Re: Cato forum on liquor advertising and electronic media

[Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>]

At 04:33 PM 4/24/97 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>The Center for Media Education is trying to accelerate this process. In a
>fearmongering report earlier this year, the group demanded that a slew of
>government agencies -- the FCC, FDA, FTC, CDC, NCI, and the WHO -- take
>"urgent agction" to "protect" America's children from tobacco and liquor
>advertising online.

Sigh.  Guess we'll have to do another information-logo-on-web-page campaign.
The real question is whether we should be in-your-face about it
and use a Joe Camel icon for the "Fight Commercial Censorship" campaign,
or something civilized like the many beer and wine company logos on the net.
"Fight censorship on the net - have a Beer!"  Would Mr. Butts be available?

Meanwhile, back on Television, the "We know what's best for you"
program ratings are getting panned by everyone.  I almost wonder if the
TV moguls decided to do a deliberately unsatisfactory rating system
rather that giving the censorship people the amount of control they want?
The proposed "sex/violence/language" ratings left out an important category
many parents would like in deciding what their kids can watch -- "Greed".  
And neither the proposed nor the enacted systems rates commercials....
So you won't be able to set that V-Chip to auto-block commercials.

PYRBBROW.GIF

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