule
that they could not erase.''
Valenti pledged to go to California
and discuss with studio heads what improvements could
be made in their practices, based on a Federal Trade
Commission report released this week that found the
entertainment industry aggressively peddles
inappropriate material to young audiences.
Parents feel ''locked in a losing
competition with the culture to raise our children,''
said Lieberman, a longtime critic of violence and sex
in the media whose presence on the Democratic ticket
has helped bring the issue into the campaign.
The Columbine High School shootings
in Colorado illustrates that the media violence
children see ''has become part of a toxic mix that has
actually now turned some of them into killers,''
Lieberman said.
McCain pledged to track down those
responsible for the most egregious examples cited in
the FTC's report, including one studio that
distributed R-rated movie passes to high school
students and promotional materials to the Camp Fire
Boys and Girls.
Mrs. Cheney zeroed in on the lyrics
of rap star Eminem's song Kill
You, which describes the artist raping and killing
his mother: ''They could not be more despicable. They
could not be more hateful.''
Eminem's album, The Marshall Mathers
LP, is one of the hottest selling music releases.
He also was a target of Sen. Sam
Brownback, R-Kan., who displayed posters in the
hearing room carrying his lyrics and those of rap
stars Dr. Dre and DMX.
''This stuff is not for the
faint-hearted,'' Brownback said, ''but the music
industry has decided it's for our children.''
Lawmakers urged the industry to stop
marketing materials to young children and went
further, suggesting that entertainment executives
adopt voluntary guidelines to limit explicit content.
Music producers asserted they have
their own limits on what they distribute.
''There is plenty of stuff that
crosses my desk that I will not put out,'' said
Strauss Zelnick, president of BMG Entertainment. While
he said the industry could consider adopting a more
robust system, ''I don't think you can analyze a work
of art like you can analyze a breakfast cereal.''
The video game industry ''has a
proven commitment to effective self-regulation,'' said
Douglas Lowenstein, president of the Interactive
Digital Software Association, which represents game
makers.
FTC Chairman Robert Pitofsky has
ordered his staff to look at whether action could be
brought against the industry for unfair and deceptive
advertising. But he warned that ''if we were to bring
a case, we'd be in the courts for several years.''
Instead, he and lawmakers want the
industry to follow the lead of The Walt Disney Co.,
which announced Tuesday it would prohibit theater
owners from showing trailers for R-rated films before
movies released under its label and that its ABC
network would not accept ads for R-rated films during
prime time before 9 p.m.
Copyright 2000
Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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