Violence in the Media Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Violence in the Media - Essay Example "Parental Choice in Television Programming" enumerates well-documented findings on the impact television exerts on a child's impressionable and partial experience, points out the underlying influence that the media exerts on daily family life, and observes that most children absorb up to twenty-five hours of television in a week or even as much as eleven hours a day. The law affirms that comprehensive research has found that children exposed to explicit violence reveal more tendencies to aggressive attitudes as they mature than youngsters not exposed. The legislation notes that rightly-concerned parents ought to have firmer control over harmful material being channeled into their home, while the government has an equal interest in legislation discreetly regulating the accessibility of programs that can be detrimental to its youngest citizens. The legislation enacts measures for the creation of a Television Rating Code, (Sections (b) and (e)(1); and approves the policy that new televi sion sets be required to have content filters known as V-Chips to block violent material (Parental Choice in Television Programming). b) Court Decisions Related to the Topic: In its 1978 decision on the FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726, the Supreme Court ruled that the media admittedly has taken on an intrusive pervasiveness in American life. Explicit and indecent matter reaches citizens over the airwaves in the very seclusion of the home where family privacy should reasonably prevail over the First Amendment civil liberties of outsiders. Through the incursion of the media into the home, adult material is abnormally available to children too young to grasp its full meaning. The facility with which the home has unhealthy exposure to television broadcasts fully warrants specific legislation on the handling of indecent programming with regard to children (FCC v. Pacifica Foundation). In keeping with this line of thought, the Federal Communications Commission has been actively supporting legislation to restrict explicitly violent (as well as indecent) material to the late evening hours, when the majority of children are likely not to be viewing the set (Labaton 2). Even though lower courts have rejected the suggestion that violence is equivalent to obscenity, the question has never been addressed by the Supreme Court (Greiner 1). If effective political action can move the Supreme Court to concur with the argument that violence merits an assessment equivalent to obscenity, legislation may meet the Supreme Court's standard of strict scrutiny and ensure that limits of the sale of graphic video games to children can be upheld as constitutional (Schatz 1). c) The Constitution relates to the topic in that The First Amendment, besides protecting artistic freedom of expression, basically reaffirms equal rights for society, parents and children in the matter. The First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." What is at issue here is primarily the right of responsible citizens to petition the government for legislation to protect at-risk and immature young minds from callous exposure