Re: THE NEW YORKER on the V-Chip

[Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>]

At 04:57 PM 1/23/97 -0800, Alan Bostick wrote:

>In the Jan. 20, 1997, issue of THE NEW YORKER, the "Comment", written by
>Malcolm Gladwell, makes a powerful arguement about the unintended
>consequences of the V-Chip, the programmable device to be included in
>next-generation television sets sold in the US that supposedly will
>allow parents to control their children's access to sex and violence on
>TV.

While I think it's always useful to consider unintended (or otherwise
unexpected) consequences, Gladwell's argument sent a shiver down my spine
with its shameless paternalism. This bit (from roughly the middle of his
piece) is what I found creepiest:

"According to one recent study, somewhere between twenty and twenty-seven
per cent of the parents of four-to six-year-olds never restrict their
children's viewing hours, never decide what programs they can watch, never
change the channel when something objectionable comes on, and never forbid
the watching of certain programs. It has apparently never occurred to these
parents that television can be a bad influence, and it strains credulity to
think that the advent of the V-chip is going to wake them up. Yet their
families - mainly lower-income, ill-educated - are the very ones most in
need of protection from television violence. Here is a rearranging effect
with a vengeance: not only does the V-chip make television worse, it makes
television worse precisely for those already most vulnerable to its excesses."

I understood Gladwell's point to be, in essence, that the V-chip will allow
TV producers to generate higher levels of morally impure content which he
fears will pollute the minds of poor children because their parents are too
stupid to protect them from the harmful content and too poor to buy new
televisions which will include V-chips.

While I think 95% of broadcast TV is crap which isn't worth the time
expended watching it, even reading arguments like "poor people should be
protected from harmful ideas they're too stupid (or too poorly educated) to
avoid and too poor to purchase protection from" makes me feel dirty. I
don't think Gladwell is, in any meaningful way, an opponent of government
control of speech/expression - he's just an opponent of inefficient or
optional forms of government control of speech/expression.  He's a
reasonable writer, but he's chosen to use his powers for evil instead of
for good. (Some of his work is available on the web; apparently he once
worked as a reporter for the Washington Post and is now on the staff of the
New Yorker.)


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