Tv Violence

TV is often accused of showing too much violence or mayhem: scenes of fights, assaults, murder and so on. Violence on TV and in films is often referred to as gore, especially when blood is visible. A film with a lot of violence and blood in it is gory.

The US cable television industry announced a major new initiative to deal with the problem of violence in American television programming. At two Capitol Hill news conferences, cable television executives, joined by concerned legislators, discussed specific ways the industry can help reduce the level of violence as portrayed in TV entertainment programs – including using available technology to block violent shows from homes.

Their proposals include:

• using cable programming to stimulate a national discussion on violence and ways to curb it;

• developing a violence ratings system to give viewers more information and control over what they watch;

• forming an industry group to monitor programmes;

• prefacing violent programmes with a parental advisory;

• providing television sets with viewer discretion technology to enable parents to block violent programmes.

Cable programmers “have united to lead the television industry in the effort to combat the epidemic of violence in America,” added Winston Cox, chairman and head of Showtime Networks Inc. “We are taking action to give viewers more control over what they are watching, and on a long-term basis, seeking to reduce the level of gratuitous violence on television,” said Cox.

Congressman Edward Markey says Cox’s efforts have helped produce an agreement among cable stations nationwide “which many would have predicted impossible to reach just three or four months ago.” Nonetheless, he explained, the major networks “have continued to resist” the efforts to rate their broadcast programmes and efforts to install circuitry into the TV set to enable parents to block objectionable programmes.

That “V-chip” technology, he said, is already being used to transmit and display closed caption information to deaf viewers for a few dollars per set and could be adapted cheaply “to block any of the programming that is sent with a V by the cable or television industry.” All television sets sold since last July now include the chip.

According to Byron Dorgan, who introduced Markey’s legislation in the Senate, “Study after study demonstrates that children watching television violence, become more aggressive.” “No one is here suggesting that there ought to be a thought police, suggesting there ought to be censorship of any kind,” he added. “What we are suggesting is to use technological means to give parents the opportunity to better supervise their children viewing habits. It’s that simple.”

Text F

Books, Plays and Films Should Be Censored

Let us suppose that you are in the position of a parent. Would you allow your children to read any book they wanted to without first checking its contents? Would you take your children to see any film without first finding out whether it is suitable for them? If your answer to these questions is “yes”, then you are either extremely permissive, or just plain irresponsible. If your answer is “no”, then you are exercising your right as a parent to protect your children from what you consider to be undesirable influences. In other words, by acting a censor yourself, you are admitting that there is a strong case for censorship.

Now, of course, you will say that it is one thing to exercise censorship where children are concerned and quite another to do the same for adults. Children need protection and it is the parents’ responsibility to provide it. But what about adults? Aren’t they old enough to decide what is good for them? The answer is that many adults are, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that all adults are like yourself. Censorship is for the good of society as a whole. Highly civilised people might find it possible to live amicably together without laws of any kind: they would just rely on good sense to solve their problems. But imagine what chaos there would be if we lived in a society without laws! Like the law, censorship contributes to the common good.

Some people think that it is disgraceful that a censor should interfere with work of art. Who is this person, they say, to ban this great book or cut that great film? No one can set himself up as a superior being. But we must remember two things. Firstly, where genuine works of art are concerned, modern censors are extremely liberal in their views – often far more liberal than a large section of the public. Artistic merit is something which censors clearly recognise. And secondly, we must bear in mind that the great proportion of books, plays and films which come before the censor are very far from being “works of art”.

When discussing censorship, therefore, we should not confine our attention to great masterpieces, but should consider the vast numbers of publications and films which make up the bulk of the entertainment industry. When censorship laws are relaxed, unscrupulous people are given a licence to produce virtually anything in the name of “art”. There is an increasing tendency to equate “artistic” with “pornographic”. The vast market for pornography would rapidly be exploited. One of the great things that censorship does is to prevent certain people from making fat profits by corrupting the minds of others. To argue in favour of absolute freedom is to argue in favour of anarchy. Society would really be the poorer if it deprived itself of the wise counsel and the restraining influence which a censor provides.

Zapping

People watching TV are viewers. Viewers who watch a lot of television without caring what they watch are couch potatoes.

If you zap between channels, you use your remote control or zapper to change channels a lot, perhaps looking for something interesting to watch, and perhaps not succeeding. A zapper is also a person who zaps.

Informal words for television are the tube in the US, and the box or the telly in Britain.

Sorting out the channels. Two articles about zapping, one from the Times and one from Today, have been mixed up. There are six sections in the first article and five in the second.

1. Say which headlines and sections make up each article. (a. is the first section of the first article and b. is the first section of the second.)

2. Find all the expressions in both articles that mean “change channels”.