2. Role-play. Divide into two groups (editorial boards), supporting two opposite points of view.

Members of editorial board No. 1 are staunch supporters of the opinion that papers should lead public opinion and influence it.

Members of editorial board No. 2 are concerned with keeping their readers through paddling to their interests.

To prove your points of view make use of the facts and figures from the text and from your personal experience.

Reading three

Read the article based on a survey to find out about children’s viewing habits in Great Britain.

Watching with Mother

I am greatly concerned by the findings of a questionnaire to mothers about children’s viewing habits, carried out for TV Times. I am not as surprised as European Marketing Surveys are by what they call the incredible amount watched – 90 per cent of the nation's children viewing every day. What does worry me is the negligence revealed on the part of parents.

Eight out of 10 children are usually or sometimes allowed to watch right up to “their bedtime”; a third of five to eight-year-olds and two-thirds of nine to 11-year-olds are allowed to stay up after their normal bedtime at weekends to watch TV.

There is a notional watershed at 9 pm, fixed by the BBC and IBA, after which more violent and intimate scenes can be shown and adult themes explored. But the survey reveals that 24 per cent of even five to eight-year-olds are sometimes allowed to view after nine o'clock, and half of the nation’s nine to 11-year-olds may actually be watching then. As mothers could be expected to play down their estimates, the real figures would be even higher, adds the author of the survey’s summary.

Only 62 out of the 524 mothers interviewed said they allowed their children under 10 to watch anything they liked. But implicit in the figures is that adult taste rather than concern for the child's mind is the main factor governing a decision to switch off (27 per cent) or switch over (57 per cent) when parents considered a programme unsuitable.

Just two per cent stopped their children watching the violent Starsky and Hutch; only one per cent banned The Professionals or Charlie's Angels. The programme with the highest per centage – six out of a hundred – of parents forbidding it from the screen was one designed for children, Dr. Who. Yet 74 per cent agreed or partly agreed that there was too much violence on TV. Interestingly, only eight per cent thought sex on television was more harmful.

What emerges most clearly from the mass of figures is that parents exercise little or no control over their children's viewing, even when it worries them. They throw the onus on to the programme-makers, which is both cowardly and irresponsible. The people who make and schedule programmes should not be the ones who have to worry about little children being upset.

Much as I am against any form of censorship, this survey convinces me that there should be some sort of indication given to parents as to the suitability of programmes. While children cannot be prohibited from viewing at home by anyone except their parents, as they can be by an “X” certificate in the cinema, there is a precedent for guidance in another way. Adult American movies now carry an “R” for Restriction Recommended. Adopting an “R”, to be clearly attached to tricky titles in programme journals and in on-air trailers, would be of immense assistance to responsible parents, and would encourage those who are less keen to take their job of guiding the young seriously.

Personally, I would like to put an “R” on all those nasty, smutty “comedy” shows like Benny Hill, Pig in the Middle, and George and Mildred, but I realize that I might be letting my own prejudices carry me away, and this is always the danger with people who set themselves up as censors.

BBC News by Elkan Allan. 2002.