[Senate Hearing 107-159]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-159
RATING ENTERTAINMENT RATINGS: HOW WELL ARE THEY WORKING FOR PARENTS AND
WHAT CAN BE DONE TO IMPROVE THEM?
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 25, 2001
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TED STEVENS, Alaska
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
MAX CLELAND, Georgia PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi
JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah
MARK DAYTON, Minnesota JIM BUNNING, Kentucky
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Staff Director and Counsel
Lawrence B. Novey, Counsel
Hannah S. Sistare, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
Fred Ansell, Minority Chief Counsel
Darla D. Cassell, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
------
Opening statements:
Page
Senator Lieberman............................................ 1
Senator Thompson............................................. 4
Senator Carper............................................... 32
Senator Durbin............................................... 36
Prepared statement:
Senator Bunning.............................................. 71
WITNESSES
Wednesday, July 25, 2001
Hon. Sam Brownback, a U.S. Senator from the State of Kansas...... 9
Dale Kunkel, Ph.D., Professor of Communications, University of
California, Santa Barbara...................................... 13
Roger Pilon, Ph.D., J.D., Vice President for Legal Affairs, B.
Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, Director, Center
for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute..................... 15
Michael Rich, M.D., M.P.H., Children's Hospital Boston/Harvard
Medical School................................................. 18
Laura Smith, Mother.............................................. 21
William Baldwin, President, The Creative Coalition............... 39
Doug McMillon, Senior Vice President and General Merchandise
Manager, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.................................. 42
Hilary Rosen, President and CEO, Recording Industry Association
of America..................................................... 44
Jack Valenti, President and CEO, The Motion Picture Association
of America..................................................... 47
Douglas Lowenstein, President, Interactive Digital Software
Association.................................................... 50
Russell Simmons, Chairman, Phat Farm............................. 68
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Baldwin, William:
Testimony.................................................... 39
Prepared statement........................................... 97
Brownback, Hon. Sam:
Testimony.................................................... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 11
Kunkel, Dale, Ph.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 13
Prepared statement........................................... 72
Lowenstein, Douglas:
Testimony.................................................... 50
Prepared statement........................................... 123
McMillon, Doug:
Testimony.................................................... 42
Prepared statement........................................... 102
Pilon, Roger, Ph.D., J.D.
Testimony.................................................... 15
Prepared statement........................................... 78
Rich, Michael, M.D., M.P.H.:
Testimony.................................................... 18
Prepared statement........................................... 84
Rosen, Hilary:
Testimony.................................................... 44
Prepared statement........................................... 106
Simmons, Russell:
Testimony.................................................... 68
Prepared statement........................................... 45
Smit, Laura:
Testimony.................................................... 21
Prepared statement........................................... 89
Valenti, Jack:
Testimony.................................................... 47
Prepared statement with attachments.......................... 113
Appendix
Prepared statements submitted for the record:
The Media Coalition.......................................... 128
Directors Guild of America................................... 131
Professor Joanne Cantor, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-
Madison.................................................... 136
RATING ENTERTAINMENT RATINGS: HOW WELL ARE THEY WORKING FOR PARENTS AND
WHAT CAN BE DONE TO IMPROVE THEM?
----------
WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 2001
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I.
Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Lieberman, Thompson, Carper, Durbin, and
Bunning.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN
Chairman Lieberman. Good morning. Welcome to this hearing.
Let me say that we are here to revisit an issue that parents
repeatedly raise with just about everyone who will listen, and
that is the challenge that is facing them in raising healthy
children in today's 500-channel, multiplexed, videogamed, disc-
manned universe.
Before I proceed, I want to apologize for the quality of my
voice today. I am fighting a summer cold, and I am reminded of
the old story of the clergyman who, when he rises to give the
sermon, says to his congregates, ``As you can hear, I have a
terrible cold, and I had thought of not giving a sermon today,
but then I decided why should you derive pleasure from my
misery?'' Jack Valenti, it is in that spirit that I go forward
with the proceedings.
A second preliminary announcement, in the last few days we
have had several requests from people who wanted to testify at
the hearing, including some members of the House, and it has
just been very hard at this date to accommodate those requests.
Others came from folks within the entertainment industry. But I
have said to them that we will accept their written testimony,
that I would be glad to meet with them, and, if it seems to be
constructive and worthy, we will convene another hearing on the
subject, to give others an opportunity to testify.
What I described at the outset, which is the concern of
parents around the country today about the effect of the
entertainment culture on their children, is a reflection of the
quantity of time that children spend consuming and using media.
You get a lot of numbers on this. One of them is an average of
6\1/2\ hours a day, which is the number reported by the
Annenberg Public Policy Center. But I think we all know it is
more than quantity. It is a reflection on the quality of the
messages about sex and violence that kids are being exposed to
by the entertainment media--messages which too often reject,
rather than reflect, the values that parents are trying to
instill in their children--and the growing sense that the
totality of these messages is having a harmful influence on the
attitudes and behaviors of our children, and therefore on the
safety and even the moral condition of our country.
There are limits to what we in government can do to respond
to those concerns, first because of our devotion to the First
Amendment, and second because governments do not raise
children, parents do. At the same time, though, there are
things that we can do--hopefully, with the movie, music, video
game and television industries--to empower parents and make the
hard job of raising healthy children a little easier.
Now, one way to empower is to inform. Over the years, the
major entertainment media have developed rating and labeling
systems to offer parents and consumers information about the
content of their products and help parents exercise more
informed control over their children's media diets. Over that
time, these ratings, particularly those of the movie industry,
have become cultural icons, literately. But as the content and
marketing practices of the entertainment media have become
worse, we have been hearing more and more concerns about how
these rating systems work. There have been specific criticisms
about their reliability, visibility and understandability, and
there have been general complaints that the ratings do not
provide parents with enough information about content--about
the levels of sex, violence and vulgarity in the product--to
make the right choice for their children. Last year, for
example, a Gallup survey found that 74 percent of parents said
the movie, music, and television ratings were inadequate on
that count.
Those concerns culminated in a letter sent to policymakers
last month by a distinguished coalition of researchers, medical
groups, including the American Medical Association and the
American Psychological Association, and a large number of child
development experts and advocates, which recommended a complete
overhaul of the media ratings. That letter, which was
instituted by the National Institute on Media and the Family,
argued that the different ratings are often applied
inconsistently, and many parents find the multiplicity of
rating icons confusing, and as a result that the ratings are
not adequately serving their purpose, which is to help parents
and protect kids. To fix this problem, the signers of the
letter called for replacing the existing formats with a new,
uniform rating system monitored by an independent oversight
committee and grounded in sound research.
I thought this was an important statement with a
provocative proposal that deserved more public discussion. I
also believe that one constructive way in which we in
government can help parents is to provide a platform, to
facilitate a dialogue and ideally find some common ground. And
that is the aim of our hearing today, to flesh out the concerns
raised in the NIMF's letter and explore the merits of their
recommendations, to hear the response of the industry keepers
of these rating systems and to see if there is any agreement on
ways to improve the ratings to better inform parents.
I have expressed interest in the idea of uniform ratings
before, as have others in Congress, including Senators McCain
and Clinton, and in the entertainment industry, notably Disney
President Robert Iger, and I remain interested in this idea.
Many parents appear to be interested, as well--a survey by the
Kaiser Family Foundation, which is being released today, found
that 40 percent of parents believe that a uniform rating system
would be more useful than the current approach, and only 17
percent think it would be less useful. So today we are going to
hear arguments in favor of switching to a single system, as
well as the industry's responses to those arguments.
I hope the entertainment industry witnesses come with an
equally open mind, particularly on the question of providing
more and better information. For some time now, for instance,
many of us have voiced dissatisfaction with the recording
industry's one-size-fits-all parental advisory program, which
provides a solitary stickered warning to parents of ``explicit
content.'' We have urged the major record companies to expand
and clarify their system and tell parents what kind of explicit
content is in the lyrics. Those same criticisms and calls for
change were repeated vociferously at a hearing before the House
Telecommunications Subcommittee last week, as I understand it,
and Ms. Hilary Rosen, on behalf of the recording industry,
ruled out adding any content descriptions to the recording
industry's labeling system. I hope in our discussion today that
Ms. Rosen will reconsider that position.
I also hope that Mr. Valenti will alter the surprising and,
to me, outrageous suggestion he made in his response to the
letter from Dr. Walsh and the AMA and the APA, that there is
serious doubt remaining about whether violence in the media
poses any risk of harm to our children.
On the brighter side, if we are looking for an industry
model, I would point to the video game rating system, which is
administered by the independent Electronics Software Ratings
Board. This system, which was a response in the first instance
to congressional hearings and parent concern, pairs age-based
icons with detailed content descriptors in a clear, concise and
informative format. I know that no rating system is perfect,
certainly not in its application, but I think this is the best
one around.
If I may touch briefly on a subject that is not the subject
of our hearing today, which is our concern about media
marketing practices, I commend the video game industry for
adopting, in response to the FTC report, a comprehensive code
of its own on marketing and a self enforcement mechanism,
which, if the legislation Senators Clinton, Kohl, and I have
proposed were adopted, would protect the video game industry
from any FTC enforcement because they have done what we have
most wanted the entertainment industry to do, which is to self-
regulate and leave no room, or no need, for government to be
anywhere near what they are doing.
Ultimately, any potential reforms in the ratings will be
meaningless if parents do not use them, and we need to remind
parents constantly of their responsibilities as we renew our
call for more and better information in the ratings.
One final word about the First Amendment, which is one
thing that I think all of us, on whatever side we are,
fortunately seem to support. I certainly do. That is why we are
not talking about any legislation or government regulation
today. By I again want to warn the industry that the best way
to invite censorship is to disengage from this discussion and
tune out the larger concerns of millions of American parents
about media influence on our kids and on our country. Indeed,
to me, the most striking finding of the Kaiser survey that I
have referred to was that 48 percent of parents in this country
would support government regulations to limit the amount of
violent and sexual content in early-evening TV shows. That is
an alarming number, and it is an outcry that begins to express
just how frustrated and angry America's parents are about the
state of our culture and its impact on our children.
I am now happy to yield to my Ranking Member, Senator
Thompson, a fully-reformed member of the entertainment industry
and who, in all of his work here, gives not only stellar
performances, but certainly G-rated performances.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR THOMPSON
Senator Thompson. Mr. Chairman, I do come to these hearings
somewhat prejudiced, as one who thinks they really have not
made a really good movie since ``Baby's Day Out,'' but I will
try to put that aside as we proceed. Mr. Chairman, thank you
for your comments. You have certainly given us a lot to chew on
this morning, and I think that it is going to make for some
very interesting hearings and discussions, but there have been
a lot of hearings lately, or certainly proposed, I think--one
in the House. We are having one--they are talking about our
Judiciary Subcommittee on the Senate side having a hearing, the
Antitrust Subcommittee--having a hearing on this. Since I am
the Ranking Member and feel an obligation to be here and make
my own views known, perhaps I can come about it from a slightly
different perspective and maybe add some things to the
discussion.
We are here talking about ratings, but really we are also
talking about something bigger. I selected the Governmental
Affairs Committee to be on when I first got here, one of the
first committees that I selected and, because a lot of people
did not find it very interesting work, I got some seniority in
a hurry and ultimately became Chairman of this Committee, but I
was interested in it because it had to do with government and
it had to do what the role of government, thinking that if
government was not doing some things it ought to be doing, that
was not serving the country, and if government was doing some
things that it should not be doing, that that was harming the
country because of the power of the Federal Government. It had
to do with the role of the government. It had to do with the
relationship between Federal, State and local government. That
is what appealed to me about this Committee and the work that
it did. As I look at some of these subjects, the questions, of
course, people are interested in the rating system, but the
real question to me, and the more fundamental question, is what
should, as a Congress, our relationship to those ratings be?
What if the ratings we decide are good? On the other hand,
what if we decide that the ratings are bad? Then what? I must
say I was somewhat surprised when President Clinton asked for
the FTC report. Of course, now the Commerce Committee asked for
another FTC report. Now we are going to get a third FTC report,
and I kept asking myself, as I think--as I was in the capacity
I was in with regard to the Governmental Affairs Committee--
what if these reports come back bad? Then what? What is our
proper role as a government, as a Congress, as a governmental
entity, if we are displeased with the findings?
So we find ourselves basically in a supervisory capacity,
as it were, with regard to a private industry who is engaged in
a constitutionally-protected activity. That is a serious matter
and it bears some consideration and some discussion. I have a
couple or three observations or points, I guess, as I think
this thing through and as I thought about it last night, as to
how to put this thing in perspective and what my obligations as
a U.S. Senator were with regard to this. One observation, it
seems to me--first of all, Mr. Chairman, I share much of your
concern with regard to some of the product that we are seeing.
As a grandfather, I shudder to think about what my small
grandchildren are going to be faced with as they go out into
the world. We all know that there is a lot of degrading stuff
out there. Stuff comes into our televisions in the home that is
unfortunate, to say the least. I think, in some ways, it is
hardly arguable that some of it is even harmful for children.
To what extent, we do not know. We, I think, also know that it
is a part of a broader pattern of society, things that are
going into society. We live in a world now where we see in the
checkout line at the grocery store things that we had to work
pretty hard, when I was growing up, as kids, to get our hands
on, not that I ever did, of course. But that is what we are
dealing with, and we also see in the entertainment industry the
advent of the conglomerate, where there are very few
individuals who come up and control segments of the
entertainment industry much anymore. It is big corporate
business. One company buys out another and is, in turn, bought
out by another, some of them foreign, some of them domestic,
movie industry, record industry. I live in a town where you
cannot throw a rock without hitting a record producer or a
record company.
I think there is one independent local record company left
in Nashville, Tennessee, and the significance of that, to me,
anyway, is that clearly it becomes and it has become much more
bottom-line oriented, with the decisions being made by people
who are very absentee, in many respects, who have corporate
ownership and corporate responsibilities and bottom-line
responsibilities that produce pressures that we have not seen
in times past. I think all that is true. I think all that is
unfortunate. But another point that is equally true is that
most, if not all, of this activity is protected by the First
Amendment. Now, we may not like that. We may think that is
unfortunate. We can argue around the edges and around the
details.
It pains me to tell these parents here the stark truth of
the matter, and that is--and this is just my opinion--when it
comes to legislation or congressional imposition of mandates or
regulation and the imposition of fines, that we do not
constitutionally have the power to do that. If you read the
opinions of justices like Justice Thomas and Justice O'Connor
and other justices on the Supreme Court, you see very readily
that speech of this kind, including commercial speech, and any
laws dealing with it, is viewed with strict scrutiny, and if
the conduct is otherwise lawful and not misleading, it is
probably going to be protected.
We have accepted for a long time in this country that there
is constitutional protection for some conduct that is abhorrent
and bad. It is a limitation on government. It has to do with a
broader consideration that the Founding Fathers thought were
paramount. That is why John Adams defended those British
soldiers for shooting those patriots. I do not know how many
people have ever watched a criminal walk out of a courtroom
because the murder weapon was seized pursuant to an illegal
search. Those are trade-offs that we make in this society and
have made for some time.
So, that being the case, matters that rightfully concern
all of us, but matters that have this protection, what is the
role of Congress? What should we be doing about conduct that
is, in some cases, bad, but conduct that is legal? If we cannot
legislate, and I know that some might disagree with me on that,
but that is my firm opinion. I am willing to discuss it. If we
cannot legislate, what can we do? Should we use, as a Congress,
our bully pulpit, as a Congress? That is a very inviting
prospect, I think, for many, and I am not sure about that. But
the only question to me is who is going to be the next group
that is engaged in legal, constitutionally-protected activity
who is brought up before us because we disapprove of their
conduct? That is a serious question that I think we are going
to have to ask ourselves, even the Federal Trade Commission.
But we have to acknowledge the fact that it appears that
some good things have come from the Federal Trade Commission.
They say that the industry ought to police itself, and while I
question whether or not the President or the Commerce Committee
or any of the rest of us ought to be sicking a regulatory
agency on one as a general principle, if they are engaged in
legal conduct, I must acknowledge that the industry has
responded to some of these things and the FTC found out things
about some in the industry that were very beneficial, because
they found that they were engaged in inexcusable activity, in
some cases, and steps are being taken to remedy that.
So it is not an easy thing to answer, for me. I do think
that Congress needs to be concerned that we not, through our
actions, encourage or discourage the beneficial activity that
has been taking place in the industry. There is no law
requiring these rating systems, and while I think that it
certainly merits discussion in some appropriate forum, as to
what these systems ought to be and how they could be improved,
what we need to keep in mind is nobody is requiring anybody to
do that, and if we penalize people for not doing it the way we
think is right, they can quit doing it altogether, and I do not
think that that would be a good thing. I think we need to keep
that in mind.
So what do we do as a society, as a people, as individuals?
I think there is a lot that we can do about something that
concerns all of us. I think we as individuals can use our bully
pulpit. That is what the Chairman and Bill Bennett have done so
effectively--Sam Brownback and others have done so effectively
as individuals going out, Bennett being a totally private
citizen. Just because you are a politician does not mean you
lose your First Amendment rights, and you can give your opinion
about what is going on, and we as citizens and fathers and
grandfathers and grandmothers ought to be free to do that.
There is certainly a lot the entertainment industry can do and
should do. I think they are moving, in some cases--not all--but
in some cases, I think they are moving in the right direction.
I think they are struggling with this. I think they need to do
more.
As I said, even the FTC says that this really ought to be
something that the industry takes care of itself. To me, it is
not just about ratings. I hope we do view ratings and proper
ratings as a panacea to the problems that we are facing. In the
first place, we are never going to agree. My personal opinion
is that I think things that come into television on a regular
basis in the homes that small kids see are worse than ``Saving
Private Ryan.'' R-rated, I believe ``Private Ryan'' was. I
would hope that every 15, 16-year-old boy would see that movie
if he did not otherwise have problems; a very violent movie,
but it shows everything that young people ought to be exposed
to. It shows the terrible carnage of war. It shows sacrifice.
It shows honor. It shows these young people what their
granddaddies did for their freedom.
So we have a disagreement right there. That is my personal
opinion. Other people will view things differently. With regard
to ratings, too, there are too many ways around them. You can
have perfect ratings. There are too many resources young people
have to get in to see an R-rated movie, if they want to, and
certainly music. We cannot protect our most vital nuclear
secrets in this country. You think we are going to keep Eminem
records and tapes out of the hands of young kids who want them.
Plus the fact that I think the ratings system is very good for
parents and for parents who are concerned and parents who use
them. That is a large segment of people, but we need to
recognize that there are a large segment of these kids where
parents are not involved, where there is certainly no better
than a one-parent situation, where their main concern is not
ratings, movies, and records. It is getting by. These things
are totally irrelevant to those people.
So while these things are good and they need to be
perfected and they serve their purpose, I hope we do not look
upon that as a panacea. I would hope that getting to the root
of the problem, that the industry would simply start doing
better with regard to the kinds of things they choose to show.
It is not Congress that the industry should be concerned about.
It is their own conscience in the board rooms. I do not think
this is a pipe dream. I think we have a lot of responsible
people out there who want to do the right thing. I talk to
people. They have kids--and actors, and whatnot--and I do not
know of one that somewhere along the line has not chosen to
turn something down because it had no redeeming social value
and was exploitive or the language was something that they did
not want.
I cannot believe that an industry feels that it can undergo
the criticism that it undergoes, and cannot respond to that. I
think responses are being made. I think more needs to be done,
because equally I cannot believe that being lucky enough to be
a part of an industry that has the ability to uplift and
inspire, that is the common denominator of American society,
whether it be movies or music. You go into a bank, the one
thing the bank president and the janitor have in common, they
grew up on the same movies and they grew up on the same music,
tremendous opportunity to do good. That does not mean that it
has to be pablum. That does not mean that it has to be things
that we all agree with or even tasteful or anything like that.
But I think--and certainly in the music industry--I think just
some responsibility as corporate citizens--corporations give
millions and millions of dollars away for charitable purposes
to benefit their community. This is something that could be
done that would be beneficial in just making things a little
bit better. That is the industry part.
I think what these private groups are doing are the most
important part of this entire equation. I think by getting out
and organizing and bringing some of these things that are most
offensive to people's attention, and shaming where appropriate,
I think that is golden. I think that is right on. I think if
you want to get together and someone is especially egregious
and not buy their products or not patronize people, that is
your constitutional right and I say go for it, make your
decisions about that.
We asked Wal-Mart to come here. Wal-Mart ought to be held
up as an example of what can be done in American society to
deal with this. They simply choose not to carry some of this
stuff. They make the decision, the subjective decision, that
others might disagree with, but they make it and they leave
some dollars on the table by making it. Until these hearings I
suppose, nobody knew about it. I did not know about it until we
got into this discussion. So it is a good thing that has come
out of it. Of course, last, but not least, parents: I think we
have a roomful of concerned parents here today, and I think
that this record sticker that we have on records now, parental
notice, what they are telling you with that sticker is that
this is bad stuff, and does it really matter how bad? If
parents just said we are not going to buy anything with this
sticker on it and you are not going to have it, I think it
would have an effect.
So, Mr. Chairman, I have gone on too long, but this is
important, and I obviously feel that this is not whether a line
should be drawn. The question is who should draw it, and I
trust that--as I say, I have the greatest respect for what you
have tried to do, and I hope you take my comments in the spirit
in which they are given, and in searching for a way, as a
society and as a people, to do something constructive, to do
something proper, in keeping our role in all of that in proper
perspective. Thank you very much.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Thompson, for a very
thoughtful statement, and I truly do look forward to working
with you to find the right role for government, for the private
sector, for us as individuals and parents as we try to create
an environment in which we can raise our children that is
conducive to the best for them and our country.
I am delighted that Senator Brownback is with us today. He
has been a leader in this cause, outspoken and very
constructive, and we welcome your testimony now. Thank you.
TESTIMONY OF HON. SAM BROWNBACK, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE
OF KANSAS
Senator Brownback. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
appreciate your holding this hearing on this important topic. I
think we held the first one together in this room 4 or 5 years
ago on a similar topic, and hopefully have made some progress
along the way, but I appreciate your holding it, and the
Ranking Member, Senator Thompson, as well. If I could just
start out with the thought that the parents in America need as
much information on what their minds consume and what our
children's minds are consuming for entertainment as what our
bodies consume for food. That is really what we are talking
about here--getting adequate disclosure to the parents of what
their children are receiving, mental images that are being put
in there, as we are concerned about their food.
We are concerned about what our children eat. We are
concerned about whether our children are smoking or not, as we
should be. We should be equally concerned about what their
minds are consuming and what it does to our children and what
it does to our country. If we are to rate the ratings, there
needs to be some agreement on what the criteria are. I believe
the purpose of the ratings system is to provide parents and
consumers with accurate information in a manner that is
accessible, simple, reliable and responsive.
But if this is the criteria, then the ratings system taken
as a whole is failing. It is failing parents, it is failing
consumers, and ultimately I believe failing our children. I
would like to address three key problems with rating systems:
(1) is ``ratings creep''; (2) is the lack of independence, and
(3) is the lack of standards. First, many of the various
ratings or label systems suffer from what has been called
``ratings creep''; that is, many movies, shows and albums that
parents find objectionable are rated as being appropriate for
children and even target-marketed to children. Various studies
have found that the industry ratings tend to be far more
lenient than what parents would choose themselves.
When the entertainment industry has rated something as
inappropriate for children, whether it is an R-rated movie or
an M-rated video game, parents almost always agree. But the
disagreement between the parents and the industry is deep and
wide over products that are rated as fine for children. What is
even stranger is, as the Federal Trade Commission reported,
even when the industry acknowledged that their products were so
violent or vulgar, or contained so much sexual content as to be
inappropriate for kids, the industry in many respects continued
to intentionally target-marketed these products to kids. This
is a sham and it is a shame, and it is not without
consequences.
Tomorrow, I will be hosting a forum, along with the
Chairman of this Committee and Senator Dorgan, which will
examine the impact of explicit sexual material, so common in
popular entertainment, on youth attitudes, health and well-
being, and I invite everyone to attend. Common sense and common
experience indicates that it does have an impact, and a harmful
one at that. One year ago, we convened the first public health
seminar on entertainment violence, and the leaders of six of
the most prominent and prestigious public health organizations
in the country, including the American Medical Association, the
American Academy of Pediatrics, the Psychological Association,
the American Academy of Family Physicians, and so on, all
signed a consensus document which asserted that exposing
children to violent entertainment can contribute to or even
cause increases in aggressive behavior and attitudes, just as
consuming too many fatty foods can have a direct impact on our
health.
In short, Mr. Chairman, the failure of the ratings to
accurately inform and the failure of the entertainment industry
to adequately self-regulate results in very real harm to
children. Now, I am not arguing for government to get involved
in the business of rating entertainment, and I take to heart
the statements of Senator Thompson. But I am stating that any
effective entertainment rating system must do a much better job
of reflecting the very real concerns of parents.
The second great failing of the rating system is the lack
of independent judgment. This is a much bigger problem with
some entertainment media than with others. The video game
industry, to its credit, convenes an independent entertainment
software ratings board, which recommends ratings to the
industry, which are then followed. However, other entertainment
media have not followed their example. The movie raters are
required to be parents, but are paid by the industry and known
only to a few industry insiders. The music industry is by far
the worst of all.
The decision as to which album receives a parental advisory
label is made by some employee of the company producing the
album. No one on the outside knows who it is, or if they
disagree with the decision, whom to contact to complain. It is
hard to imagine how to come up with a system with less
accountability. A third failing of some of the entertainment
rating system is the lack of recognizable standards. No one
knows why a particular album, show or film got the rating it
did. So when parents ask very reasonable questions such as: Why
did this album by Prodigy with the lead single song ``Smack My
B - - - - Up,'' not receive a parental advisory label? There is
no answer besides the fact that someone somewhere in the
company that produced and promoted that album thought no
parental guidance was necessary.
Or why would the movie ``American Psycho,'' which
originally received an NC-17 rating, which is quite an
extraordinary achievement when you consider that movie ratings
folks have only considered four films nationally released films
in the last decade to deserve an NC-17 rating, was allowed to
get an R rating after cutting only three seconds-worth of
footage. Of course, some decisions have to be judgment calls.
We can all agree on this. But we should also be able to agree
that those judgments should be guided by standards that
entertainment companies are willing to articulate and parents
are able to understand.
There are several things I believe we can and should do.
First, each rating system should develop clear and
comprehensible standards for rating entertainment products and
make those standards accessible to parents and consumers. That
seems to be simple and almost an undeniable request. Second,
ratings and labeling decisions should be made by an independent
body that is not connected in any way to the company that
stands to profit. Third, entertainment companies should make
the labeling- and ratings-decision process open to public
scrutiny. If they are truly interested in ensuring that the
ratings serve the needs of parents, they will be interested in
hearing what parents have to say about them. Fourth, more
information on content should be available rather than relying
on age ratings alone, more information available.
Some parents may be more concerned about exposing their
children to violence than to profanity or vice versa. Content
information helps parents make informed decisions about
entertainment consumption by their children. In addition,
providing information on content reduces the amount of
confusion parents experience in trying to decipher a variety of
different rating systems. As it is, there is one system for
movies, and a different, and I believe, a particularly
confusing one for television, another for video games and a
generic label for music.
It is difficult for parents to make sense of the alphabet
soup of ratings. In contrast, content description is
universally understood. We need more information. It needs to
be clearly rated out there. It needs to be readily understood
by the parents so they can know what their child is consuming.
Just as food labels provide clear information to parents on
what their kids are consuming, entertainment labels should let
parents know what is being fed to their child's mind.
Mr. Chairman, I have long admired your work in this area
and have worked side-by-side with you and I look forward to
continuing to do this. I believe there is a great deal of
limitation of government's role in this, as we have talked many
times and I have spoken in front of this Committee about. These
are simple things that the industry itself can do, and should
do. They do not impact the First Amendment and in almost every
regard they ask for more information, not a limitation on any
information. I think they would readily help parents. I know
they would certainly help this parent.
Thank you very much and I look forward to any questions.
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR BROWNBACK
Good morning. I want to thank Governmental Affairs Committee
Chairman Joe Lieberman for holding this hearing to discuss an issue
that I know is a great and abiding concern for both of us.
If we are to rate the ratings, there needs to be some agreement on
what the criteria are. I believe the purpose of the ratings system is
to provide parents and consumers with accurate information in a manner
that is accessible, simple, reliable and responsive. But if this is the
criteria, then the ratings system, taken as a whole, is failing--
failing parents, failing consumers, and ultimately, failing children.
I would like to address three major problems with various ratings
systems: Ratings creep, the lack of independence, and the lack of
standards.
First, many of the various ratings or labeling systems suffer from
what has been called ``ratings creep''--that is, many movies, shows and
albums that parents find objectionable are rated as being appropriate
for children, and even target-marketed to them.
Various studies have found that industry ratings tend to be far
more lenient than what parents would choose. When the entertainment
industry has rated something as inappropriate for children--whether it
is an R-rated movie or a M-rated video game, parents almost always
agree. But the disagreement between parents and the industry is deep
and wide over products that are rated as fine for kids. What is even
stranger, is that, as the Federal Trade Commission reported, even when
the industry acknowledged that their products were so violent or vulgar
as to be inappropriate for kids, they target-marketed to kids anyway.
This is a sham, and a shame.
And it is not without consequences. Tomorrow I will be hosting a
forum--co-hosted by both the chairman of this committee and Senator
Dorgan--which will examine the impact of the explicit sexual material
so common in popular entertainment on youth health, attitudes, and
well-being. (I invite everyone to attend.) Common sense and common
experience indicate that it does have an impact--and a harmful one at
that. One year ago, I convened the first public health summit on
entertainment violence. The leaders of the six most prominent and
prestigious public health organizations in the country--the American
Medical Association, the Academy of Pediatrics, the Psychological
Association, the Family Physicians, and so on--all signed a consensus
document which asserted that exposing children to violent entertainment
can contribute to or even cause, increases in aggressive behavior and
attitudes. In short, Mr. Chairman, the failure of the ratings to
accurately inform, and the failure of the entertainment industry to
adequately self-regulate, result in very real harms to children.
I am not arguing for government to get in the business of rating
entertainment. But I am stating that any effective entertainment rating
system will do a much better job of reflecting they real concerns of
parents.
The second great failing of the rating system is the lack of
independent judgment. This is a much bigger problem with some
entertainment media than with others. The video game industry, to its
credit, convenes an independent Entertainment Software Ratings Board
(ESRB) which recommends ratings to the industry which are then
followed.
However, other entertainment media have not followed their example.
The movie raters are required to be parents, but are paid by the
industry, and known only to a few industry insiders. The music industry
is, by far, the worst of all. The decision as to which albums receive a
parental advisory label is made by some employee of the company
producing the album. No one on the outside knows who it is, or, if they
disagree with the decision, whom to contact to complain. It is hard to
imagine how to come up with a system with less accountability.
A third failing of some of the entertainment ratings systems is the
lack of recognizable standards. No one knows why a particular album,
show or film got the rating it did. And so when parents ask very
reasonable questions, such as ``Why did this album by Prodigy with the
lead single song `Smack My Bitch Up' not receive a parental advisory
label?'' There is no answer--besides the fact that someone, somewhere,
in the company that produced and promoted that album, thought no
parental guidance was needed. Or why the movie ``American Psycho,''
which originally received a NC-17 rating--quite an extraordinary
achievement, when you consider that the movie ratings folks have only
considered four national releases in the last decade to deserve a NC-17
rating--was allowed to get an ``R'' rating after cutting--and their
producers bragged about this--only 3 seconds worth of footage.
Of course, some decisions have to be judgment calls. We can all
agree on this. But we should also be able to agree that those judgments
should be guided by standards that entertainment companies are willing
to articulate and parents are able to understand.
There are several things that I believe can and should be done.
First, each rating system should develop clear and comprehensible
standards for rating entertainment products, and make those standards
accessible to parents and consumers.
Second, ratings and labeling decisions should be made by an
independent body that is not connected in any way to the company that
stands to profit.
Third, entertainment companies should make the rating and labeling
decision process open to public scrutiny. If they are truly interested
in ensuring that the ratings serve the needs of parents, they will be
interested in what parents have to say about them.
Fourth, more information on content should be available, rather
than relying on age ratings alone. Some parents may be more concerned
about exposing their children to violence than to profanity, or vice
versa. Content information helps parents make informed decisions. In
addition, providing information on content reduces the amount of
confusion parents experience in trying to decipher a variety of
different ratings systems. As it is, there is one system for movies, a
different--and, I believe, particularly confusing one--for television,
another for video games, and a generic label for music. It is difficult
for parents to make sense of the alphabet soup of ratings. In contrast,
content description is universally understood.
I also want to note that I have not been a proponent of a
federally-mandated universal rating system. I believe that the best
route to take is for the entertainment industry to responsibly self-
regulate, rather than the Congress to regulate. It is, I believe, the
best way to keep our children--and speech--protected.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Brownback. Thanks
for taking the time to be here. Thanks for excellent testimony
and some very constructive suggestions. I look forward to being
with you at your forum tomorrow.
We will call the second panel now: Dale Kunkel, Roger
Pilon, Dr. Michael Rich, and Laura Smit. Thank you all very
much for being here. I very much look forward to your
testimony.
We will begin with Dale Kunkel, who is a Professor of
Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
and a leading expert in the field of media violence. Good
morning.
TESTIMONY OF DALE KUNKEL, Ph.D.,\1\ PROFESSOR OF
COMMUNICATIONS, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA
Mr. Kunkel. Good morning, sir. In my comments today I wish
to cover two primary points. First, how well are media ratings
working to assist parents? And, second, how can media ratings
be improved? On the first point, how well are media ratings
working, there are two key issues to consider. One is the
concern that parents may not understand and, therefore, may not
use the media rating systems to help guide their children's
media use or exposure; and the other is that media content may
not be accurately labeled. If that happens, inappropriate
material may then slip through the cracks in the filtering
system of the V-chip or other rating formats even when parents
actively employ them.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Kunkel appears in the Appendix on
page 72.
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Studies that examined parents' use of the V-chip system
have produced somewhat mixed results to date. Research
indicates that while a substantial proportion of parents know
about the ratings, there is a lot of confusion about the
meaning of the various categories and labels. This may explain
why only a modest proportion of parents report using the
ratings currently. Starting in 1999 the Kaiser Family
Foundation reported that three out of four parents said they
would use the V-chip if they had one. But the same study also
found that just slightly less than half of parents often or
sometimes use the TV ratings to help guide their children's
viewing. More recent research by the Annenberg Public Policy
Center found that only about 50 percent of parents were even
aware of the V-chip ratings in the year 2000, compared to 70
percent in 1997 when the press coverage of the rollout of the
new system was at its peak.
This reduction in the awareness of ratings almost certainly
stems from the lack of any significant effort by the TV
industry to publicize the ratings framework. Even among those
parents who know about the rating system, confusion abounds
about the meaning of many categories. For example, most parents
mistakenly believe that the FV designation is meant to identify
programs appropriate for family viewing, when, in fact, it
signifies fantasy violence, the strongest warning that can be
applied to children's programming under the current V-chip
system. Given this confusion within the V-chip rating system
itself, it is hardly surprising that the lack of consistency
across rating systems that are used for different media leads
to consternation on the part of parents trying to figure it all
out.
The second key issue to consider in assessing the efficacy
of media ratings is whether or not the content that poses the
greatest risk of harm to children is labeled accurately.
Research I have conducted in the first and second years
following the adoption of the V-chip system indicates that the
age-based rating judgments were being applied accurately, but
that the content-based descriptions, those are the V for
violence and an S for sex designations, were not. Indeed, the
majority of programs that contain violence did not receive a V
rating and, thus, any parent using the V-chip to screen out
programs rated with a V, would accomplish little in terms of
reducing their child's exposure to TV violence. If this pattern
persists today, parents cannot effectively screen out violent
portrayals by relying upon the content-based aspect of the V-
chip system.
Similarly, the accuracy of programs is also questioned by a
recent study from the National Institute on Media and the
Family. This research found that parents tend to rate programs
in a much more restrictive fashion than the judgments that are
applied by the TV industry. Given the obvious economic
incentive for TV networks to rate programs leniently--this too
is a worrisome finding.
So, how can media ratings be improved? The assignment of
media ratings are determined solely by the industry and
practically speaking there is probably no alternative to that
course. Nonetheless, there is a rich body of scientific
research that identifies the types media content that pose the
greatest risk to children. More training, education and
sensitivity on the part of raters to the relevant research
about media effects on children is needed. In addition, more
active monitoring and oversight of the ratings process is also
called for. While several of the media rating systems maintain
advisory boards, none of these have played a vigorous role to
date.
There is a precedent for the television industry to fund
truly independent research from neutral parties to evaluate its
performance in presenting violence responsibly. This was done
with the National Television Violence Study in the 1990s. Such
an effort should be considered to evaluate the accuracy and
consistency of rating judgments for the V-chip system, as well
as for other media rating systems.
And finally, it is time to seriously consider the prospects
of a universal rating system that could be applied across all
media. The lack of consistency across media and their rating
formats makes it incredibly difficult for parents to make sense
of it all. For example, a media product that includes extreme
violence would be rated R if it were a movie, TV-MA if it were
a TV show, M if it were a home video game, or have a parental
advisory sticker if it were a music CD. As Senator Brownback
noted, an apt comparison here involves the uniform system of
food labeling that is employed in this country, a consistent
framework that indicates calories, grams of fat and so on is
included on all food packaging and the uniformity of the system
is what facilitates the easy comparison for consumers.
The potential value to parents of a uniform rating system
is too great to pass up without serious consideration by all of
the media industries. That consideration will not come without
strong prompting from the public and hearings such as this are
an important catalyst to help focus the attention of busy and
overwhelmed parents. I commend this Committee for its pursuit
of this issue and its contribution to the ongoing public
dialogue about the topic of media ratings.
Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Professor Kunkel. I
look forward to questioning you on a few of the statements you
made. Our next witness is Roger Pilon, who is the Vice
President for Legal Affairs at the Cato Institute and is a
scholar in Cato's Constitutional Scholars Program.
Good morning.
TESTIMONY OF ROGER PILON, Ph.D., J.D.,\1\ VICE PRESIDENT FOR
LEGAL AFFAIRS, B. KENNETH SIMON CHAIR IN CONSTITUTIONAL
STUDIES, DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL STUDIES,
CATO INSTITUTE
Mr. Pilon. Good morning. Thank you very much, Senator
Lieberman and Senator Thompson, for your kind invitations to
address this Committee. I was invited, as you know, to address
the question of whether the ratings are working for parents and
what can be done to improve them, as well as the issues that
are raised in the National Institute letter that you
referenced, Senator Lieberman, together with the bill that you
referenced at that same time, the Media Marketing
Accountability Act of 2001.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Pilon appears in the Appendix on
page 78.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let me say at the outset that I share many of the concerns
raised in the institute's letter, concerns that you have raised
over the years, Mr. Chairman, about the quality of some of the
entertainment that has been produced and distributed in America
for some time, especially as it bears on the development of
children. Obviously, this is a land of many tastes. Given our
relative freedom and the market system we enjoy, producers will
rise to satisfy those tastes. That can coarsen our culture,
giving rise to entertainment that some would prefer not to have
in our midst. Yet, the very freedom that enables that fare to
arise also enables great and often controversial works to
flourish as well.
The issues here are ancient, of course. Sex and violence
have been a part of entertainment and literature from the
outset of civilization. The only question is what we are going
to do about it, and on that, I want to part company with the
thrust of the institute's letter and especially with the bill
that you have introduced, Mr. Chairman, about which I will say
a little bit toward the end of my remarks. In doing so,
however, I want to make it clear that I am not here to
represent the entertainment industry. I speak only for myself
and, of course, I share the views of the Cato Institute in
favor of individual liberty and limited constitutional
government, views that will animate my remarks this morning.
To go to the heart of the matter without elaboration for
the moment, given the limits imposed on Congress by the
Constitution and the First Amendment, I would ask why these
hearings are even being held. Why, in fact, are they being held
before the Governmental Affairs Committee? This is not dealing
with government management, rule over the District, campaign
finance and the like, the ordinary stuff of this Committee. So
one wonders why it is this Committee is holding these hearings,
especially given the constitutional restraints. It is an odd
fit, at least.
Having noted my interest in these hearings and my basic
concern about the proper role of government, which is the
concern that Senator Thompson raised in his opening remarks,
let me turn now, Mr. Chairman, to the question immediately
before us. I am afraid I do not know precisely how well
entertainment ratings are working for parents, nor does anyone
else. I am struck, in fact, by the National Institute's letter
when it presumes to speak for parents, as if parents spoke with
one voice on the matter. Their letter claims, for example, that
parent and child development experts disagree on the current
media ratings. No doubt, some do. At the same time annual
national surveys conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation
of Princeton, New Jersey, show growing parental satisfaction
with the voluntary movie rating system. The latest poll in
September revealed that 81 percent of parents with children
under 13 found the ratings very useful or fairly useful,
whereas only 17 percent found the ratings not very useful. I
daresay the Members of this Committee would salivate over
ratings like those.
More precisely, however, the National Institute claims the
voluntary rating system now in place for television, video
games, motion pictures, and music fail to identify sensitive
material accurately, consistently, or in a way that helps
parents. They call for an independent ratings oversight
committee, a committee that would create a universal rating
system. Although they do not call for government action here,
one wonders if there is not a hidden agenda somewhere--perhaps
government grants in support of the research they call for, or
perhaps more extensive public-private partnerships are in the
offing, including a commission with coercive legal powers.
Quite apart from such possibilities, however, one also
wonders why, if the concerns are as well-founded as they report
to be, there is not more private support to see them
implemented. Why, that is, does the National Institute feel it
necessary to come to Congress? If the findings are all that
well-founded, there should be plenty of private support in the
private sector. And, I submit, that is where they ought to
focus their attention. Nevertheless, they have come here, so I
want to address the issues they have raised, especially with
respect to the lack of accuracy and the inconsistency in the
systems of ratings now in place.
That implication is problematic at best. Given the
subjectivity that is inherent and inescapable in applying any
rating system, consistency could be hoped for only if the
ratings were somehow centralized. But look at the numbers and
see what you are up against here: 650 films each year; 2,000
hours a day of TV programming--the equivalent of 1,000 movies a
day; 1,300 computer and video games, forget about web sites;
40,000 music releases. If you are going to have a Committee
review this, I daresay, there are not enough hours in the day,
in the month, in the year to do so. It will have to be done by
Subcommittees and, therefore, all the inconsistency has a
chance of creeping right back in again.
When you turn to the accuracy issue, you run into similar
problems. This is an extraordinarily subjective undertaking.
How many sexual events or violent acts and of what kind, given
the larger context of the work, enter into that judgment? This
is not mathematics. It is not even science. And yet science
purports to underpin the National Institute's letter. They
speak of the validity of the research known to the scientific
community, but that research is anything but settled. You said
in your bill's discussion of congressional findings, Mr.
Chairman, that most scholarly studies on the impact of media
violence find a high correlation between exposure to violent
content and aggressive behavior. With all due respect, Mr.
Chairman, that is false. Dr. Jonathan Freedman of the
University of Toronto did an exhaustive study of the research,
some 200 studies in the English language, and he found the
research does not provide consistent or strong support for the
hypothesis that exposure to media violence causes aggression or
crime. In fact, he continues: Fewer than half of the studies
provide evidence that supports the causal effect, while many
find evidence against such an effect.
There are deeper problems with this approach, as well,
namely, that the behaviorism and the reductionism that is
implicit in this approach is denigrating in many ways to human
beings. It deprives us of the choice, suggesting that we do not
have choice in these matters. It invokes a kind of stimulus-
response model, which may be appropriate for analyzing the
behavior of lower forms of life, but certainly is not for human
beings. The irony, in fact, of the causal model is that it
denigrates us in the name often of uplifting us.
Let me conclude, Mr. Chairman, with just a couple of legal
comments, which I have developed more fully in my prepared
testimony.
Chairman Lieberman. Let me say that your full statement and
those of all the witnesses will be printed in the record.
Mr. Pilon. Thank you very much. There are serious
constitutional problems. First, with the fundamental
constitutional question: Where is the authority of Congress to
do anything in this area? And second, with the question: Even
if there were authority, how can you do so without running
afoul of the guarantees provided by the Constitution? I develop
those points more fully in my testimony. I will not go through
them here. I will just conclude by saying that this appears to
be a classic example of a problem searching for a solution in
the wrong place, namely, government.
The Founders established a limited constitutional
government on the understanding that not every problem required
a government solution. The problem here is occasional
irresponsible behavior. How occasional is open to debate. The
solution, as with most examples of irresponsibility, is moral
suasion. Will that solve the entire problem? Of course not, but
it is far better, as the history of overregulation has
demonstrated in spades, than introducing the heavy hand of
government where it does not belong, morally or
constitutionally.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Pilon. You have raised very
provocative questions. Let me just respond to one, which is
what this Committee is doing holding this hearing. This is the
Committee that has specific jurisdiction, primarily an
oversight committee, and the fact is that there are a whole
series of governmental agencies that are currently involved in
questions related to the impact of entertainment culture on
children and on society, including the Federal Trade
Commission, which you mentioned. The Federal Communications
Commission, obviously, is constantly enforcing law. There is an
existing statute that was passed on the rating system and V-
chip, which bears regular review. Tomorrow morning's forum that
Senator Brownback is convening concerns research being done now
under the auspices of the National Institute of Child and Human
Development to gauge the impact of sexual material in the
entertainment culture on behavior of children. So there is an
oversight role there.
I have also reached a judgment in my own concern about
this, which as I said began as a parent, that so much else that
we are trying to do here in Congress to better educate our
children, to reduce the rate of crime, to deal with sexually
transmitted diseases, to deal with the problem of children
being born to unwed mothers, particularly teenagers, is
affected--I never say caused--but it is affected by the values
and messages conveyed by the entertainment culture. So I see
some role there.
And the third is to provide, as I said in my opening
statement, a forum for people on both sides of the issue. We
have a very balanced slate of witnesses today to speak out and
see if we can find common ground. And each of us, as Senator
Thompson said in his excellent opening statement--I think we
are all concerned, as you are indicating in your statement,
about the entertainment culture, and the question here is to
find the appropriate role for government and other institutions
of our society in responding to that concern.
The next witness is Dr. Michael Rich, who is an Assistant
Professor of Pediatrics at Children's Hospital, Boston, Harvard
Medical School, an expert on media violence and its effects on
children and a signer, along with Professor Kunkel, of the
letter that has generated this hearing.
Good morning, Dr. Rich.
TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL RICH, M.D., M.P.H.,\1\ CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL
BOSTON/HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
Dr. Rich. Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity
to testify before you today as a pediatrician, a child health
researcher, a film maker and a parent. Our entertainment
media--motion pictures, television, music and video games--
represent not only a successful industry, but an important
cultural documentation of the United States as an idea and as a
people. Our First Amendment-guaranteed free expression has
allowed the creation of the most influential entertainment
industry in the world, which generates a wide variety of
products that excite, inspire, and move us.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Dr. Rich appears in the Appendix on
page 84.
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By allowing us to experience issues and events that
otherwise may not touch our lives, media serve as potent
teachers. Until recently, we have drawn an artificial
distinction between education, which occurs in schools, and
entertainment, which is fun, diverting, downtime for our minds.
There is no downtime for a child's mind. Children are always
curious, always learning. They adopt the ways of the world by
observing and imitating. They cannot help but be influenced by
media. The question is what are they learning? Unfortunately,
Dr. Freedman is a sole dissenter among hundreds, thousands, in
fact, of respected scientists around the world.
The results of thousands of research studies on the
relationship of media use to the physical and mental health of
children are nearly unanimous. After exposure to media,
attitudes and behaviors of children and adolescents in relation
to violence, substance abuse, unsafe sexual activity, poor
school function, eating disorders and other health risk
behaviors are changed. The findings of hundreds of studies
analyzed as a whole show that the strength of the relationship
between television exposure and violent behavior is greater
than that of calcium intake and bone mass, of lead ingestion
and lower IQs, of condom non-use and sexually-acquired HIV, or
of environmental tobacco smoke and lung cancer. These are all
associations that we as clinicians accept and on which
preventive medicine is based without question.
It is not so long ago that, while the tobacco industry
argued over scientific minutiae of the research, the medical
community and society at large recognized the serious health
risks associated with smoking and began to intervene. Look at
how our personal attitudes and behaviors, our social
environments and our public health awareness have changed for
the better. We are at a similar crossroads in relation to media
effects on health. It is time to be honest with ourselves, to
acknowledge the risks, and to address them in a serious and
responsible manner.
Media rating systems are not new or controversial. Child
health professionals, parents and the entertainment industry
have all voiced their support for a system whereby parents can
determine how best to guide children's media consumption so
that it is consistent with their values. The question is how
best to design and implement such a system. To function
effectively as a tool that parents can use, a rating system
must be trusted, consistent and usable. From both the
scientific perspective of a child health professional and from
the practical perspective of a parent, I find several problems
with the current systems.
In assessing any health-related situation, I seek out
information that is both valid and reliable. None of the
current media rating systems have been tested for either
validity or reliability, a basic first step in the assessment
of any instrument used in public health or social science
research. A recent study, published in Pediatrics, compared
movie, television and game rating systems to a well-validated
media evaluation instrument designed for parents. When the
current rating systems for each of these three media indicated
that a product was unsuitable for children, parents universally
agreed. However, there were significant discrepancies between
what parents and the rating systems found suitable for various
age groups. Like bank errors, all of the mismatches were in one
direction.
The current rating systems were more lenient than parents,
with as much as a 50-percent disagreement. If up to half of
parents disagree with the media rating systems, there is
significant concern that these systems may not be valid with
the population for whom they were specifically designed. A
second concern about the current rating systems is objectivity.
The entities which assign current media ratings, as Senator
Brownback indicated, range from artists and producers in the
television and music industries to industry-appointed rating
boards in the motion picture and gaming industries. The
memberships of these boards are industry secrets, which is
cause for concern about accountability.
A recent Washington Post story interviewed a terminated
member of The Motion Picture Ratings Board who violated his
secrecy agreement to report an idiosyncratic, inconsistent and
ultimately autocratic rating assignment process. Only the
television rating system has an oversight board for their
system, but by report, this board does not review all their
ratings and, indeed, has not met often. When the entertainment
industry rates their own product, there are powerful incentives
to down-rate their creations in order to make it accessible to
a larger market share. There is a strong tendency to create for
the top end of a rating, competing in an ever-tougher market,
to push the envelope with violence, sex, and other rating-
critical content.
The ratings creep, indicated by large discrepancies between
industry and parent assessment, may be the result of these
pressures. Finally, there is public concern that that industry-
applied ratings are used as a tool for marketing to children,
rather than protecting them. The discovery by the FTC of plans
and procedures to market R-rated movies to children as young as
eight did little to allay this concern. Current rating systems
are complex, confusing and difficult for parents to use. They
vary in structure, detail, and even approach, from the strictly
age-based rating of motion pictures to the dichotomous parental
warning of the music industry. After more than 30 years,
parents feel they understand the motion picture rating system,
but few understand and fewer still use the television and game
ratings. In my own practice, 6 of 10 parents thought that FV
stood for family viewing.
A final concern to me as both a parent and a child
development professional is that people will just throw up
their hands and not use any ratings. The concept of age-based
ratings is of concern to me. Essentially what that does is ask
parents to accept the opinion of a group of strangers regarding
what is appropriate material for their children, base solely on
their dates of birth. It does not account for variations in the
rates of child development, socialization or in the values of
individuals or families.
What are the possible solutions? What can the entertainment
industry, consumers, and society as a whole do to make media
ratings more effective in protecting the health of young
people? First, we can attempt to generate ratings that are more
valid and reliable. When parents and child development experts
disagree by 50 percent, these ratings do not function as they
were designed, because parents do not trust that the ratings
are an adequate proxy for their own judgment. Second, ratings
must be objective. If they could pass the same rigorous tests
of validity and reliability as other social science
instruments, they would function more effectively as a child
protection tool.
An independent oversight committee consisting of members of
the entertainment industry, child development and public health
professionals, social scientists and parents could ensure more
democratic, representative and consistent applications of media
ratings across media types and ensure regular evaluation of the
ratings validity and reliability. Finally, the ratings need to
be simplified and streamlined so they are understandable and
user-friendly. A single universal rating system may be the
solution. However, given the inherent differences between
motion pictures and music, between television programs and
video games, such a system would be difficult to design so that
it would be simple, appropriately descriptive and protective,
yet responsive to the differences in media.
Any solution will be imperfect. However, from my
perspective as both a pediatrician and a parent, a content-
based rating system similar to the content descriptors of the
television ratings, would be the most useful, valid and parent-
friendly solution to rating our wide variety of entertainment
media. Just as we want to look at a can's label and read what
we are feeding our children's bodies, we should be able to
determine with equal ease what we are serving are children's
minds. Content-explicit ratings would not supersede parents'
assessment of what their children of certain ages are capable
of handling, and would be responsive to variations in values
that families may hold in relationship to content.
If parents know the media menu, they can choose
thoughtfully and knowledgeably what they are feeding their
children's heads. Media ratings are important to us as
individuals and as a society. Designed and used properly, they
allow us to create and consume a variety of media while
protecting both child's health and creative freedom. Censorship
is anathema to our free society. It suppresses the free
expression of ideas and it stifles both science and culture,
the mind and soul of our society. I know and love the
possibilities of media, and I respect them. Entertainment media
are not inherently dangerous. They are a powerful tool that
must be used thoughtfully and wisely. Just as the same shovel
can be used to hit someone over the head or to prepare a field
for planting, so, too, media can harm or help.
What we teach our children today will determine the world
that they create for all of us tomorrow. It is our task as
parents, as citizens, and as compassionate people to do what we
can to teach our children the lessons that will help them make
their world safe, healthy, and free.
Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Dr. Rich.
Finally on this panel, we are delighted to have Laura Smit,
who in some ways represents the voices that we all hear at home
and that bring us together around this topic. Laura Smit is a
parent, a PTA president from Columbia, Maryland, and mother of
two children--an 11-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy. We are
delighted to have you this morning. Thank you.
TESTIMONY OF LAURA SMIT,\1\ MOTHER
Ms. Smit. Thank you. I am honored to be here today, to talk
about the rating systems from the point of view of a parent. I
am, I think, an average mom, although my daughter, when she
read my testimony, said, ``Mom, you're not average, you're
special.'' I live in a suburban Maryland neighborhood. I drive
the standard minivan. I am active with two PTAs. I help out
with the neighborhood swim team and I do my share of carpooling
and child chaffeuring.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Smit appears in the Appendix on
page 89.
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In addition to these jobs, I have the constant burden of
making daily decisions about my children's media consumption.
Every day, I have to make judgment calls about what television
programs to allow them to watch, what movies I am going to
allow them to see, what electronic games they can play and what
music they can listen to.
Every day, I have to choose between being a good mom and a
cool mom. When I am a good mom, I stick to my guns--no pun
intended--and say no even if I have the slightest doubt about
an entertainment product. When I want to be a cool mom, on the
other hand, I sometimes take the risk of letting my children
see or play something inappropriate, because I want my kids to
fit in with their friends, because I want them to be happy, or
sometimes just because I am tired of arguing.
The good mom in me looks to the current rating systems for
guidance and tries to determine why a particular media product
has been given the rating it has. I try to figure out whether
the rating is for violence (how much, what type?), for sexual
content (are the people in bed, are they having sex, how much
is shown, what kind of innuendos?) or language (is it lewd
language, what types of words are used, what tone of voice?).
Equally important, I try to figure out whether there are adult
themes in this entertainment which make it inappropriate for
children.
Doing this requires a considerable amount of my time. I
have to read movie reviews, look at web sites, and talk to
other parents to see what they think, and I do not always have
the time for all of this energy--or the energy for all of this
sifting.
On many days, I have to make a split-second decision, such
as when a TV program comes on that I find questionable, but my
son wants to see, as he has seen it advertised 20 times before.
Or when we arrive at a movie theater and the movie we planned
to see is sold out. Sometimes when the cool mom gives in, I end
up feeling like a bad mom, a mom who is not protecting her
children enough, and then I think ``why should I be put in this
position?'' As parents, we spend billions of dollars on
entertainment products for our children. Shouldn't the
companies who make so much money from parents and children make
our lives easier, not harder?
Some of you may think I am making a mountain out a molehill
here, but each of you can remember, I am sure, a particular
forbidden movie that you begged your parents to see when you
were young. But there is a huge difference between my task as a
mother today and your mother's task. The difference today is
that the level of extreme violence, foul language and blatant
sexual content that my children are exposed to is on a totally
different level than the fare that you and I were exposed to as
kids. Is it surprising then that parents worry about what
entertainment is doing to their children? It seems like on a
daily basis I wonder, what will watching this movie do to my
daughter? Will the sexual content in that movie give her a
warped sense of what love and good relationships are all about?
Is she old enough and mature enough to see this?
For my son, my worries are will he act out when he sees a
violent movie? Will he end up shooting someone because he plays
violent video games, or will he end up committing suicide,
having been rejected and bullied by his peers because I did not
let him go over to his friends' houses to play first person
shooter video games?
My concern with these issues led me to the Lion and Lamb
Project, a parent advocacy group which is working to inform and
mobilize parents around the issue of the marketing of violent
entertainment products to children. I attended a Lion and Lamb
workshop for parents in 1999, and both the workshop and their
web site, www.lionlamb.org, opened my eyes to many issues
around violent entertainment, as well as the various rating
systems. This hearing is about rating entertainment ratings and
how well they are working for parents. I have here a handy
little flyer that tells me all about the rating systems, except
for the TV industry. All of you are familiar with this alphabet
soup, and I will not go into detail about that, but are these
letters really helpful to parents? Yes, they are helpful, and
no, they are not helpful enough.
For example, take movie ratings; many parents are confused
about what is PG-13 and what is R. Some parents on my PTA told
me they thought ``Planet of the Apes'' was an R-rated movie,
based on the scary previews they saw with their children, often
at PG movies. I know others who thought last year's James Bond
movie, rated PG-13, ``The World is Not Enough,'' was definitely
R-material, and on the other hand, ``Billy Elliott'' is a movie
many of my friends thought would be a good movie to see with
their kids, but it was rated R because it had too many F-words.
Where is the line between PG-13 and R?
The Motion Picture Association of America web site states,
``PG-13, parents strongly cautioned some material may be
inappropriate for children under 13,'' and I have to wonder
what material. The MPAA site explains that a PG-13 film is one
which, in the view of the rating board, leaps beyond the
boundaries of the PG rating in theme, violence, nudity,
sensuality, language and other content, but does not quite fit
within the restricted R-category, and where are the boundaries
of a PG rating? It is really hard for me to figure out what my
11-year-old should see (and believe me she thinks she should be
allowed to see everything) because PG-13 movies have such a
range of theme and content. ``Tomb Raider,'' ``Pearl Harbor,''
``Legally Blond,'' ``What Women Want,'' and ``The Animal,'' are
all PG-13. With video games, I am not sure what the difference
is between a teen and a mature violent video games. ``Golden
Eye 007,'' a T-game, does not seem that different to me, from a
mom's perspective, from ``Quake III,'' which is a mature game.
As far as I can see, many T-shooter games are similar to M-
games, except there is no blood and the people are animated,
not real. But the whole point of the game is to shoot and kill.
Why are we teaching our kids how to kill?
With the Chairman's permission, I would like to have a teen
demonstrate one of the teen-rated video games--it is called
``Time Crisis''--at the end of my presentation.
Chairman Lieberman. Fine.
Ms. Smit. I have similar concerns with TV ratings and the
one-size-fits-all parental advisory warning label. Again, the
parental advisory warning label is a guide, but it does not
give me the why I need. Music is a big concern for me. Radio
music, which is cleaned up, sometimes entices kids into buying
CDs that are inappropriate. My husband and I had an experience
with this, with Eminem's music, long before all this publicity
about him came out. We were at the mall and we let my daughter
buy the ``Marshall Mathers'' CD, although I saw the parental
advisory label. When we heard the CD on the way home in the
car, we were horrified. So we told my daughter that she just
could not have the CD, and we gave her back her money. She was
embarrassed, but it was a big lesson for us.
So parents need more help in trying to figure these things
out. So what do I want in a rating system? As a mother, I would
appreciate a clear descriptive labeling system, in addition to
the age and parental guidance descriptors. The labels would be,
as many have spoken about before, similar to the government-
mandated labels on food. When my son asks me if he can have a
HaagenDaz ice cream cone, I know that he will be ingesting 11
grams of saturated fat, 120 milligrams of cholesterol and 21
grams of sugar, and it is my choice whether to let him have one
or not. Likewise, my children consume a steady diet of
entertainment products. Clear labels would provide me with
concrete reasons for making a decision. With uniform labels on
all entertainment products, it would still be my choice as a
parent whether my children should consume the product or not,
but labels would also make it much easier for me to give my
children good reasons why something was not appropriate for
them.
Having descriptive labeling of entertainment products would
really put the ``guidance'' into ``parental guidance.'' Parents
are not one monolithic group. Every parent has different values
and beliefs. The messages each individual parent received about
sex, about violence, and about language when he or she was
growing up, from their parents, from their church, from their
school, all of those play into the type of guidance they will
give their children today. Some parents are concerned primarily
with sexual content, others worry more about the effects of
viewing violence, and others focus more on language and
obscenities their kids might be exposed to. What is OK for one
parent might be totally unacceptable for another.
The entertainment industry keeps saying that it is up to
parents to make decisions. Well, I think labels would give us
the tools to make these decisions. I would also need
information on what the effects of the particular labels could
be. If I knew something could be harmful to my child, I would
be much more careful about letting him or her see it. Going
back to the food examples, I know now why it is bad for me to
eat foods high in saturated fat, cholesterol, sugar and sodium.
I would like to have the same type of information for the
effects of entertainment products. This labeling system would
be a uniform labeling system across the whole entertainment
industry, movies, TV, electronic games and music.
Right now, each rating system is created and controlled by
the industry group that stands to make or lose money, depending
on how the product is rated. The lower the rating, the higher
the profit. The result is a phenomenon that I know is talked
about as ratings creep, ever more violent fare allowed into
ever-lower categories. In short, we now have a system where the
fox guards the chicken house. It is hard for me as a mother to
trust such a system.
I would want this uniform rating system to be created by
child development experts, people who really care about the
needs of both children and parents, professionals such as
psychologists, teachers, pediatricians, guidance counselors,
early childhood experts and others. Since all these industries
claim their ratings are intended to help parents, I would think
they would be happy to allow experts in child development to
give parents the tools they need. I want to make it clear that
I am not opposed to any artist producing any movie, video game
or lyric that they want for adult consumption. What I am
strongly opposed to is the marketing of blatantly adult-
oriented products to my children.
As a country, we no longer market cigarettes, alcohol or
pornography to children, but entertainment with inappropriate
content is marketed to children every single day. Each movie,
video game, TV program, and music album seems to push the
envelope just a bit further in the depiction of graphic
violence, language, and unhealthy sensuality. Just to give one
example, inappropriate music is everywhere. My daughter loves
to listen to her three favorite radio stations, which she found
out from her fifth-grade friends about. We listen to songs
about being caught ``butt-naked,'' making love on the bathroom
floor. But it still shocked me when my third-grade son started
singing the words to City High's song, ``What Would You Do,''
about a woman who sleeps with men ``for a little bit of money''
to feed her son, and his daddy's gone? What is this teaching my
son?
A psychologist friend of mine told me that a mother
consulted him because she was convinced her 8-year-old daughter
must have been sexually abused because she was repeating a
sexually-explicit phrase over and over again. It turned out
that she was just singing the lyrics of a song she had heard on
one of her favorite radio stations.
There is more blood, gore, machine guns, dead bodies, and
sheer mayhem in today's movies than our parents could ever have
imagined, let alone let us experience, and we know enough now
about the effect of violent entertainment on children's
behavior to know that viewing violence leads to increased
violent behavior, especially among children.
I know that there are no simple answers and no magic pills,
and I am just a mom. But our country more than 30 years ago
managed to put a man on the moon. I would like to request that
in the year 2001, elected officials and corporate leaders do
their best to find a way to label our children's entertainment
products, so that parents can indeed make responsible
decisions.
Thank you for taking your time to listen to one parent's
point of view. I hope that this congressional hearing will be
the beginning of much-needed changes in the entertainment
industry's rating system. The improvements I have suggested
would be welcomed with open arms by parents who struggle every
day to bring up their children to be peace-loving, responsible
and healthy citizens, working toward a more civil society.
Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much, Ms. Smit. I
honestly believe that you speak not just as one parent, but for
millions of parents and grandparents--three of whom are up here
on the dais--about your concerns, and you did it very, very
effectively. Incidentally, Senator Thompson and I both agreed
that when we were kids, which admittedly was long ago, when
dinosaurs roamed the Earth, we do not remember there being a
forbidden movie, and I do think that some of that had to do
with the fact that the folks in Hollywood had a code that
guided what they did, their own code, not a government code.
Senator Durbin. Mr. Chairman, are you familiar with the
National Legion of Decency?
Chairman Lieberman. Oh, yes. So they may have had an
effect, too. Where are they when we need them? Anyway, thank
you. Thank you very much. We will proceed now to questions by
the----
Ms. Smit. Excuse me. May we show 1 minute of this teen-
rated video game, named ``Time Crisis?''
Chairman Lieberman. Who is this, Ms. Smit?
Ms. Smit. This is Adam Neely. He is a friend of mine and a
teen who knows how to play these games.
Mr. Neely. I will be playing ``Time Crisis,'' a Play
Station video game.
Ms. Smit. And this is a teen-rated game.
[Video game begins to play in the hearing room, but does
not work.]
Ms. Smit. I would like to show that the gun that he is
going to be using is called a Scorpion, and when this gun was
advertised, the magazine ad read--an endorsement from a
policeman, who said, ``If I saw a person with this gun, I would
shoot them.'' That is how realistic this gun is, that he is
holding in his hand.
Chairman Lieberman. Do you think it is working now?
Otherwise, we will go ahead with the questions and then we will
come back to you when it is. OK? Let me begin.
Dr. Kunkel, I wanted to ask you--or is it Professor Kunkel?
I wanted to ask you if you would respond to the statement that
Dr. Rich made, that at this point the data, the studies that
have been done, leave no doubt as to whether violence portrayed
in the entertainment culture poses a risk to children.
Mr. Kunkel. Well, there has been over a quarter-century of
research that has been done on this topic and at the present
time the following agencies, when they have reviewed the entire
body of research, have all reached the conclusion that media
violence contributes to real world violence and aggression in
children. These include the U.S. Surgeon General, the National
Institute of Mental Health, the American Psychological
Association, the American Medical Association, the American
Academy of Pediatrics. I can go on and on. All of these
represent the best minds, the top leaders in their fields in
public health and social science research and so on.
What I think is outrageous is that at a hearing that is
focused on media ratings--the reason we have media ratings, of
course, is concern about the adverse public health impact of
some of these media portrayals on children, and this panel--
twice we have heard mentioned a review of the literature done
by a gentleman named Jonathan Freedman at the University of
Toronto who happens to be about the only social scientist on
the North American continent who disagrees with all of these
findings. So, from my perspective, what I see is that this
study which was funded by The Motion Picture Association of
America--if the industry groups like MPAA wanted to know what
is the effect of media violence on children, they do not need
to do a new literature review. All they need to do is look to
documents produced by the Surgeon General and NIMH and so
forth. I think it is obvious what they are trying to do in
commissioning a new study by the only naysayer to all of this
research is to try and propagate a canard. You simply cannot do
that given the state of scientific evidence today.
Chairman Lieberman. Dr. Rich, I noted in the letter that we
have referred to, from the National Institute on Media and the
Family, which again you and Professor Kunkel signed, that there
was the statement that the current ratings are not sufficiently
health-based. I wonder what you meant by that and what role--
how you would change that from a public health perspective to
see that the ratings were more health-based?
Dr. Rich. I think this refers both to the confusing quality
of the multiple rating systems and the difficulty that parents
have using them, but more importantly to the fact that they
tend to be aged-based for the most part rather than content-
based. We have decided that we just want to determine an age
when we can produce an I.D. that says we are of enough age,
just as we buy alcohol or vote, that we will be OK with certain
media content. And I think that what the science says is that
the effect of media on health is much more content-driven than
an age-related phenomenon. We do know that children develop at
different rates. Children are capable handling different things
at different times. So a 14-year-old is not a 14-year-old is
not a 14-year-old. As a result the role of the parent becomes
that much more important. The person who knows this child best
needs to be given the information on the variety of health risk
behaviors that research has shown are concerning to make a
decision for their individual child.
Chairman Lieberman. Ms. Smit, I was interested in your
portrayal at the end of your testimony about what you would
like to see in a rating system, and part of it is clearly
labels that are more informative. I was particularly interested
in your desire to know more about the effects of media content
on kids, and I wonder, having heard what the two previous
witnesses have said, in comparing it to what you know about the
impact of content of food, for instance, on children's health,
what you think is the best way to convey that information about
the effect of media content on your children's health.
Ms. Smit. That is a very difficult question. Obviously, I
am not a research scientist. I think about this a lot. I am a
sexuality educator, so in that area, I know a lot about
sexuality education, and people say to me why do you have a
problem with your daughter watching things? Sometimes it goes
back to what the Supreme Court Justice said about when you know
pornography. I think that both in the area of violence and in
sex, I just have an instinctive reaction, knowing my kids, I
see something, like my daughter would love to watch Ally
McBeal, and I do not want her to watch it because there are so
many things that I cannot explain to her, because she has to
have experienced a certain number of things and explain things
and get things in kind of an order.
Chairman Lieberman. She is 11, you said.
Ms. Smit. Eleven. So I obviously wish I had an answer, but
if I had an answer, I probably would not be sitting here. I
probably would be sitting somewhere back there.
Chairman Lieberman. Just let me take a moment. As a
sexuality educator, what is your conclusion about the impact
that the sexual messages in the entertainment culture have on
kids' sexual activity, if any impact?
Ms. Smit. Well, I think it has a lot of effect. I teach a
class for eighth-graders, and I find them so cavalier about
having sex--going to McDonald's and the movies and then having
to have sex with a boy just because they went out together. I
find them really cavalier about it, and it is really hard to
teach them values about what a loving relationship is about. To
me, sexuality education is teaching children to have positive
feelings about sexuality, to know its place in their lives and
to be responsible about it and not hurt other people. And I
think that especially when I see sexual content that is
misogynous or hurts other people, that upsets me.
Chairman Lieberman. Let me come back, Professor Kunkel, and
perhaps, Dr. Rich, to you. In the letter that we have referred
to, there was a recommendation of an independent rating
oversight committee, and I wonder what thoughts the signers of
the letter had about that. I presume that was not thought to be
a government group. So under whose auspices would it be formed
ideally, and what would it do?
Mr. Kunkel. Well, I think that depends in part on the
future of ratings, whether they maintain independent ratings
for each of the various media or whether there might ultimately
be some uniform rating system. At this point in time, that is
obviously an open discussion. Imagine for a moment that there
was a uniform rating system. Then it would be easy to consider
that you would have an oversight board or an advisory board
that would be contributing to the creation of the categories,
as well as supervising the application of the categories.
It seems obvious that what parents are calling for, that
what researchers are calling for, is more descriptive
information, rather than more interpretive or evaluative or
subjective information. As people have noted, there is a lot of
disagreement about what is appropriate for children of
different ages, and the public does not necessarily want the
entertainment industry's perspective, what they want is
information. If you had a descriptive rating system that, let's
say it had four levels of violence, and in the first level, it
was comedic violence, and in the second level, it was serious
violence where people are threatened and harmed, in the third
level, people are killed, and in the fourth level, people are
killed and it is graphical or explicit portrayals.
Now, that is something that is simple, descriptive and
could easily be applied across media, whether it is film or
television, and then that could easily be evaluated by an
independent board to see that the judgments were being made
fairly and accurately.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes, I think you make an important
point, which maybe we assume, but should make explicit--and you
have--which is that you are not looking for statements that
this is bad and this is good. You are looking for descriptive
information about what is in the products so every parent can
determine what he or she thinks is appropriate for their
children. Was there any discussion among the signers of the
letter about how this independent oversight committee would be
formed, Dr. Rich, or was it thought that it might be formed in
cooperation, presumably, with the entertainment industry?
Dr. Rich. I think the general concept behind it was to try
to bring the kind of tools public health researchers and social
sciences bring to bear on other questions of the interface
between society and the public health, issues of epidemiology,
issues of sexual risk or how disease spreads, and to try to
bring those kind of minds and those kind of constructs to a
group of people that would represent all of the above, the
entertainment industry, social scientists, child health
experts, child development experts, and try to achieve the
validity and reliability that we insist on in other public
health and social science tools. We should try to create
objectivity and spreading from a single entity (that is often
currently a secret entity or an unknown entity,) to the
consumer, to create a broader and more accountable group who
have to stand behind those descriptors, those ratings that are
given to the media that the parents are letting their children
consume.
I would hope to see that it was a cooperative arrangement
between all of the various parties, because I think the
ultimate goal of this is to be able to have as free and open a
forum for expression in our society as possible, doing so by
making it safe and helping people know what the rules of the
road are.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Dr. Rich, thanks to all of you.
My time is up.
Senator Thompson.
Senator Thompson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. On the
issue of causation, others know a lot more about this than I do
and have followed it more closely, but it is a very confusing
thing to me. Everyone speaks with such authority. First, we had
the quest for the blame with regard to some of these terrible
shootings we had. Some wanted to blame it on guns and advocacy
of gun control, others on the media, and we seem to be getting
these very conflicting reports as to the state of the science
with regard to causation.
I hear you refer to Dr. Satcher, for example, but I was
looking at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and it is an
article, January 18 of this year, it says, ``Study Disputes
Myths About Youth Violence,'' and it says, ``While some media
reports, including a Wednesday Los Angeles Times article about
the Surgeon General study, played up the role of the media in
causing youth violence,'' this, of course, is the U.S. Surgeon
General, dismissed those accounts, and they are quoting Dr.
Satcher, ``As a risk factor for youth violence, the impact of
media violence to date is very small, very small indeed. Some
people may not be happy, but that is where the science is
today, and our responsibility is to stick with the science.''
Which side of this is Dr. Satcher really on? That is not
consistent with the quotation I thought I heard that you gave
of his awhile ago.
Mr. Kunkel. My quotation was to the U.S. Surgeon General,
and there actually are several previous U.S. Surgeon Generals
who have taken a much stronger stance on this than Dr. Satcher.
However, I think really what the debate boils down to is that
many people try to oversimplify this discussion. They try to
think of the impact of media violence as having a direct and
powerful, almost bullet-like impact on people, so that they see
a particular effect. They say, well, if you see this program,
will that make you go out and commit a crime or will that make
you go out and kill someone? And that would almost never
happen. There are, of course, rare instances of this and they
are reported in the press. But that is not the primary concern
about the influence of media violence.
That would be like asking what is the effect of smoking one
cigarette? There is, of course, very little or no effect from
one cigarette. However, as you have cumulative exposure to
cigarette smoke across years of time and thousands of
cigarettes, you develop an increased risk of cancer. Similarly,
with greater exposure to media violence, you develop an
increased risk of aggressive behavior and, according to certain
studies, certain criminal acts later in life. Now, that is a
risk factor. Just as I am sure that you know, Senator Thompson,
people who have smoked all their life and not contracted
cancer, there are people who have seen violence in large
measure over the course of their life and do not behave
aggressively. That is because there are many factors that shape
human behavior.
Senator Thompson. I am not arguing the science with you,
because I do not know.
Mr. Kunkel. It is a risk factor.
Senator Thompson. But I guess, when the Surgeon General
says the impact of media violence, he is not talking about one
exposure here, ``The impact of media violence to date is very
small, very small indeed,'' I do not think anybody would argue
with the commonsense proposition that a lot of things are going
on out in society here have some affect. I think the question
is maybe as you put it, what are we talking about? Are we
talking about something that is primary, something that is
substantial, or something that is very, very small?
I looked over here in the FTC report that was issued last
fall; there was some discussion of it in the executive summary,
but just like in some of these global warming reports that come
out, the executive summary is not exactly the same as the body
of the report, and if you look over in Appendix A of the FTC
report, it says, ``There does appear to be general agreement
among researchers that whatever the impact of media violence,
it likely explains a relatively small amount of the total
variation in youthful violent behavior.''
So, again, I am not arguing the science. I do not have the
answer. I do not know what extent. I guess everybody would
concede some extent, but the question is whether or not we are
making a much stronger causation and we are representing the
science as being somewhere that the science really is not, in
light of both the FTC and the U.S. Surgeon General.
Mr. Kunkel. There is no doubt that some people exaggerate
the research in this realm.
Senator Thompson. My question was whether or not you were
one of those people.
Mr. Kunkel. I do not believe so, sir, and I believe that
just as human behavior is influenced by so many factors, I
believe that the comment that you were referring to from the
Surgeon General, Satcher, reflects is that parents are of
critical importance, peer groups are also of critical
importance, and that relative to those factors in terms of
predicting violent behavior, media falls below those, and the
Surgeon General's report on youth violence reflects that. The
Surgeon General Satcher's report also reflects that media is a
risk vector and it is a contributing factor to aggressive
behavior, and our concern about this topic area is not that it
is the most potent influence on youth behavior, but it is one
of the most pervasive factors.
Children are watching media every day. They spend more time
exposed to media than they do attending school by the time they
graduate from high school. Certainly you would agree that
education has an impact on young lives.
Senator Thompson. Certainly.
Mr. Kunkel. And so I do not think you can discount this.
Senator Thompson. The issue here is one of causation. It
has to do with purported science, causation with regard to
violence, not that it has an--nobody could argue that this
stuff has an overall degrading, debilitating effect on society.
Mr. Kunkel. Of course.
Senator Thompson. I do not think there is any question
about a lot of it.
Mr. Kunkel. Of course.
Senator Thompson. But I think as we get into this, we need
to make sure that we are dealing with the most accurate science
that we can from the people and the entities who have some
responsibility in this area. Thank you very much.
Ms. Smit, thank you very much for your testimony. Tell me a
little bit more about The Lion and the Lamb Project, your
organization, how it came about and what you do and what your
goals are in your organization. It sounds like you do some very
good work.
Ms. Smit. Well, actually, I am just a member of The Lion
and Lamb Project. I just took a workshop and I like to go on
their web site. Daphne White, who is the director of The Lion
and Lamb Project, would probably be better to talk about it,
but it is a parent advocacy group. If anybody goes on the web
site, there are articles about the marketing of entertainment
to children. Talk about issues, for example, like these Gameboy
games which are rated E, but the same game is also a mature
game. So if it is totally different for children, then why are
they calling it by the same name? Obviously, if my 8-year-old
played this E-rated game, he would want to go play the mature
game soon enough.
Senator Thompson. Are there advisories that are put out to
members of The Lion and Lamb Project?
Ms. Smit. Yes.
Senator Thompson. Is there an organization in every State,
for example, do you know?
Ms. Smit. There are people that get trained to be trainers,
to do parent workshops, and it is a slowly growing
organization. Like all non-profits, it is sorely lacking in
funds.
Senator Thompson. Do you know whether or not--have you been
able to attract some private industry corporate support,
contributions and so forth, to help you?
Ms. Smit. I am afraid I cannot answer those questions,
because I really am just a member, but Daphne White is the
person to contact, and I would encourage people to go on the
lionlamb.org site to see what is on there. They do send out E-
mails to people who become members, alerting them to all kinds
of issues in this area and encouraging parents to talk to other
parents and just make them more aware.
I really was not as aware of all of this when my children
were younger, but as they get older I became more aware. I
mean, I see my kids every day and their friends just running
around the house, saying, ``I'm going to stab you, I'm going to
shoot you,'' and it is coming from watching this stuff. I am no
scientist, but I just really know that there is a connection
when I see bad behavior in our school. I think the World
Wrestling Federation has a big effect on young boys.
Senator Thompson. Well, it sounds like you are doing what
you can, not only to be a good parent, but to exercise your
rights to make it known what you think about all of this and to
join together with other people to have some influence in this
regard, and more power to you. Thank you for being here today.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you. Senator Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I apologize to our
witnesses and to my colleagues for being late. This is the
third hearing I have been to, and I know we are all busy. I
appreciate you being here. Sometimes when we have a panel like
this, I like to ask where you agree and where you disagree. I
am not going to do that. I am tempted to, and if I have time, I
am going to ask that question, where you agree and where you
disagree, but what I would really like to ask you is what
role--and you may have said this already, and I apologize if
you have--what role is there in these issues for the Congress?
What is the appropriate role for us to take in these regards?
Let's just start with Mr. Kunkel.
Mr. Kunkel. I would say that the appropriate role is to do
exactly what you are doing today, and that is to provide a
public forum for the discussion of these issues which, given
the First Amendment, seem best considered or best addressed by
self-regulatory action on the part of the media industries. I
think that there is a need for parents' voices, for advocacy
group voices, to be heard and to have an opportunity to meet
with leaders of the entertainment industries, and a forum like
this accomplishes just that purpose.
Senator Carper. You may have said this already. Do you have
children of your own? I have two boys, 11 and 12.
Mr. Kunkel. I actually have five godchildren between the
ages of 2 and 6, but no natural children.
Senator Carper. Thank you. Mr. Pilon.
Mr. Pilon. Well, as the odd man out on this panel, let me
say that I think that the role of government in this is
relatively limited. I think that the evidence that has been
cited is characterized most strikingly by Professor Kunkel,
when he said that violence in the media contributes to violence
in the world. That is a scientific inference that is so weak as
to be all but useless. I recall reviewing this literature as a
graduate student and I went away singularly unconvinced that
there was any serious correlation you could draw between
watching this stuff and the human action. And, in fact, I went
away saying that not only is there no serious inference to be
drawn, but rather it denigrates us as human beings capable of
choice. Indeed, it is only because we are capable of choice
that we can be held responsible, and we cannot point to the
video game and say, ``I did it because the video game made me
do it.''
Speaking from my own personal experience, yes, I have
children. I have a 16-year-old son who has been playing these
shoot-'em-up video games since he was 7. He is on his way to
becoming an Eagle Scout. I have no reservation about his
ability to distinguish between what he sees on that screen and
what goes on in the real world. I think much of this has been
overstated and it is nowhere better characterized than by
Professor Kunkel's remark that this ``contributes to.'' Lots of
things ``contribute to.'' Eating too much sugar can
``contribute to'' violence.
I would add also that the idea that you can achieve
precision in these ratings, of the kind that you get on a food
label that says 11 grams of saturated fat, is a chimera. You
will never get anything close to that in this. We are talking
about subjective judgments. We are talking about disagreements,
even on this panel, about how ``Saving Private Ryan'' or
``Sophie's Choice'' or many other wonderful films are
characterized because we have got this artificial grid relating
to sex and violence. This is the kind of thing that is
inherently subjective. To look for food label kind of labeling
just simply misses the point about it.
Now, with respect to the role of government, here again I
would suggest that if this is the kind of thing that is indeed
worthy, then the National Institute can find plenty of support
in the private sector to underwrite this type of thing. I
submit, though, that when you press their program you will find
that it does not stand up because the idea of setting up a
uniform standard for all of these media, and being able to put
out consistent ratings for the 100,000 or more programs that
are put out each year, is a pipe dream. It simply will not
happen. You will have this Committee and you will still have
disagreements.
Senator Carper. Mr. Pilon, I am going to ask you to hold it
right there. I want to hear from the other witnesses, as well.
Thank you.
Mr. Kunkel, I am sorry. I missed your thin remark.
Go ahead, Dr. Rich.
Dr. Rich. I agree with Dr. Kunkel that this is the first
step of what Congress' role is in this. Congress has functions
beyond legislation. It is also leadership. It is a voice. You
are our voice. You represent us, and you speak loudly, and the
fact that you are paying attention to this issue, that you are
not being distracted by other arguments, and saying we, the
people, are concerned about this is the most important function
that Congress can serve. You can, by your voice and by your
leadership, lead all of us, all of our diverse voices,
hopefully, to a better system.
While this system is a good attempt and I think that the
entertainment industry deserves credit for creating it, it is
not yet perfect, and so you can lead us toward a better
solution for that.
Senator Carper. Thank you. Ms. Smit.
Ms. Smit. As a mother, I agree with both Dr. Kunkel and Dr.
Rich. I see this a little bit like the cigarette industry was
many years ago. I mean, the issues are much more complex. But I
think the same thing with the Joe Camel ads, where cigarettes
were being marketed to kids. I would like to see some steps
made to stop marketing these violent video games and sex to
kids, and I guess I would like to see what we are doing now.
The fact that Congress is interested in this issue, makes a
parent really happy that this is being looked at seriously, and
I hope that everybody will come together, both on the corporate
side and governmental side, to do something for our kids,
because I see that all of you are concerned up there, but the
question is how do we go about doing it? But I am very happy as
a mother that Congress is looking at this.
Senator Carper. Mr. Chairman, do I have some more time?
Chairman Lieberman. Yes, you do. I am sorry. There is a
timer in front of you. You have exactly 3 minutes and 27
seconds, more or less.
Senator Carper. How much time did I have to start with, 10
minutes?
Chairman Lieberman. Yes, 10 minutes.
Senator Carper. I was going to say this is the slowest 5
minutes I have seen for awhile. I would like to go back to Dr.
Kunkel, if I could. We are familiar in our own family with the
ratings that exist for movies and follow those pretty closely.
My boys are into popular music--so is their dad--but I am just
not familiar with the warning system that is in place for
music, as a parent. The CDs that we buy just do not have those
kinds of warnings, or if they do, I have just not seen them.
Our boys like to play video games. I am not aware of the
warning system that exists there. I do not know if they are
alike, if they are dissimilar. I do not know if there is a need
for more commonality, but we all understand, I think pretty
well, the movie rating system, but not so much the other rating
systems for video and music and maybe television. Do we need
something that is more uniform?
Mr. Kunkel. Well, first of all, I would say that you fit
perfectly the profile of an average parent, because I think
that is what most parents in this country would say, that they
are aware that there are some labels being thrown on different
types of media products, but they are having trouble making
sense of them because of the inconsistency or sometimes
incompatibility across media. You apparently are not aware, but
there are no rating categories that are applied to music or
CDs. There is merely a warning label that says parental
advisory, that is put on material that someone in the company,
using no criteria that are publicly available, decides is
sensitive or might be inappropriate for use.
In contrast, there are somewhat vague standards for the
motion picture ratings, such that you can see that there will
be comments such as serious violence would be in one category
or graphic or explicit violence in another, but those seem to
vary from application to application. So I think there is a lot
of confusion on the part of parents who want to use the
information, but simply cannot disentangle all of the different
ones, and what we are suggesting here today is the need for
some greater clarity, some greater consistency in applying the
standards, making the public aware of the standards that are
being used to rate material, and also for the media industries
to seriously consider uniform ratings that would then allow
parents to easily figure things out because the criteria could
be the same across all media.
Senator Carper. I would ask each of the other witnesses to
just take 30 seconds and respond to what Dr. Kunkel said.
Mr. Pilon.
Mr. Pilon. If there is indeed a market for this, I see no
reason why The Motion Picture Association of America, the video
game producers and so forth, would not respond to it. It seems
to me that this is perhaps a mission in search of a market, and
it may be that it is more difficult than people have given
credit for it being.
Senator Carper. Thank you. Dr. Rich.
Dr. Rich. As a pediatrician and as a parent, my response is
that I am constantly in search of information that will allow
my own children and the children that I care for to make
informed and thoughtful decisions about a variety of risk
factors in their lives. Research has established that media can
be a risk factor to their health, to their physical and mental
health. Therefore, I would search for some means, hopefully
simple and direct and one that you and the other average
parents out there can use in an easy and direct way, to make
those risk-benefit judgments that a parent makes every day on
behalf of their children.
Senator Carper. Thank you. Ms. Smit.
Ms. Smit. I think that a uniform rating system would be
really helpful to parents. I am more educated than probably
most parents, and I think that even though it would be
difficult, it would be very helpful. I think that what has to
go along with it, though, is educating the general public about
it, just as maybe 20 years ago people were not aware of which
things that you ingested--how they would harm you. I think that
a lot of parents, if I look at some of the parents in my
community, just really need to be educated about that, and
there needs to be massive education, so that everybody knows,
because most parents go on the opinion a friend that they feel
has the same values, and you know who those people are, and you
know which people are more sensitive about which issues, and
you ask them, ``Well, would you let your daughter see it?'' or
``What did you think about it?'' That is why I think it has to
be a massive education effort, because a lot of parents rate
entertainment based on what their friends and the people they
trust say.
I think everybody needs to know that saturated fat is bad
for you, let's say, and everybody needs to know what levels of
violence are bad, but this is why it is so difficult, because
everybody has different values and this goes to people's values
and beliefs, which are the strongest things in people's lives.
And every parent is different. Parents aren't going to have the
exact same opinion about entertainment products.
Senator Carper. Again, our thanks to each of you for being
here, and, Mr. Chairman, my thanks to you for holding these
hearings in the first place.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Carper. Thanks for
being here.
Senator Durbin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DURBIN
Senator Durbin. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for this
hearing. I appreciate the opportunity. I am sorry I had to step
out for a moment, and my questioning will be brief, because I
know you have other panels to consider. As I listened to the
testimony and read some of the testimony that we will hear very
shortly, I tried to determine whether there were some things
that we could agree on.
There is a difference of opinion, Dr. Rich, for example, on
your premise that you say is supported by major health
organizations, that there is a causal connection between media
violence and aggressive behavior, which I believe--I am not
sure how much of a connection there is or how great of an
impact it is, but I do believe there is a connection. I do not
believe you can be desensitized to this kind of exposure,
particularly as a young person. I think that it has an impact
on you. There is some agreement. Mr. Baldwin will later say
that he thinks there may be some connection to it. He has other
things to say, which are equally important. There are others--
Ms. Rosen--who may disagree in her testimony. But it seems that
that premise is something that at least leads us to this
hearing.
If there is a connection, what should we do to protect our
children? The second thing, though, is there wide disagreement?
That is the question that was posed, or at least a statement by
the Chairman in his opening remarks. A Gallup survey found 74
percent of parents said movie, music, and television ratings
were inadequate. Later on, Mr. Valenti is going to tell us that
81 percent thought that these same rating systems for movies
were very useful. So there seems to be a real difference of
opinion there.
I will have to tell you--maybe it reflects the fact that my
children are grown and I now have a 5-year-old grandson, I am
reintroducing myself to some of these things--I think they are
unintelligible. I do not know how you follow it. I have no idea
what they are flashing on the screen in television. Maybe I do
not follow it as closely as I would have if I had kids sitting
around me. But it should be simpler, shouldn't it? Shouldn't we
be in a system where a parent really kind of knows going in, A,
B, C, D, F, or something that is fundamental? Right now, the
gradations and the definitions are so hard to follow, and a lot
of it is in the eye of the beholder. Most of these ratings are
being done by the industries themselves and by people in the
industry. Well, self-policing is important, because who wants
the big hand of government making this call? But when you get
into self-policing, it is a matter of definition and taste, and
it is very individualized.
Just the other night, I was stuck in O'Hare, which is part
of my life, and I went to a CD store. I went in there--I was
just browsing through there--and I looked in the New Age
section in the CD store, and they had two CDs entitled ``The
Very Best of Perry Como,'' and I thought to myself some clerk
along the way here--and they were all pretty young--probably
does not have a clue who Perry Como was and thinks he is a New
Age musician.
Senator Carper. Perry Como would be pleased to know that he
is thought of as a New Age musician.
Senator Durbin. Let me ask you about this, Dr. Rich. The
premise here, the connection, you believe that it is clear,
although I guess there is some question about impact on
individual kids.
Dr. Rich. I see it both in a wide variety of research and I
see it every day in my clinical examination room. I do think
there is an effect. I do not think it is an on-off switch. I
think that in the search for causality, we get seduced into
saying that if you do this, then this will occur. The reality
in all of life is that there are gradations of risk, and, in
fact, if one were to say you cannot prove causality, you could
not prove causality that having sex causes pregnancy, because
it does not happen every time. What we look at is variance. We
look at the risk inherent in it, and the risk inherent in
exposure to media violence is approximately 14 percent for
serious violence as an outcome.
By contrast, the risk of smoking cigarettes has been
associated with a variance that explained between 13 percent
and 22 percent of lung cancer. Everybody that smokes does not
get lung cancer. So what I am searching for, both as a
pediatrician and as a parent, is a tool, a tool that I can use,
that I can share with people without spending hours and hours
or a weekend seminar to teach them how to use it, that they can
use to decide how to care for their children best. I tell them
put on the child's seat belt. Bicycle helmets are necessary. We
do this all the time. This is a much more complex and difficult
situation on a variety of levels, but I think it needs to be
simplified, and I think the easiest and most direct way to
approach it is this content-based approach, because that allows
the individual parents to respond to what is there, rather than
what someone tells them is the appropriateness of what is
there.
Senator Durbin. So, Mr. Pilon, if it is kind of a consensus
opinion among medical experts that there is a connection
between media violence and aggressive behavior, why should not
the government be part of giving parents that information so
they can make the right choice for their kids?
Mr. Pilon. Because we have a Constitution.
Senator Durbin. You think the Constitution prohibits even
self-policing of these entities?
Mr. Pilon. Oh, of course not, but you said why shouldn't
the government be involved. That is not self-policing.
Senator Durbin. If the government is going to suggest that
we have, for example, categories that parents can understand as
part of this hearing, do you think that oversteps the
constitutional boundaries?
Mr. Pilon. So now we are moving in the direction of this
public-private partnership; is that the idea? The government is
going to suggest the categories?
Senator Durbin. Do you find that frightening?
Mr. Pilon. I find that a slippery slope, absolutely, Mr.
Durbin. I have been around this town for a little while.
Senator Durbin. I am new here, but thank you. [Laughter.]
Mr. Pilon. Well, I know, and I was here before--when you
were back out in Illinois. In any event, no, I think that there
is not this consensus that you referred to, and indeed, as I
said, what you do find is a very weak inference. Indeed, I
would throw this data out before the Committee: We are told
that there is an increase in violence in the media, and there
is an increasing amount of media because cable is expanding the
media outlets every day, the movies are getting more violent,
and yet we know that over the last several years youth violence
has been going down. Square those two, if you will. That seems
to fly right in the face of the hypothesis of these hearings,
and so I think that we ought to check the science a little more
carefully and, in fact, check precisely what we mean by
scientific inference.
Again, I repair to the language that was used by Mr.
Kunkel, ``It contributes to.'' As several of the panelists have
said, lots of things contribute to violence, and the Surgeon
General put video, media, etc., way down on the list of those
contributory factors. Therefore, I come back to my final
conclusion, that this may be a problem of whatever magnitude in
search of a solution, and what concerns me most, in search of a
government solution.
Senator Durbin. There are moments in politics when the left
and right come together, and I can see that.
Mr. Pilon. Yes, we find that often at the Cato Institute.
Senator Durbin. I am not going to touch that one.
[Laughter.]
I will just say that no one would disagree with your
premise. In fact, Mr. Baldwin, I think makes it very clear in
his statement, that there are many factors that lead to youth
violence and this may be a contributing factor. I think that is
what Dr. Rich is saying. I hope I am not putting words in your
mouth.
Ms. Smit, thank you for being here. As I listen to you, I
thought you represent a lot of people that I represent in the
State of Illinois, in just trying to find the right thing to do
to raise those kids in the right way, and when they turn out
right, it is the greatest reward in life.
Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Durbin.
Thanks to the members of the panel. I think you have set
down a challenge for us. You have spoken--certainly, Ms. Smit,
you have--from the common concerns that are widely held around
the country, and I think the letter that Professor Kunkel and
Dr. Rich signed also challenges the industry and all of us to
see what we can do to better prepare to help parents raise
their kids, and in that spirit we thank you and we look forward
to the next panel. Thank you very much.
Ms. Smit. Could we have one minute to try our video again?
Chairman Lieberman. OK. Let's try it again.
Ms. Smit. It is the technology of this fancy TV, and if it
does not work this time----
Chairman Lieberman. Is his name Adam? I find it
disconcerting that, playing this game, he is wearing a Cal
Ripken shirt.
Senator Thompson. He has got to please the home crowd.
Chairman Lieberman. Well, he is our hero.
[Pause.]
Chairman Lieberman. No-go? OK.
Ms. Smit. Sorry. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Point made, I think, though. Let us
call the next panel: William Baldwin, President of The Creative
Coalition; Douglas McMillon, Senior VP and General Merchandise
Manager of Wal-Mart Stores; Hilary Rosen, President and CEO of
the Recording Industry Association of America; Jack Valenti,
President and CEO, The Motion Picture Association of America;
and Doug Lowenstein, President, Interactive Digital Software
Association. Thanks to all of you.
See if you can find your seats as quickly as you can. We
have been notified that there is a vote that will occur
sometime in the next 10 to 20 minutes on the Senate floor, so
we will have to recess for a period of time, and we will try
very hard to get as many of the witnesses in as we can before
that time.
Let's begin with William Baldwin, obviously an actor, and
this morning here as president of The Creative Coalition.
TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM BALDWIN,\1\ PRESIDENT, THE CREATIVE
COALITION
Mr. Baldwin. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee,
thank you for inviting me to appear at this important hearing.
I am a parent, an actor and president of The Creative
Coalition. I am not here speaking on behalf of the
entertainment industry, nor do my comments reflect the opinions
of all the members of my organization, The Creative Coalition.
Senator Lieberman and I have had many discussions about the
role of media in our culture, its effects on children, and ways
in which we can help parents navigate the overwhelming barrage
of words, images, sounds, and ideas that bombard our children
daily.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Baldwin appears in the Appendix
on page 97.
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Although we agree that there is a problem, we do not agree
on the specific definition of the problem and we are even
further apart on potential solutions. Despite this, I consider
myself a partner in our collective effort to empower parents.
In recent years, there have been many welcome changes in the
approach of the arts and entertainment industries to the issue
of violent and sexual content, and the rating systems that we
are discussing today are among the most significant. But let's
be clear; even if we devised the most perfect rating system
imaginable, we would be no closer to solving the real social
problems of this country.
We were all horrified by the destructive acts that have so
disturbed the Nation in recent years, but in spite of all the
rhetoric to the contrary, the real issue is not media violence,
it is youth violence, which is in decline. The core issues for
youth violence are drug and alcohol abuse, divorce and family
breakdown, physical and sexual abuse, neglect, poverty, mental
illness, and easy access to firearms; and, yes, media may play
an indirect role by contributing in the form of aggression,
desensitizing or overstimulation.
But the problem is far greater than violent movies or video
games, and the ratings we use to control access to violent and
sexual content are not going to solve the social ills
afflicting children today. Printing warnings on a CD are not
going to raise anyone's children or make them go to school, or
keep them away from drugs. A sticker on a video game is not a
bandage for a broken family. Ratings are merely one tool that
parents can use to identify entertainment that matches their
own values. They are not a substitute for those values, nor can
they instill values if they do not exist.
Ratings are extraordinarily valuable, but they can be made
stronger and more informative. No one could argue that the
rating system serves no purpose and no one could argue that the
current system cannot be improved. In my view, any system that
indiscriminately lumps ``Schindler's List,'' ``Billy Elliott,''
and ``Saving Private Ryan'' in the same category as a slasher
movie clearly is ripe for reform. As a parent, I want to know
why a movie received a particular rating so I can intelligently
apply my own judgment and values. Descriptive labels that let
parents know what caused a rating, whether it is language, sex,
or violent content, would make ratings more credible; and, as
you will hear from Mr. Valenti, this is precisely the course of
action that the industry is taking. But no matter what ratings
system is adopted, it must be voluntary.
Congressional oversight, no matter how well-intentioned,
should not impose legislation that would infringe upon
constitutionally-protected expression. Government sanctions of
any kind to enforce subjective standards of accuracy or
appropriateness are a clear violation of the First Amendment.
There has been much discussion about mandating a so-called
universal rating system that uses the same terminology and
standards of judgment, no matter which medium is being rated.
Many apparently feel that parents are easily confused, even
though, ironically, the FTC has determined that parents are
overwhelmingly familiar and satisfied with current systems.
We believe that whatever confusion exists should be fixed
within each medium's particular system and not by creating a
one-size-fits-all concept. A universal system assumes that all
media are the same and affect audiences in the same way, but
artistic mediums have been proven to affect audiences
differently. Visual media, like movies and television, are
intrinsically different than media that rely on more subjective
interpretations, like music. As an aside, I have read novels.
For example, I have read the novel ``Hunt for Red October.'' I
saw the film ``Hunt for Red October'' twice, because Senator
Lieberman--I am sorry--Senator Thompson and my brother, Alec,
both starred in the film.
Chairman Lieberman. That was in my fantasy world, that I
starred in that film. [Laughter.]
Senator Thompson. You are being generous. We both starred;
right? [Laughter.]
Mr. Baldwin. I read the novel. I saw the film, not only
twice because my brother starred in the film, but it was an
excellent film. Six months later, somebody approached me on the
street and said, ``Hey, I loved your brother in that film. He
was the greatest Jack Ryan. I loved that part about such-and-
such,'' and I just agreed. I said, ``Oh, thanks a lot. I will
tell him.'' I walked away and I could not remember, not only
that scene, but I could not remember a lot of what the novel
was about. Two days later, I am driving in a car, and in a
week's span, I hear ``Paradise by the Dashboard Light,'' by
Meatloaf, I hear ``25-or-6-to-4:00'' by Chicago, and I hear
``In the Mood,'' by Glenn Miller; all three of them, I had not
heard in 15 years. I knew every movement of the melody and I
knew every word of the lyrics. Clearly, music affects the brain
differently than reading a book or seeing a film, and that is
one of the reasons--it is one of the justifications for why I
do not think a universal rating system can apply to all forms
of media, because they affect the brain differently.
So a single standard applied across all media would never
serve parents effectively, and if we are talking about age-
appropriate ratings for all media, should we include books,
Broadway musicals, paintings and the evening news? Clearly,
though, within the context of self-regulation, there is room
for improvement. We should continue to make ratings system
stronger and more informative. Parents are understandably
concerned as standards by which films are rated appear to have
eased over time. For example, some films that were rated R
years ago today might be given a PG-13 rating. The credibility
of self-regulation requires consistency, and the industry is
working to find ways to improve in this area.
Another area in which the entertainment industry can
further improve its self-regulatory mechanisms is compliance at
the retail level. The FTC report found that movie theaters have
the best rating enforcement of any retail industry surveyed.
Despite this, compliance with the rating system is an area that
can still be improved, and theater owners have pledged to do
so. We must work to find incentives for retailers to comply
with the rating system in ways that are not cost prohibitive.
Our organization is proud of recent industry efforts to improve
marketing practices, but pressure must continue to make sure
all media is made for and marketed to appropriate audiences.
But we also must be vigilant to guard the right to market to
adults, and more important, the right of adults to receive this
information.
I would like to suggest one more area that is rarely
discussed. I believe that we must not only give parents the
tools they need to help guide their children, but we also must
give children the tools they need to interpret the media
onslaught. We need to institute media literacy programs to help
children understand and process with a more critical eye the
vast amount of information they receive from all forms of
media, from films to television commercials to Dan Rather to
the evening news. Children need to develop inner filters that
help them make sense of what they are digesting. The more they
understand how and why media is created, the more they will
benefit from the media that they are ingesting.
The Creative Coalition is eager to work with other
interested parties to develop media literacy curricula that can
be used in schools nationwide. I thank the Committee for its
concern about our children's future. Solutions should not come
in the form of government regulation or any direct or indirect
form of censorship. In the end, voluntary self-regulation is
the only constitutionally-acceptable way to address this issue.
Self-regulation has been very successful. We now have a rating
system for the television industry, the video industry, and a
parental advisory for the recording industry. Mr. Valenti has
implemented new guidelines that entertainment industry
executives have not only voluntarily and enthusiastically
embraced, but some have offered to take several of these
recommendations even further.
Is the current system perfect? No. Is there room for
improvement? Definitely. We can strengthen the rating system
and the parental advisory by making them even more informative.
We can enhance enforcement. We can incorporate media literacy
into our schools. In dealing with the issue of youth violence
there clearly is a seat at the table for the entertainment
industry, with legislators, educators, law enforcement,
advocacy groups and other relevant constituencies. But any
effort will fail if parents are not doing their job. The
entertainment industry can help parents, they cannot be
parents.
Last, I wanted to say that when protecting freedom comes in
direct conflict with protecting children, dramatic results
should not be expected overnight. It needs to be done in an
incremental and thoughtfully considered manner, and myself and
The Creative Coalition all look forward to working with you to
find common ground that protects both freedom of expression and
the need to provide tools to empower parents.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Mr. Baldwin.
Mr. McMillon, thanks for being here. I must say to you,
just to echo what Senator Thompson said, that in the 8 years I
have been involved in this particular topic, there have been
moments of great frustration and disappointment, and there have
been moments when I felt really a sense of accomplishment and
appreciation, and I think Wal-Mart Stores has been exemplary,
really, continuing extraordinary acts of good citizenship in
the role that you played as retailers in applying your own set
of standards in the interest of the families that shop at Wal-
Mart, as you market entertainment products and do so based on
the rating systems, such as they are. So I am delighted that
you are here. I thank you and I look forward to your testimony.
TESTIMONY OF DOUG McMILLON,\1\ SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND
GENERAL MERCHANDISE MANAGER, WAL-MART STORES, INC.
Mr. McMillon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am proud of the
company that I work for and appreciate the opportunity to be
here today. At Wal-Mart, we are a customer-driven company. Our
customers are the primary force behind the decisions that we
make. We aspire to be an important part of our communities and
provide products and services that raise the standard of living
for our customers. Consistent with that aspiration, Wal-Mart
attempts to sell entertainment products in a way that allows
our customers to make informed decisions and to exclude from
our shelves merchandise that they may find objectionable due to
its sexually explicit or extremely violent nature.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. McMillon appears in the Appendix
on page 102.
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The challenges we face are in our ability to first help the
customers understand what it is that they are buying, and
second to determine which products they may find objectionable,
either before or in some cases after we have made it available
for sale. At times, this is harder than it may sound, due to
the subjective nature of these decisions. In the case of
movies, we use The Motion Picture Association ratings. We do
carry R-rated movies, which our buyer selects on a title-by-
title basis. Our cashiers are prompted at registers to verify
that the purchaser is 17 or older, and we are involved in an
ongoing training effort to ensure that our more than 120,000
cashiers all understand our policy of age verification.
In the case of video games and computer software, we use
the ESRB ratings. We do not carry adults-only titles and we
register prompt for age verification on M-rated titles. In
addition to register prompting, we have also implemented in-
store signing, print advertising, and associate training to
explain the ESRB rating system. In the case of music, we do not
have a rating system to follow. We do not currently carry
parental advisory stickered music. We do carry edited versions
of some parental advisory music. I want to stress here that
edited does not mean clean. It means some portions of the music
have been removed or changed. There may still be some
objectionable material, and this is an area where we feel we
may be contributing to our customers' misunderstanding.
We do not age-restrict the sale of any music products. We
simply do not know where to draw that line. From our
perspective, a standardized rating system for music by the
industry would help our customers make a more informed
purchasing decision. The Committee has asked that we address
the proposal from the National Institute on Media and the
Family. They propose that media ratings be more accurate, even
to the point of establishing an independent ratings oversight
committee and a universal media rating system. We share their
concern that rating systems accurately and consistently
identify sensitive material. We want our customers to be able
to make informed decisions regarding the entertainment products
that they purchase. While we obviously would be supportive of
continued improvements in media rating systems, Wal-Mart and
other members of the retail community have voluntarily made
substantial investments of time and resources to ensure that
both our associates and our customers are fully informed of
existing rating standards; for example, the rating system for
movies first initiated in 1968 and generally has been effective
in establishing sufficient levels of consumer familiarity with
movie content.
Accordingly, any proposals to make media ratings more
accurate should build upon this current level of familiarity.
With respect to the notion of an independent ratings oversight
committee, there are serious concerns over whether such a body
would interfere unduly with the consumer choice and discretion
in the purchase of constitutionally-protected free speech.
These concerns would be compounded by the fact that Wal-Mart
and other retailers have already demonstrated that commitment
to enforce and comply fully with voluntary industry standards.
Accordingly, we feel that the formation of an independent
regulatory body would at this point be premature and should be
considered only after the related constitutional issues are
fully examined.
Finally, it has been proposed that a universal rating
system be established for purposes of simplification. Prior to
making a recommendation regarding such a system, we would want
input from our customers, and we simply have not asked them. In
conclusion, while we strive to use our best judgment on what we
carry and work hard to restrict the sale of certain products to
those under the age of 17, it is not possible to eliminate
every image, word or topic that an individual might find
objectionable. In addition, we are the first to admit that our
systems and training, good as they are, are not infallible. We
want our customers to make informed decisions and we want them
to feel that we are handling entertainment products in an
appropriate manner.
Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Mr. McMillon. Again, that is
very impressive testimony. And obviously you are doing this;
government is not coercing or even suggesting in any way that
you do this. You have done this just as an act of your own
judgment about what is best. And it is obvious, in your case,
because of the significance of Wal-Mart Stores in marketing in
the United States, you have had an effect, I think, on content
in some of the entertainment products that you have described.
In other words, if you are not going to be able to be sold at
Wal-Mart because of a particular rating that you get, then
that, I think, will begin to affect the behavior, and that is
the way it ought to happen, out in the private sector. I thank
you.
Next is Hilary Rosen, President and CEO of the Recording
Industry Association of America.
TESTIMONY OF HILARY ROSEN,\1\ PRESIDENT AND CEO, RECORDING
INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
Ms. Rosen. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Members of the
Committee. Thank you for having me here. I am here to discuss
the recording industry's parental advisory program. I am also
here as a parent, a citizen, as a member of the music community
who has worked on this difficult subject for 15 years. But my
history does not go back as far as the criticisms of music and
popular culture do. That has been a subject of public opinion
and government scrutiny for over 70 years, since Duke
Ellington's song, ``The Mooch,'' was subject to protest because
of fears it would inspire rape.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Rosen appears in the Appendix on
page 106.
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It will not end with today's hearing, and perhaps that is
as it should be, for music is so often identified with youth
rebellion and generational misunderstanding that simply the
dialogue about the subject has the potential to build bridges,
if that is the goal. Too often, the goal, however, is to cast
blame and intimidate the creative community, and please know
this community has quite strong feelings about this subject.
Chairman Lieberman. I have noticed.
Ms. Rosen. At the risk of cutting short my own statement, I
am going to read a few sentences from the statement of Russell
Simmons, the chairman of the Hip Hop Summit Action Network, who
requested to testify today, and ask that his full statement be
a part of the record, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Let me say I will be happy to put it in
as a part of the record, and I regretted that we could not have
Mr. Simmons testify. I appreciate that you are going to read
some from it. I will not take this away from your time. There
just ended up being too many witnesses to add more, but if we
come back to the subject, I will be glad to give Mr. Simmons
and others the chance to come in and testify. Please go ahead.
Ms. Rosen. Thank you.
``I regret that we are not able to testify, because many of
us in the Hip Hop community feel these hearings are really
about us, and it would be better, in our view, to hear from us
and speak directly to us before judgment is passed. Although we
know the harsh underlying social realities that some of our
music exposes have not changed much in our communities, we are
committed to speaking the truth. We believe we must continue to
tell the truth about the street, if that is what we know, and
we must tell the truth about God, if that is who we have found.
Part of telling the truth is making sure that you know and talk
more about what you know than speak or do music to appease
those who are in power. Hip Hop represents truth-telling. What
is offensive is any attempt by the government to define the
expression of words and lyrics that emerge out of a culture
that has become the soul of America. My final point is that
often this is largely about race, and it makes some of us very
concerned that few will publicly admit this effort to censor
Hip Hop has deep-seated racial overtones. The Federal Trade
Commission's report on explicit content disproportional focused
on black artists. This report is scientifically flawed, as well
as morally and culturally flawed, and should not be used as the
basis for constructing a system of ratings in regard to
music.''
There are compelling statements in this, Mr. Chairman,
which I am sure the Committee will appreciate hearing about.
Chairman Lieberman. We will enter the statement in full in
the record.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Simmons follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF RUSSELL SIMMONS
My name is Russell Simmons and I am submitting this statement on
behalf of the Hip Hop Summit Action Network and its Executive Director,
Minister Benjamin Muhammad. I am Chairman of the Hip Hop Summit Action
Network and I have worked in the music and entertainment industry for
more than 25 years. Minister Benjamin is the former Executive Director
and CEO of the NAACP and has over 35 years of experience in civil and
human rights.
The Hip Hop Summit Action Network is the broadest national
coalition of Hop Hop artists, entertainment industry executives, civil
rights and community leaders. Established this year, the mission of the
Hip Hop Summit Action Network is to support Hip Hop and freedom,
justice, equality and empowerment for all based on the principles of
freedom of speech, music and art creativity, and the universality of
humanity.
I regret that despite our request to the Committee there I neither
have space nor time for me to testify today. Not simply because I, both
individually and on behalf of the Hip Hop generation have some
important things to say about these issues, but also because many of us
feel that these hearings are really about us, and it would be better in
our view to hear from us and speak to us directly before you pass
judgment and deny our fundamental rights.
But let me start with something positive. The Hip Hop community has
decided to take a leadership position toward the evolution of our
artistic destiny and responsibility. We convened an historic summit
last month in New York and we are planning others in Los Angeles and
Miami in August to explore questions related to violence in our own
communities, racial profiling, police brutality, representation of
women, and the profanity of poverty, and how we can work from within
our industry to expand and elevate the artistic presentation of our
culture and experience.
Although we know that the harsh underlying social realities that
some of our music exposes have not changed much in our communities, we
are committed to speaking the truth.
We believe that we must continue to tell the truth about the street
if that is what we know and we must continue to tell the truth about
God if that is who we have found. Part of telling the truth is making
sure that you know, and talk more about what you know than to speak or
do music to appease those who are in power. Hip Hop represents truth
telling, speaking the truth to ourselves and speaking the truth to
power out of the context and condition of our community.
The Congress of the United States should not censor free speech nor
artistic expression. It is unconstitutional for government intrusion or
dictation concerning ``labeling of music'' or ``rating of music'' that
has the effect of denying free speech.
What is offensive is any attempt by the government to deny the
expression of words and lyrics that emerge out of a culture that has
become the soul of America. In fact Hip Hop has now grown to become a
global cultural and artistic phenomena. Congress should not attempt to
legislate preferences in music, art and culture.
My final point is that this is often largely about race. And it
makes some of us very concerned that few will publicly admit that this
effort to censure Hip Hop has deep seated racial overtones. Hip Hop
emerged out of the African American experience. Eminem is a successful
white Hip Hop artist who, power to him, has excelled and profited from
the genre of black music. He stands on the shoulders of other
originators of Hip Hop. The Federal Trade Commission's report on
explicit content disproportionately focused on black Hip Hop artists.
This report flawed scientifically as well as morally and culturally and
should not, therefore, be used as a basis for constructing a system of
``ratings'' in regard to music and other forms of entertainment.
Simply put, we conclude by appealing to the Senate Committee on
Governmental Affairs to refrain from censoring, labeling, or rating our
music and culture in the absence of understanding and appreciation of
our artistic work which represents the genius of our culture and talent
of our youth. In fact, all youth of today--black, white, Latino, Asian
and all others.
Thank you.
Ms. Rosen. I do believe that it is important for you today
to know about the important initiatives that the recording
industry is currently undertaking to give parents and consumers
information they need to make choices for their music-buying
family. As you know, our labels have appeared on our products
for more than 15 years. By the measure that matters most, what
parents say, the program is a success. According to the FTC's
own report, 77 percent of parents are aware of the program and
75 percent of those approve of it. The Kaiser Family Foundation
study yesterday gave us comfort when it said that 90 percent of
those who use the music industry's system find it useful.
Over time, the system has evolved, most recently, last
October. We amended our guidelines, but in a review in
February, the FTC issued a report about the implementation of
those guidelines and was highly critical. We deserve that
criticism and we spent the last several months working hard to
do better. We established an implementation task force, in
conjunction with the retailers and our member companies. I have
met personally with top executives of every major record
company to review the implementation of the program, and we
have been meeting with our retail partners, as well.
We are working to implement recommendations formulated by
that task force, as well as by the coalition I just referred to
in my testimony. Last week, we announced a broad-based campaign
that our industry is launching to improve public awareness of
the label among educational leaders and parents in a variety of
ways. That message must get out to parents, and we are going to
make sure that our industry lives up to these commitments.
However, Mr. Chairman, I have to continue to take exception to
the FTC's most persistent criticism, and that is the erroneous
claim that the recording industry deliberately markets material
to children that we ourselves have already determined to be
inappropriate. By the definition of our program, that charge is
untrue. Our system is not an age-based program.
It is often compared to the rating systems in place for
television, motion pictures, and video games. But books have no
labels or ratings, even those that contain explicit content and
are marketed to children. Why? Because words are particularly
subject to interpretation and imagination. Most people feel
labeling books is a bad idea. Music is closer to books than it
is to movies or video games nature. We label content when it is
explicit. We provide a well-known and commercially-accepted
logo to identify those recordings. America's parents do
understand our system, and my written testimony outlines more
detail about how much we have to do to make sure that everybody
understands it. We take our duties seriously. Indeed, the
freedom I am here to defend does confer a responsibility. We
value our responsibility to parents and to consumers, and we
will continue to give them tools to make decisions for their
family. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Ms. Rosen.
Mr. Valenti, welcome. We look forward to your testimony.
TESTIMONY OF JACK VALENTI,\1\ PRESIDENT AND CEO, THE MOTION
PICTURE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
Mr. Valenti. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Thompson,
Senator Carper, and Senator Durbin, for having me here. I am
going to say a brief word about movie ratings, a brief word
about the Federal Trade Commission reports and maybe an even
briefer word about the Media Marketing Accountability Act. So
let me begin. Of the current members of the U.S. Senate today,
only five were residents in that hallowed chamber when the
movie ratings system was born November 1, 1968. In the ensuing
almost 33 years, the movie ratings have become part of the
daily American life.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Valenti with attachments appears
in the Appendix on page 113.
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I think it is fair to say that they have been faithfully a
part of that life. We have a 98-percent recognition factor
among American families today. What is the objective of the
system? It is simple: To give some advance cautionary warnings
to parents so that parents can make their own decisions about
what movies they want their children to see or not to see. Now,
how do parents feel about these ratings systems? You have heard
Dr. Pilon and others make some statements. Since 1969, the
Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton, New Jersey, has
conducted annual surveys. The last survey, September, 2000,
found that 81 percent of parents with children under 13 found
this rating system very useful to fairly useful in helping them
guide their children's moviegoing. That is an enormous level of
parental endorsement.
But more importantly, last year in the summer, the Federal
Trade Commission conducted its own independent survey, and what
did they find? That 80 percent of parents found the rating
system to be, ``satisfactory.'' Now, what about the accuracy of
ratings? We have heard about this. Since the inception of the
program November 1, 1968, the rating board has rated 16,892
movies, 15 to 20 of which starred Senator Thompson, I am
pleased to say. Now, it is impossible for anyone to say that
those 16,892 movies are confirmably correct or wrong. Frankly,
I will confess to this panel that privately, I take issue every
now and then with the rating of a film, and I think the rating
board might have erred. But if there are errors in the accuracy
of a movie rating, it is a matter of a judgment call and not an
exile of integrity.
What movie raters have to face is they are not dealing with
the purities of Euclid's geometric equations, the answers to
which are always clean-shaped and precise. What movie raters,
vexing though it is to them and to social scientists and to
Wall Street analysts, are dealing with is the ghostly form of
subjectivity which is barren of all Euclidian finalities. And I
might add, as a result of that, they cannot make accurate
judgments, totally accurate, because they are not divinely
inspired enough to see clearly what is not clearly seen. So
what do movie raters and social scientists, a group of whom you
heard earlier, and Wall Street analysts do? They draw smudged
lines. They estimate. They surmise, and they have to. Remember,
when a Wall Street analyst cannot remember his phone number, he
will give you an estimate.
That is what we are dealing with in movie ratings, and we
have to understand that. Let me say a word about the FTC
reports. When that first report came out on September 11, 2000,
it was critical of a number of marketing plans of some of our
companies, and frankly I thought they were not off the mark. I
found some of these marketing plans to be indefensible, and I
so publicly declared. But 17 days after that publication of
that report, the movie industry presented to the Senate
Commerce Committee a 12-points set of initiatives in which we
vowed we would remedy the frailties of some of these marketing
plans, and those initiatives are in place now and they are
working. How to confirm that? Well, the FTC's second report,
which came out in April of this year, in 17 separate citations
commended the movie industry for making visible improvements in
its marketing plans.
Is it all over? Are we totally improved? Of course not. We
have got some ways to go, but the point is we are trying and we
have made visible improvement, as witness the FTC report. Now,
just a final statement, a brief word about the Media Marketing
Accountability Act; I want to say that I do not for one moment
question the integrity or the commitment or the deeply-felt
passions of this bill's sponsors. Every one of them is a person
for whom I have personal admiration. They are superior public
servants and the Nation is the beneficiary of their skills,
their leadership and their fidelity to this country. But in all
candor, I have to say that that proposed legislation treads
heavily on the spine of the First Amendment. This government,
through a regulatory agency, cannot, cannot, cannot intervene
in First Amendment-protected properties or creative material.
Now, I believe that is unconstitutional, and if anyone
wants to question me, I would say read the June 20 decision,
handed down this year, Lorillard v. Reilly, by the Supreme
Court of the United States, which had to do with a company
advertising its own product, and the court, citing Reno v. ACLU
and Baker v. Michigan, said that no matter how well-intentioned
the government's interest was in trying to protect children
from so-called harmful material, that did not justify the
suppression of speech to adults. Now, you can indict me, Mr.
Chairman, for appearing before this Committee and practicing
law without a license.
Let me finish my last comment. What the ratings do is what
the Federal Trade Commission has urged the Congress to
understand, and that is that industry self-regulation of First
Amendment-protected material is the best way to aid parents.
Now, I am so enchanted by what I am saying here that really I
do not want to stop, but I will, and I only hope that someone
on this panel will ask me some questions about the letter sent
to me, which I answered, by the National Institute of Media and
Health, or whatever it was, but I would like to answer some
questions about that.
Thank you, sir.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Valenti. I have no
intention of indicting you, but I do disagree with you about
the Media Marketing Act, as you know, and I feel very strongly
that it is not unconstitutional to simply amend the existing
Fair Trade Practices Act that governs the Federal Trade
Commission to say that if a business makes a representation
about a product, such as rating it with regard to
appropriateness for children, and then turns around and markets
it to children, that is a deceptive practice.
Mr. Valenti. May I respond to that?
Chairman Lieberman. My final point is this: As you know,
there is nothing I would like more than to get out of this area
and see the industry self-regulate, and that is why, in fact,
in the proposal that we have made, in the Media Marketing Act,
Senator Kohl and Senator Clinton and I have created a safe
harbor, and said that if any entertainment industry creates its
own code of marketing and self-enforcement mechanism, they are
protected from FTC action, period, exclamation point. So I hope
that that will happen with the movie industry and all the other
industries.
Mr. Valenti. May I respond quickly to that? In Section B of
that act, the safe harbor says that the FTC will specify
certain criteria and that if producers abide by that criteria,
then they are going to be protected from these fines, unless
they are found guilty of marketing to children. I think that
very definitely connects umbilically to the Lorillard v. Reilly
case, but more than that it seems to me is what this bill does
that I think puts to peril the movie rating system; it
immunizes peoples who do not rate, because if you do not rate
your film, you do not come under the canopy of this bill. But
if you do rate your film, if you are trying to give information
to parents, then you are going to have a possible penalizing,
and that is where I think, in a respectful way, that we differ,
but it is done very respectfully, Senator.
Chairman Lieberman. And my opposition to your position and
Mr. Baldwin's is done with the same respect.
Mr. Lowenstein.
TESTIMONY OF DOUGLAS LOWENSTEIN,\1\ PRESIDENT, INTERACTIVE
DIGITAL SOFTWARE ASSOCIATION
Mr. Lowenstein. I should start off complaining. It seems
whenever I testify, I have to follow Jack Valenti. I am not
sure that is fair. Thank you for having me here this morning--I
should say this afternoon. I perhaps should rest my remarks on
the statement that you made regarding our rating system, very
kind remarks, and I appreciate them, but even though that is
probably the better part of valor, to probably not say any
more, I am going to plunge ahead. Let me start with a few very
brief comments on our industry. It is a myth that most gamers
are kids, which is something that I think is still widely held
amongst the population. In truth, 145 million Americans play
video games--that is 60 percent of the population--and their
average age is not 12 or 14 or 16, or even 18. Their average
age is 28 years-old; 61 percent of people who play games are
over 18; 43 percent are women. So this is a pretty diverse
market we are talking about.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Lowenstein appears in the
Appendix on page 123.
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I want to now turn quickly to the perception, as well, that
many of the games out there, and I think you know this is not
the case--you have often cited many of the quality games out
there--do not contain violence. In fact, 70 percent are rated
as appropriate for everyone, and last year, only about 117 of
the 1,600 titles released carried a mature rating for violent
content. Let me turn quickly here to the Entertainment Software
Rating Board system, or ESRB, as we call it. As you yourself
have said, this is, I think, a highly-effective system, one
that provides a great deal of reliable and useful information
to parents. You said so in the past and we appreciate your
recognition of our efforts. I would like to--and I am somewhat
hesitant to do this in view of the technological glitches this
morning--but we do have about a 1\1/2\ or 2-minute video from
the ESRB that describes the ratings process, so if we can take
a shot and see if it works--if it does not, I will quickly move
on and proceed with that.
Chairman Lieberman. Fine.
Mr. Lowenstein. Can you hear that?
Chairman Lieberman. No. Could you make it louder, please?
[A video is played in the hearing room.]
Mr. Lowenstein. Thank you for letting me show that. The
message there is that this is a fairly rigorous process. It
involves individuals coming from all walks of life who review
the game play and make independent decisions as to what content
they think is appropriate, and then generate both an age-based
rating and a content rating, and I think that is one of the
reasons you said some kinds things about the rating system,
because we have made the effort from the very start to provide
information on content.
I understand that there are those who disagree with some of
the ratings on some of the games. Ms. Smit, who, by the way,
from what I heard, is not only a good mother, but she must also
be a cool mother--she was a very impressive witness--clearly
has some differences of opinion with the ratings, and I respect
that. But I do not concede that her opinion or my opinion is
necessarily more valid than that of a demographically diverse
panel of raters that the ESRB uses. Now, we have done--again
commenting on some of the earlier testimony--we have gone out
and tried to validate the system. We have not just assumed that
it is right. Peter Hart, one of the most respected pollsters
and researchers in this country, did scientific national
research with 410 adults, and found that in 84 percent of the
instances, average consumers rate games equal to or less
strictly than the ESRB.
Inevitably, some parents will differ from ESRB, and as I
said, I concede the point. But the disagreement hardly reveals
a flaw in any of the rating systems. It is not even surprising.
Rather, it reflects, as Jack Valenti has said, the broad
diversity of opinion that exists in a free and pluralistic
society where individual parents have different views about
what is acceptable and appropriate for their children. In the
end, people do react differently to the same piece of
entertainment, and not even a proposed government-blessed
universal rating system offers any assurance of more reliable
ratings or more accurate ratings, because accuracy does not
exist here. This is simply a matter of perception in the end,
and I would argue that, to the extent there is a government
role in this, that is even less reliable than what industry is
doing.
I know we are very short on time. I am going to suspend the
rest of my remarks. We have done, as you know, a great deal, I
think, to try to educate consumers. We have supported retailer
enforcement of our ratings, notwithstanding the fact that means
that games that would otherwise sell are not being sold. We
have done public service announcements with Tiger Woods and
Derek Jeter and others to promote the rating system. We have
advertising guidelines that you have referred to, and overall I
think we are doing a good job. We will keep working at it, and
I thank you for your attention this morning.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Lowenstein, very much. The
vote, as is the habit of the Senate, has been postponed, so we
can proceed to questioning. I have referred to the letter from
the National Institute on Media and the Family, which is really
what occasioned this hearing, and I want to ask the three
industry-group association representatives to respond to the
letter. Obviously, we do not have time to take on every point
of it, but I am essentially asking at this point, is there
anything that you are going to do in response to the letter?
Because the letter, leaving aside the debate--it is an
important debate about what effect entertainment has on
behavior--this is all about the ratings. You all have ratings
of one form or another. The letter says that the ratings, as
they are now, are either inadequate, as in the case of the
record industry, they are inconsistent across the industry, and
they are confusing, and that is why they recommend the uniform
system.
So let me start with you, Ms. Rosen, and let me say first I
appreciate what you have announced today, which is that you are
going to have a mass-mailing about the parental advisory, you
are going to update the labeling in all the stores, and you are
going to produce some public service announcements featuring
Quincy Jones. But the obvious targeted question I want to ask
you is why not provide more information than the simple
parental advisory, ``explicit content''? Even Mr. McMillon
today--and I appreciate it--has essentially asked the industry
to give the retailers a more standardized, delineated rating
system on records.
Ms. Rosen. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I think that actually
the Kaiser study yesterday illuminated us quite a bit on this,
where they actually found that a majority of people, over 50
percent, 55 percent, I think, thought that they did not believe
that a uniform rating system would be useful, and so I think
there is clearly divided analysis on this, and the presumption
that is what parents want, I think, is just fundamentally
incorrect. With regard to the music system, it would be really
easy to sit here and say we are going to try and make everybody
happy. We are going to come up with a rating system. We are
going to tell you whether this is sex or violence, and Mr.
McMillon is telling us if we did, we would sell more music in
Wal-Mart. That is an awfully attractive offer. Why aren't we
taking it? For a reason, and that is because words are
difficult to categorize. The fact is that we cannot make such
subjective decisions when it comes to words, and it is
virtually impossible, I think, for somebody to tell me how they
would do it. Every lyric is going to mean something different
to different people.
Chairman Lieberman. Let me take you up on that. In other
words, if a record has language that goes to violence or sex,
or the language is vulgar, each of these other industries has
attempted in rating systems to--generally they have developed a
system that is fairly comprehensible and delineated, on these
various categories, leaving it to parents to decide whether
they want their kids to experience one or another of these.
Isn't it possible to do the same with music?
Ms. Rosen. It is not, and I think there is not an easy
solution for parents who want this, and I just have to say this
consistent reference to parents as somehow parents are calling
for something and we are different is just overwhelmingly
offensive to all of us in the industry. We are all parents,
too. I am a mom who lives in the suburbs of Maryland and drives
a minivan, so I am as qualified on that subject as Ms. Smit is.
The fact is that I do not want to tell a parent whether Chuck
Berry's singing about his ding-a-ling is about sex or whether
it is about music. I do not want to tell a parent that when
somebody says that they were blown away by that, whether that
means that they have been shot, whether it is about the
weather, or they are simply impressed. I think you have to
concede that words are so different when it comes to
interpretation than when you have a picture where there is very
little doubt, and that is why we cannot do what seems like
should have been an easy thing to do.
Chairman Lieberman. OK. I remain unconvinced, but one thing
I am convinced of, I know you are a parent and I know that
people in the industry that I have talked to, in your industry
and others, are parents and have a lot of the same concerns
about their kids and what their media diet is. Some are
struggling very sincerely with it. Some have changed the
behavior of their companies. I was with Mr. Valenti in
Hollywood and heard that from some folks who lead studios. So I
appreciate it, and I guess in the end, I wish that the parental
instinct would overcome the industry instinct, and that there
would be--I am not speaking to you personally; I am speaking to
the legion of people I have seen--and that their concern for
their own kids as parents, and good parents and great parents,
would be reflected more in the judgments made about what they
produce and also what they tell us about what they produce.
Ms. Rosen. So many places to go with that. There are many
people in the music community and many people in society today
who think that subject matter that is subject to interpretation
actually is art, that they have put both their parental
responsibility and their instinct for creative exploration
first. As Mr. McMillon just said, this is not a commercial
decision for us.
Chairman Lieberman. Jack Valenti, it is a form of torture
to ask you to respond to my question in the 3 minutes and 55
seconds that I have left on my time, but see if you can do it.
Mr. Valenti. I cannot take a breath in 55 seconds.
[Laughter.]
Chairman Lieberman. Why don't you see if you can----
Mr. Valenti. I will sum it up very quickly.
Chairman Lieberman. In other words, what is your response,
and is the MPAA--and you represent Hollywood and TV--going to
do anything in response to the letter?
Mr. Valenti. Already have. I received this letter from Dr.
Walsh, singed by some 20 or 30 people, on July 20. On July 28,
I sent him what I thought was a well-thought out four- or five-
page letter. I wrote in the last part of the letter--this is a
letter much too long to read--but, ``The reach of your critical
comments makes it impossible to reply either briefly or
blithely. Would you pass along to the other signatories a copy
of my letter to you? I am available at any time to meet with
you and whomever else you suggest. All you need do is call me
and I will instantly respond.'' I want to meet with these
people to talk it out. I have heard no response from any one of
the 25 or 26 respondents.
Chairman Lieberman. Let me phrase it in a somewhat
different way, and direct it. Some time recently, I read a
comment from Bob Iger, the head of Disney Pictures, former head
of ABC.
Mr. Valenti. He is president of the Walt Disney Company.
Chairman Lieberman. OK--who said that he was interested in
the idea of a uniform rating system, perhaps not surprisingly,
but certainly credibly, based on the MPAA system. Now, you are
the godfather or the father of that system. Why not try to have
the MPAA system be the basis of a uniform rating system?
Mr. Valenti. I am grateful to you for giving the entire
Iger comment. Most people stop in saying I am for a one-size-
fits-all rating system. He says, ``And the rating system that
ought to fit is the MPAA rating system.''
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Valenti. Very briefly, the reason is why, as Hilary
Rosen and Doug Lowenstein and others have testified, we are
dealing with vastly disparate art forms. For example, the video
game is interactive. Movies, music and television programs are
not. Music is for the ear. It is like words, as Hilary said.
The rest of us are not. The movies produce 650--we rated 650
movies last year. On television, Mr. Chairman, there are 2,000
hours a day of television program and the equivalent of 1,000
movies every day, 40,000 albums, 1,300 video games. Now, where
is this cyclopean eye, this all-seeing eye that is going to
oversee all of this and meld it into a harmonious whole? It
cannot be done, and by the way, what you Senators should
understand is if you have one single system, do you know what
you would have to do? You would have to make it exactly the
duplicate of the TV system. Why? Because when the manufacturers
of these new sets, and there are 50 million of them in this
country today with the V-chip, passed by this Congress, you
will obsolete 50 million sets, because the circuitry in there
is irrevocable. It cannot be changed.
Finally, the TV system does not have an adults-only
category. Video games do, movie ratings do, but there are none
in television. So when you mix all this together, what seems
like a gloriously resplendent idea becomes decayed when you
begin to look at it.
Chairman Lieberman. My time is up. I was hoping that you
would be the one to find that cyclopean eye, and that you would
do it with Euclidian finality. [Laughter.]
Mr. Valenti. I am pleased to know that you have been
listening to me, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Most people do not.
Chairman Lieberman. A vote has begun on the floor.
Senator Thompson, why don't I go over and vote, and we will
sort of roll the questioning so we can continue the hearing
without interruption?
Chairman Thompson [presiding]. I am reluctant to bring down
the level of this socratic dialogue to the more mundane, but as
I have indicated, I have a real question to the extent of
whether or not we ought to directly or indirectly, through
hanging out there the threat of government agencies trying to
do something that do not do a very good job of in any other
respect, and that is fine-tuning a complex problem and getting
it exactly right, even if we had the constitutional right to do
that.
I must say that in reading that Lorillard tobacco case, I
was somewhat surprised to see where the Supreme Court said that
even though there is no question about the harmful effects of
tobacco, unlike the issue that we have concerning violence
causation, that the government could not restrict advertising
designed to be for the benefit of the children if there was
this pour-over effect, and, in fact, it was making what adults
would be subject to, down to the level of children, and that is
something that I think we have to deal with.
So looking at that, we are--our next fallback is the rating
system, and I think what you are trying to do is admirable. I
admire these individuals who are trying to get a better rating
system. I think they are very good parents. But I hope we do
not fall into the notion that is somehow going to really deal
with the problem. There are too many people it will not touch,
too many people it will be irrelevant to. There are too many
one-parent households out there. It is too pervasive. At the
risk of doing what I said I questioned, I guess I would simply
use this pulpit to express what I would hope to be the
direction that we ought to go in, because you have the right to
do something does not mean that you ought to do it. I think we
all know that, and because the Supreme Court says one thing
today does not mean that it will not say something else
tomorrow.
Ms. Rosen, quite frankly, I think it will be the music
industry that tests that limit--and I represent a lot of music
people in Nashville. Of course, the biggest controversy we have
in Nashville is whether or not country has gone too mainstream.
It is a little bit different than what we are having to deal
with here, but in many cases, a lot of this troublesome stuff
is marketed almost solely to children. It has mass availability
and you have got the most egregious examples. You can say what
you will about music that depicts somebody's throat being
slashed and listening to the blood gurgle, and killing your
mother and stuff like that. But the fact of the matter is that
is going to test the outer limits, and if I were in the
industry, strictly from a bottom-line standpoint, I would
simply add this suggestion: Take a long look at that. Nobody
wants to stifle anybody's creativity. Nobody wants to stifle, I
do not think, anything that even some people might find
offensive, because of First Amendment considerations. But I see
a trend that I would be concerned about if I was in that
business.
We were told with some certainty up here, back for the last
couple of years, that the Supreme Court undoubtedly would, on
the basis of the First Amendment, strike down State laws having
to do with campaign finance regulation, because the whole trend
has been going in one direction. The Supreme Court did not do
that. It surprised everybody in town, a 5-4 decision, and they
said that you could regulate. In that particular case, it was a
hard money situation, and I wonder to what extent that might
have had something to do with what was going on in the country.
Since Buckley v. Valeo, there has been a sea change out there.
We are awash in money from all directions.
I do not think the Supreme Court is immune from seeing what
is going on in the Nation, plus all that being brought to them
in a legal forum. I see the same thing in the music industry.
As time goes on, as these pressures mount, some of which I
think are improper, but they are going to be there, by
government and by others, I am wondering where you are going to
be a few years from now. We talk about crime being in decline
right now. I think the reason for that is demographics. The
crime-committing age group is relatively small right now. In a
few years, mid-teens to mid-twenties, just demographically, we
are going to have many more of that age group, and the chances
are we are going to see a substantial increase in crime for
that reason alone. So you are going to have a substantial
increase in crime. You are going to have Eminem still doing his
thing, and stuff that is embarrassing to all of us with no
redeeming social value that anybody can see, and you are going
to rest comfortably on the fact the Supreme Court is going to
be where it always is.
The Supreme Court might do something that is unwise or
questionable in the long run. I do not know. I am just talking
here, because I do not feel like I ought to be telling you what
you have to do. I might, as a citizen, if we had a private
conversation, I would tell you some things as a citizen, in my
opinion, that I do not feel, as a government official----
Ms. Rosen. You have.
Senator Thompson [continuing]. I have any particular
business doing. But I would just put that out for your
consideration. I think that, as I say, rating systems have the
purpose, but the underlying product I would really question, in
the movie industry and the music industry, about whether or not
we could do a little better without sacrificing artistic
freedom, to do our part with regard to the underlying product.
I think William Baldwin is certainly doing his part. I had the
benefit of going to New York and being with Bill and Alec and
others awhile back, and I thought I was going to be, as a
Republican up there, and several other actors, I thought I
would probably be the one served for dinner. But I found all
parents, all concerned, all, I would imagine at one time or
another, have had some concern about the scripts that you have
seen, things that you have had to make decisions on.
I would be interested in knowing whether or not, from all
of this discussion that we are having in the country right now,
from your end of it, do you see any changes, any differences,
any changes for the better? Are the people who make the
decisions, you think, becoming a little more sensitive to what
they might want their own kids to be seeing, or am I being
overly optimistic? I have not seen any of that in awhile.
Mr. Baldwin. Well, I would have to say that because there
are so many more new opportunities and new entertainment
outlets, there is so much more product being manufactured,
there is so much more product being made, so there is much more
excellent quality material being produced. But I think
proportionally speaking, on a percentage basis, perhaps there
is just as much bad, and I think part of the problem is that it
is called show business for a reason. The operative word is
business, and it does not have to be a violent film. It could
be a film like ``Happy Gilmore.'' It could be an Adam Sandler
film that people--you know, the opening weekend, it will open
at $40 or $50 million, and then ``A River Runs Through It''
makes two cents and closes after its opening weekend, and the
more those types of films are profitable, the more they are
going to be made, and I think that they are a viable form of
entertainment, even the violence and the sex is a viable form
of entertainment and they have a constitutionally-protected
right to express themselves in that way, and people have a
right to see it.
But there are a lot of times I will appear on television
and I will say is it my fault for appearing here today? Is it
your fault for inviting me? Or is it their fault for watching,
because the main reason you had me come out here is because I
am famous, and the main reason you had me come out here because
I am famous is because you know it is going to generate ratings
and you know more people are going to watch and you know this
network is going to make more money because I am appearing on
the show. You can have somebody appear on the show who is an
expert in this area who is not famous, but they are not here
today. You have me here today. And I said is it my fault for
showing? Is it your fault for inviting me or is it their fault
for tuning in? And, at some point, it has to be what will drive
the market is demand, not supply. I think there has to be a
greater demand.
I am saddened by the fact that--I wish that ``A River Runs
Through It'' or ``Quiz Show''----
Senator Thompson. But you make the point or you mentioned
``Hunt for Red October.'' As I think back on it, I do not know
what the rating of that was. Now that I think about it, I do
not recall even any profanity in the movie, much less any of
the other stuff that cause people problems. I do not recall any
of that, and yet they are still running it. I am amazed, you
know, late-night cable. In other words, it did very well. So
again we have a causation question. I think it attracts some
kids, which is part of the problem, some of the bad stuff--but
with regard to a large segment of the population, it seems to
me like it does not matter whether it is there or not.
It has to do with the quality of the script, primarily, and
it has to do with the quality of the actors and the direction
and all those things. But you can walk out of one of those
movies, like ``Hunt for Red October,'' and it does not occur to
you that there was no violence or nudity or bad language. It
was just a good movie. So I do not think--I think from a
production standpoint, it would occur to me that if I were
making these things, that if you want to appeal to a younger
crowd and do some things in there to induce them, I guess that
is valid, because the R-rating causes ratings to fall off
because young people under 17 want to go see them and they are
not allowed to see them, and they are the moviegoing audience,
primarily, I guess.
But in a broader sense, it looks to me like the problem is
not is if you have a so-called clean movie, that you are going
to drop audience. The problem is it is more difficult to write.
As you know better than anybody, a good script and a good story
and done well is extremely hard, and I do not know what we do
about that, but I would hope that it would induce folks to try
harder in that respect.
Ms. Rosen. I think, at the risk of answering a question
that was not asked----
Senator Thompson. It is just like I am finally back in
control again here. [Laughter.]
Ms. Rosen. So as long as we are stalling, I might as well
throw it out.
Senator Thompson. Well, I have a vote I am going to miss,
but I will take that chance. Go ahead.
Ms. Rosen. I just wanted to say two quick things. One is
that I think that fundamentally the entertainment industry
relies on the First Amendment, but does not use it as an excuse
for everything that is made. I think that there is a sense of
artistic credibility in things that you do not find credible,
and when I heard you say that you thought ``Saving Private
Ryan'' was a great movie for 14-year-old boys to watch, I heard
groans in the audience because you have to concede you are
seeing that through the prism of your own judgments and your
own values.
Senator Thompson. Exactly.
Ms. Rosen. And that there are people in this country who
would listen to Chuck D. or Mostep or Eminem, even, and suggest
that that is through the prism of their world and their own
values, and that is essentially the reliance on the First
Amendment, not that you cannot touch us, but rather this
expression all has some validity to somebody, and therefore it
must be protected by everybody.
Senator Thompson. But we all make judgments. I mean, that
was my judgment about that. People who produce records make
judgments. It is not like you do not make judgments. Everyone
presumably has some line somewhere. The question is who makes
that judgment? Should the government be making that judgment?
Ms. Rosen. That is right. That is my point.
Senator Thompson. And since it is the producer who makes
that judgment, is it not appropriate for other people to voice
their opinions, and the customer of this--this is a commercial
enterprise that we are talking about here--and the customers
getting together and expressing their opinion on the judgments
that you make? I think that is what we are dealing with here.
That is why I find a congressional forum for all of this an
uncomfortable one. These are decisions and discussions that
ought to be happening all across America, but it concerns me
when the first thing we think about--when we have a problem in
this country, the first thing we think about is government, and
usually the Federal Government.
Ms. Rosen. Right, and I think when the Supreme Court looks
at this issue again, because people suppose that it might, if
there is still crime in the streets and poverty in people's
homes----
Senator Thompson. You will have more reports, showing more
causation.
Ms. Rosen [continuing]. And divorce and child abuse, there
is going to be music that reflects that. There is going to be
movies that have those themes, and those are undeniable pieces
of society.
Senator Thompson. Anybody else have any comment?
Mr. Baldwin. Yes, I just wanted to say one thing, that
based on my experience with this issue, I just found it a
little troubling, and I noticed Senator Lieberman addressed
this earlier, but an overwhelming and disproportional amount of
what the reason why we are here today, graphic and explicit
violence, sex, profanity, the Media Accountability Act, it all
addresses hip-hop music--disproportionately addresses hip-hop
music and rap music. As Hilary mentioned earlier, the testimony
of Russell Simmons, I read it and I think that it makes some
very, very interesting points, and I think it is a little bit
unusual that nobody from--no hip-hop artists or no rap
artists--and it is interesting that publicly they cite Eminem
because he is the token white guy who is doing this, because I
guess publicly it does not want to be targeted as a black
issue. But I really think that his thoughts and his feelings
and the expression of that community needs to be included in
this dialogue, in this discussion, next time.
Senator Thompson. Well, you might go back over that with
the Chairman, who has just walked in. But I thought about that
as she was speaking. I think the notion that this in some way
is a racial targeting, I think, is not only invalid, I think it
hurts those of us who are really concerned about protecting the
First Amendment rights of artists. I do not know what the
numbers are. I do know that Eminem has been singled out. I
think he is the one whose record I have described awhile ago,
about the throat slashing and the killing of the mother and
that sort of thing. I really question, from the standpoint of
African-Americans, whether or not someone coming forth and
urging that this, in some ways--these kind of lyrics is an
indigenous part of race, is beneficial. I think there are
millions of families out there----
Ms. Rosen. That is not what they say.
Senator Thompson [continuing]. That would not want to be
represented by those kinds of statements. I think that it ought
to be considered on its merits. I think that when people use
racial motivations for people who there has never been any
indication, anywhere or anytime, that that is the case, hurt
the legitimate claims that they have concerning this music.
Senator Lieberman, concerning not having someone here from
the hip-hop industry and the implication that that music has
been targeted for racial reasons, as Mr.----
Mr. Baldwin. Can I just--I am not accusing this Committee
of targeting that for racial reasons. I am saying it is a
consequence. It is an unconscious consequence. The overwhelming
amount--the reason we are here today is to talk about
protecting children and empowering parents from violent media,
from sexual media, and from profanity, and by definition, an
overwhelming percentage of hip-hop music and rap music falls
into this category, and I think that when we look at
Shakespeare, when we look at the Greek tragedy, we see an
honest reflection and portrayal of the times in which they
lived and the culture in which they lived, and I do not think
it is going to take 50 years or 100 years or 500 years--at that
time, it was provocative and controversial, as it is today. I
do not think it is going to take 100 years to look back and see
how honest a depiction or a portrayal that was for minority
communities who live in urban areas.
I understand that now, and I respect that now, and I think
that is just as honest as Waylon Jennings twanging his guitar
and talking about how he fell in love with his sweetheart and
she broke his heart and he had too much to drink and he thought
about killing himself, and I think that that is as honest and
accurate a portrayal as country music or as a Shakespearean
play or a Greek tragedy, and I think, unfortunately, most of
this music has fallen into--has become prey of what this
Committee is interested in addressing, and I think just because
it has violent or sexual content or profanity, I do not think
that there should not be information given to parents and I do
not think that there should not be a parental advisory for that
at all, by no stretch of the imagination. But I just want to
acknowledge publicly that I do not think there is anything
wrong with people expressing themselves in that way.
Senator Thompson. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman [presiding]. Thanks, Senator Thompson.
Obviously, I am at some disadvantage because I have not heard
the preceding, but just to go back to Mr. Simmons, when the
request came in, it came in at a late hour, and it was our hope
to have the industry association representatives here,
representing all elements of the recording or TV and movie or
video game industry. So we did not have an opportunity to
include him.
Second, I am intrigued by what my staff tells me is the
notion that a disproportionate number of those records
stickered are either hip-hop or rap records, and that is
something that is worth considering. I do not, to put it
mildly, claim to be an expert here. But in the previous work we
have done on music, it seems to me that a lot of rap and hip-
hop was not in the parental advisory, explicit content
category. It is obviously clear that no one racial group has
any--at least as I view the entertainment industry--any
monopoly on producing material that is of questionable content
to parents. I mean, it is broader than that.
Go ahead, Ms. Rosen.
Ms. Rosen. You know, the facts of both the marketplace and
the genres are that hip-hop music tends to have more profanity,
and therefore subject to more labels, and that you can be
talking about the very same domestic abuse in ``Goodbye Earl''
by the Dixie Chicks, but because they are not saying it with a
lot of curse words, it is not going to get a parental advisory
label for explicit content, because that is what the label
means. I think the larger point here, Mr. Chairman, I think is
that I think this is probably the eighth or ninth hearing I
have testified at on this issue over the years, and
consistently there has been a desire on the part of people who
actually create this music to come and tell their stories, and
they are consistently denied, because it is frankly easier to
make this be about corporations than about artists.
Chairman Lieberman. So you are saying you would like not to
testify at the next hearing?
Ms. Rosen. I think that would actually be a nice thing,
certainly provided that artists get to speak for themselves,
because they do have views, and the irony of all of this, when
you talk about content labeling and things, is that when
parental advisory labels were first created for music lyrics in
1985, there was a hearing in the Senate, promulgated by the
Parents Music Resource Center, and artists were invited to
testify at the very first hearing, and that is why we do not
have content descriptors, because Dee Snyder of Twisted Sister
came in after having his song, ``Under the Knife,'' be attacked
for an hour-and-a-half by Senators on the panel as being
disgusting and violent, about murder and slashing, and he came
in and said, ``What are you talking about? My friend was going
to have surgery the next day, and that was about feeling
vulnerable in an operating room under the surgeon's knife.''
That sort of irony, when an artists gets to speak for
themselves about the multiple meanings and experiences of their
life, does not get represented at these hearings.
Chairman Lieberman. I look forward to meeting with Mr.
Simmons, and if there is a good reason to hold another hearing,
I will be happy to do it. I wish that all the violent and
sexually explicit lyrics and content that parents are concerned
about had the same ironic and innocent explanation as the case
that you gave, because they do not.
Mr. Baldwin. I just wanted to make one more comment that
sort of reinforces what Hilary said. Clearly, she knows a lot
more about this, and Russell Simmons knows a lot more about
this than I do, but my wife is a recording artist, and she has
written several albums, and she had an album. Her debut album
had her first single that went to No. 1--was a song called
``Hold On,'' and she got hundreds and hundreds of comments from
people on the street and hundreds of letters from people that
said that they were on the verge of committing suicide, they
were on the verge of hurting themselves, and when they heard
the song--the lyric is ``Hold on for one more day,'' they
thought she was speaking to them about overcoming the despair
in your lives or heartbreak in relationships and so on. The
song, in reality, was about sobriety, 1 day at a time. The
song, ``Hold On For One More Day,'' was about trying to fight
to stay sober.
So I think it just plays well into the argument about
subjectivity and interpretation, and how the written word is
different than the visual image and how a universal rating
system may not apply because of that.
Chairman Lieberman. Also, because of the power of music and
all the entertainment media to affect behavior--both
constructively, positively, and negatively--in the example you
give, I have got two quick questions about the ratings.
I understand the opposition to the uniform rating idea. Mr.
Valenti, on the question of the TV ratings, the Kaiser Family
Foundation study that came out today shows that--the headline
is ``Few Parents Use V-Chip to Block TV Sex and Violence,'' but
more than half use TV ratings to pick what kids can watch.
There is actually a statistic that says that 53 percent of
parents who now own a TV equipped with a V-chip do not know
that they have this capability. Is there something more that
the industry can do to better inform people--parents,
particularly, but viewers generally--of this capability that
they have?
Mr. Valenti. Good question, and the monitoring board met
last week. We had public advocacy groups and members of the
industry there, and we were briefed by Vicki Rideout on the
Kaiser study. I think one of the most relevant pieces of
information that came out was that half of the people who had a
V-chip in their television set did not know about it. One of
the things that we are trying to do now is to do work with
retailers of television sets and manufacturers of television
sets. All they have to do is get a little sticker on it, a
yellow sticker with black lettering, that says, ``This TV
contains a V-chip,'' and to have something xeroxed there, very
simple; when you buy the set, you get this little xerox piece
of paper that says you have a V-chip, this is what it allows
you to do and this is how to use it. That is not extant at this
time. It does not exist, and one of the things we hope to do is
to try to get point-of-sale information, because the time to
know that you have a television set with a V-chip is when you
buy it, not afterwards, and 36 percent of the people who know
they have a V-chip, use it.
Now, it may be, if you look at this, that maybe we
complicated the television ratings too much and maybe it is a
little bit difficult to use, as many of us still today cannot
program our VCR longer than 30 minutes, and therefore that
might be. But we are working on trying to get this point-of-
sale information, so when you buy that television set, you say,
``Eureka. I have got a V-chip, and this is what it does.''
Chairman Lieberman. Good. I appreciate that. Final
question: When I was out in Hollywood a couple of months ago
and I met with the MPAA and The Creative Coalition and the
Directors Guild, I found an interesting and, I would say, an
encouraging amount of dialogue--maybe some would call it
tumult--within the creative community about the ratings system,
from the point of view of the creative artists and the
directors, particularly, as you know, taking a lead on this
from their own point of view, wanting to delineate the system
in more detail, which would have the effect of better informing
consumers of movies, viewers and parents, obviously; and if I
understand the premise, it is that the R-rating has become
ubiquitous, so that more than 50 percent of the movies are
rated R. You know these numbers better than I do, Jack Valenti,
and that it covers such a wide latitude that the viewing public
would be benefited by more delineation and particularly by
trying to sort of revive the original intention behind the NC-
17 rating--which, as somebody said earlier, only three or four
movies have received--so that it is not a kiss of financial
death, but that it makes clear that these are really movies
that are intended only for adults.
So I would ask both Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Valenti if they
want to comment on that. I know in the meeting I had with The
Creative Coalition, there was a fair amount of discussion of
this matter. Jack Valenti, what is the latest? I believe the
Directors Guild came out with a proposal on this publicly; am I
right?
Mr. Valenti. I do not know if they have come out with it
publicly, but I listen very carefully when the Screen Actors
Guild or the Writers Guild or the creative community, Billy
Baldwin's Creative Coalition, and particularly the Directors
Guild, makes any comments, and I have met with them several
times, listening to them and some of the things they think
ought to be done. And, of course, we have a partner in the
rating system. Keep in mind, Mr. Chairman, there is one thing
that people who wrote me this letter and people who speak about
the rating system do not understand, and that is that the
industry has nothing to do with it.
Lew Wasserman, in his powerful day, Sumner Redstone, Rupert
Murdoch, Michael Eisner, have zero influence on this rating
system. The only two people in this country who have anything
to say about the policy and the people who inhabit the rating
board, one is the president of The Motion Picture Association
and the other is the president of the National Association of
Theater Owners, and if any producer, any director, any studio
boss, any mogul, tries to pressure the rating system, they have
to run me down, and as you can see, I am still standing.
Chairman Lieberman. You mean pressure about a particular
rating on a particular movie?
Mr. Valenti. Absolutely.
Chairman Lieberman. But we are talking about the whole
system. In other words, whoever created this system presumably
can change it, if there are good recommendations to change it.
Mr. Valenti. That is right. I met with a number of
exhibitors 3 years ago, and we created this system. We talked
to studios. We talked to independents. We talked to the three
creative guilds. We talked to religious organizations. We
talked to movie critics, to try to form a consensus, and that
is how it came about. But I am saying to you that only two
people really have the power to change this thing, and the
reason why is if we did not, there would be bedlam out there. I
am listening to the Director's Guild, because some of the
people with whom I have conferred are people for whom I have
enormous respect.
Chairman Lieberman. So you are listening to them?
Mr. Valenti. I beg your pardon?
Chairman Lieberman. You are listening to the Directors
Guild?
Mr. Valenti. Absolutely.
Chairman Lieberman. Do you think that you and those two
people you mentioned are open to some of the changes that they
are recommending, which I think would not only more reflect
their creative instincts and work, but would better help
viewers understand what the movie contains?
Mr. Valenti. I am not prepared to tell you what we are
going to do or what we are not going to do. I am very merely
saying that their voices command respect, and we have met
several times. We will meet again, and also they are meeting
with the National Association of Theater Owners, who are
partners in this, because if you do not have the theater
owners, you do not have a rating system.
Chairman Lieberman. For my part, based on the discussions I
have had with them, I think that they are on to something.
Incidentally, I love the movies.
Mr. Valenti. Well, I hope so.
Chairman Lieberman. No, in other words, my criticism is the
criticism of a fan, really, an admirer. But for my part, as I
listened to them, their recommendations made a lot of sense,
and I hope you will look at them.
Mr. Valenti. We are looking at them very carefully, and I
know that one of the directors who talked to you has been in
touch with me, and we are listening, and, as I said, so is the
theater owners' association listening.
Chairman Lieberman. Mr. Baldwin, what does The Creative
Coalition think about--on your own, no government influence--
about altering the rating system to better reflect what is on
the screen?
Mr. Baldwin. Well, this is not an area of my expertise.
Clearly, Mr. Valenti knows a lot more about this than I do, but
I think many different circumstances have converged, such as
certain events in our history, new information, political
pressure from this body and from the media and from advocacy
groups, parents groups, have already led to the dividing of the
PG rating to PG-13, and the introduction, the implementation,
of the NC-17 rating, and I think that recently Mr. Valenti has
spoken to me about, for example--Mr. Valenti, you said
something to me yesterday about how new information, if you
have an advertisement for a movie in a newspaper and the ad is
more than a quarter-page in size, it provides information that
gives more information to consumers and to parents about the
specific reasons for why a film was rated the way it was rated.
Mr. Valenti. Correct.
Mr. Baldwin. These are ways in which--again, when the First
Amendment comes in conflict, when defending freedom, when
protecting freedom comes in conflict with protecting children,
you cannot expect dramatic results to happen overnight, as I
said before. This has to happen incrementally. It has to be
carefully thought out, and I think that the business, through
self-regulation, has elevated the bar, and I do not think the
system is perfect and I think there are areas where we can
tinker with it and certainly improve it, and I think that the
recording industry--I think all the different mediums have done
so. Is there more work to be done? Yes, and I think the role
for government, as we discussed before, is to do exactly what
you are doing, be the leaders that you are being and work with
parents and advocacy groups and the media and the entertainment
industry, and can The Creative Coalition be a bridge from
Capitol Hill to the entertainment industry, to create access
and opportunities and a dialogue and raise awareness and
educate people, and try and strengthen these systems to empower
parents? I believe we can.
I think everyone is doing a nice job, and I think that
members of Congress and parents do not think that it is
happening quickly enough, but when you factor in the First
Amendment, it is not going to happen fast enough.
Chairman Lieberman. Senator Durbin has sent a message that
he wants to return. This mean, unfortunately for you, that I am
going to ask a question or two more, to give him time to
return, and if he does not in about 5 minutes, we will adjourn
the meeting.
Mr. Valenti. I was hoping you would say that, Senator.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes. I know you did not want to leave,
Jack.
Mr. Baldwin, you talked about media literacy. That was a
topic that I raised at every meeting that I was at when I went
out to Hollywood, and I do think it is something, an area of
common ground that we ought to all be able to work on
constructively. I guess I will end it by simply saying that
anything you think government can do to be supportive of those
programs, insofar as they are educational, and we may be able
to help in that sense, and I would certainly appeal to the
various industries to be proactive in helping to support and
fund media literacy programs. It is as important, I think, for
our kids today in this electronic age to learn how to
comprehend, understand, and deal with the stories that are told
to them over the electronic media, as it was for kids in my
generation to learn reading comprehension.
So I am going to end there and yield to Senator Durbin.
Senator Durbin. Thanks a lot, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for
being held up on the floor for a few minutes. Mr. Baldwin, I
thought you made a great statement. I like your balance in
suggesting that there are a lot of reasons for young people to
get into trouble, and I know that Senator Levin often uses the
example of his city of Detroit, which shares the same
television market and the same movies with Windsor, Ontario,
and that the number of murders and violent crimes committed on
his side in Michigan are substantially larger than those
committed on the other side, in Ontario, and he raises a
question, a legitimate question, what lesson do we draw from
that? And I think you have drawn an appropriate lesson, the
availability of guns and a lot of other things should be
factored into questions about youth violence and what causes
it, and I also want to commend you for saying at some point
maybe this does play a part. Maybe this whole thing, media,
does play a part in it.
I do not know where you draw the line. There has been a lot
of reference here to the tobacco industry during this entire
testimony, and I have spent 19 years fighting them tooth and
nail, and am damn proud of it, as we say in the Senate. But I
would say it troubles me and my wife to sit and watch all the
movies with people smoking in them that kids are watching, and
I am thinking I wonder what lesson that is. But I wonder if
that is a line that we need to draw or the industry needs to
draw, or do you just appeal to the creative people and say,
``Think twice about this, if you will.'' What are your thoughts
on that? Have you ever been on a movie set where they have said
this is something we want to do, and you say, ``Wait a minute.
That goes over the line?''
Mr. Baldwin. Oh, of course. I mean, I turn down material
all the time on a--I would like to say on a daily basis, but I
do not get that many offers--but, on a weekly basis, I am sent
material that I am offered, that I turn down, because it does
not meet my standards. But I think, again, it is subjective.
There is someone that would see violence in a Shakespearean
tragedy, and that is acceptable. They would see it in a ``Home
Alone'' comedy, where McCauley Caulkin pushes the piano down
the staircase and it pins Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci against
the wall, and say that that is violence, but that is OK,
because it is shrouded in comedy and there is a cute little boy
in the film; whereas ``Natural Born Killers,'' because it is
sensationalized in some way, is not acceptable and it is
inappropriate. So I think that it is subjective. It is up to
the interpretation of the individual.
Senator Durbin. I agree with that, and I think that makes
the point.
Mr. Simmons. Can I make a statement? You are talking about
me like I am not here for the last hour. I keep hearing my name
pop up, and I am here, and I have a statement, but, I do not
know if I want to read the statement. I certainly would like to
interject here.
Chairman Lieberman. Mr. Simmons, why don't you wait a
minute, let Senator Durbin finish his questions?
Mr. Simmons. Because I did request to speak on this panel
10 days ago, and most of what is really being discussed is
about hip-hop, although we are not making----
Chairman Lieberman. Yes, I hope you understand that the
reason you were turned down was only because, if we started
to----
Mr. Simmons. Twenty-three out of the 27 artists the FTC
cited were black.
Chairman Lieberman. I am going to give you an opportunity
to speak after Senator Durbin is done.
Mr. Simmons. Oh, good. Thank you.
Mr. Baldwin. Where were we?
Senator Durbin. I think that you responded. I think you
made your point about the subjectivity of these decisions and
how far you go and what line you draw, and I think that is why
Senator Lieberman and I would agree it is very difficult, if
not impossible, in this free society we live in for government
to lay down these standards. We have had a tough enough time
with the Supreme Court trying to figure out what is right and
what is wrong, and I will not go any further on that line of
questioning. But I do want to ask Mr. Lowenstein a question.
You make an interesting point with your video about the
standards that have been applied to video games. Senator
Lieberman--I have joined with him in some legislation relative
to this area, because we find--and maybe there are some
analogies and parallels to movies and other things--but that we
find that in your industry, when you have rated one of these
games, for example, as adults-only, that that does not
necessarily mean that kids cannot walk into a store and buy it,
and that becomes, I think, the real failure of the system, if
it is not complete from start to finish.
My Attorney General in the State of Illinois, Jim Ryan, who
happens to be of the opposite political faith, but I agree with
him completely on this effort, conducted an investigation to
determine whether national retail stores were complying with
the voluntary video game rating system developed by the
Entertainment Software Rating Board. Attorney General Ryan
found that in 32 out of 32 instances, children between the ages
of 13 and 15 were able to buy those games rated for mature
audiences, games that were not recommend for children under 17.
There was no documentation necessary, no proof of age, no
questions asked. Some stores came forward and said, ``We are
going to get serious about this,'' and we have since learned
they did not.
How do you follow through? Once you have the rating, do you
feel that your hands are clean then? It is entirely up to
retailer to make sure these do not get to the hands of
children?
Mr. Lowenstein. Ultimately, yes, it is entirely up to the
retailer. Obviously, we do not control the policies at retail.
We have for over 3 years, well before this issue really took up
steam, encouraged retailers not to sell mature-rated games to
persons under 17. That has been a position we have taken
consistently, notwithstanding the fact that the rating itself
has never said that the content is inappropriate for people 17
and under. It has never made that distinction. We voluntarily
said let's make this a hard M-rating. We support retail
enforcement. Since then, Wal-Mart, Circuit City, Staples,
CompUSA, Kmart, I believe, and a number of other mass
merchants, have all adopted policies in one way or another to
card for M-rated games. We support those policies. How
effective they are at retail really is something that the
retailers need to continue to work on. We continue to work with
them. We encourage them to carry those policies through, and I
should note that in many cases, the same policies in terms of
restricted sales do not carry through to other content. So we
have sort of taken the position we are willing to have our M-
rated games treated, frankly, more harshly at retail than other
content, and we encourage retailers to adopt those policies to
restrict sales to minors.
Senator Durbin. What should be the government response if
we find that retailers do not enforce your own standards, in
terms of inappropriate games for children?
Mr. Lowenstein. Well, candidly, I do not think there is a
government response, in my view. This is a legal product. It is
a constitutionally-protected product, and at some point, I
think, besides the encouragement that some Senators have had--
Senator Lieberman, I know, has had a dialogue over the years
with retailers to encourage them to be more proactive in this
area--and I am not sure there is much more you can do, and
there is certainly not much more that we can do. We have made
our position clear to the retailers. I meet with them regularly
and encourage them, not only to promote the rating system--to
regulate sales--but to promote the rating system, because
ultimately we believe parental awareness and education is
enormously important.
Many retailers are running our Tiger Woods public service
announcements, our Derek Jeter public service announcements, in
their stores. So many retailers are taking additional steps to
try to increase awareness, as well.
Senator Durbin. Well, I will just close by saying, going
back to the tobacco analogy, for years, they would buy full-
page ads in the Wall Street Journal, telling children not to
smoke, and that really was not the appropriate venue or forum,
and perhaps running a video at a store has some value,
particularly with someone as popular as Tiger Woods, but more
important is whether the retailer takes his responsibility
seriously, and I think your industry, frankly, should be part
of that, too, to make certain that there is some enforcement
when it comes to the sales. Otherwise, this is a sham, and I
think some of these games are pretty outrageous.
Mr. Valenti, 13 people sit down and grade movies?
Mr. Valenti. Yes, sir, 12 or 13.
Senator Durbin. You are the one who ultimately has the last
word in hiring them?
Mr. Valenti. Yes, sir.
Senator Durbin. The only requirement is they have to be
parents?
Mr. Valenti. Parents, yes, sir.
Senator Durbin. And they are paid about $30,000 a year?
Mr. Valenti. Well, I do not want to go into that, sir, if
you can let me pass that question by, but they are paid full-
time.
Senator Durbin. There has been a suggestion from Ms. Smit
and others that perhaps we need some people in there with a
little background and interest in child psychology and
childhood development. Do you take that into consideration?
Mr. Valenti. Earlier, I did have a couple of child behavior
experts on there, and, in all candor, I did not find them any
more unerring in their judgment than just plain parents. What
we want to do is to have these parents ask themselves one
question: Is the rating I am about to vote to apply to this
picture one that most parents in America would judge to be
accurate? This is totally subjective, Senator. As I said
earlier, we do not have any precision here. Child development
experts, social scientists, carpenters, do not have any idea
about how individual people are going to react to an individual
movie. All parents are not alike. All children are not the
same. Only parents know the emotional, intellectual, and
maturity level of their children. No one else knows that.
Therefore, what we do is to give some direction to parents. We
say R says this movie may contain some adult material, though
it is not adult-rated, and therefore a child must be
accompanied by a parent or an adult guardian. The NC-17 says we
believe this is unsuitable for children. It is the only
category where we make a mandatory stand against admission by
children, and the PG-13 says this is a movie, obviously, that
does not, in our judgment, reach the level of an R, but some
material, to some parents, may be inappropriate for pre-
teenagers.
And then we are now putting in every ad and every web site
of every movie, plusfilmratings.com, that anybody can come to
that web site, and we have put in here what the rating is and
why it got the rating on each of these ads, so that a person
can look at it and say, ``Graphic violence, language, nudity.''
Now, if you do not like any of those for your children, do not
take them to see that movie.
Senator Durbin. Let me ask you a similar question I asked
Mr. Lowenstein. How much of an effort do you make in the
industry to make certain that the movie theaters pay attention
to the 17-year-old limitations, for example?
Mr. Valenti. Well, that is not my turf. However, they are
partners in the rating system, and my judgment is, based on
their own research and independent research, I think doing a
pretty good job, maybe 70, 75 percent of theaters are
enforcing. But we have speed laws, we have drug laws, we have
all sorts of laws in this country, Senator, that are not being
obeyed each day. That does not make it a bad law, it is just
that some people will violate something. If a kid is
resourceful and really wants to get into an R-movie, he can,
just as if somebody is a good hacker, they can get into the
Pentagon war room if they need to.
But I think that my judgment, which I will give to you, and
it is a judgment call, is I salute the theater owners. I think
they have done a terrific job in turning away revenues at the
box office in order to fulfill our obligation to parents. How
many other industries in this country do that? I do not know of
any, except video games and probably music. Who else turns away
revenues? We do.
Senator Durbin. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Senator Durbin, thanks for your
interest in this subject.
Mr. Simmons, because you are here, because you have been
referred to repeatedly and your concerns have, I do not have
any hesitation to make an exception to the normal rule, and I
look forward to your testimony now.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, I did not come
to testify, but I certainly do want to make a few comments.
Chairman Lieberman. Please.
TESTIMONY OF RUSSELL SIMMONS,\1\ CHAIRMAN, PHAT FARM
Mr. Simmons. At a later date, I would like to testify if
these hearings continue. I want to start by saying something
very positive about what the hip-hop industry is doing to take
responsibility, because I believe it is our, as industry
leaders, job to take responsibility. We recently held a summit
in New York where most of the leaders attended, and we dialogue
about what our responsibilities are and how we might expound on
the ideas that we have already implemented, including the
rating system that we have, or the parental advisory sticker
that we do have already, and we have talked about how we may--
and I guess we adopted--the whole industry has agreed that
every time there is a television ad run or a radio spot run,
that we will use those stickers. Where they were not visible
before, they will be now, going forward.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Simmons appears on page 45.
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And we also agreed that we want to put--and in most cases,
up to 70 percent of our lyrics are posted on web sites. So you
will be able to see detailed descriptions of what is inside.
Chairman Lieberman. On the artists' web sites?
Mr. Simmons. The lyrics, yes. That is correct. So we are
looking to make sure parents know what they are buying, but I
want to make it clear to this Committee that most of the people
who you are indicting today, and 23 of 27 of the FTC's groups
that they have chosen to go after are black and are hip-hop.
Eminem is an exception. He has maybe been profiled or
something. But we are working hard on making sure that everyone
understands what it is they are buying, but it is not easy to
make this Committee or some of the other people outside the
community, and I mean young people and hip-hop people, because
80 percent of the people who buy our records are not black.
So the plight of the kids who live in Compton is a lot
clearer now to the kids in Beverly Hills, and that may be a
big--that probably is one of the reasons so many people are
afraid of hip-hop. But we have worked very hard over the years
to have integrity and promote honesty in our artists, in their
lyrics. Some of the songs you may find offensive, protests
songs or other songs, are actually reflections of realities
that need to be expressed. I think the real issue is how do we
address these issues, more than it is that we want to shut
these reflections of our realities down.
Some of the things that come out on records are things that
mostly are behind doors, and on records now are visible. The
real issue of how we address the issues and the suffering in
the communities--and an example, one of my favorite songs was
``F the Police,'' and I know there was a big stir about that 15
years ago, not as big as it would be if it came out today,
because, of course, now you have got 80 percent non-black
listening. That song was a protest song, and it reminded you--
in case you did not know about the way people were being
treated by the police in Compton. Racial profiling still exists
and we still have to deal with it, but that song was very
important in identifying that issue. So hip-hop, the poetry, is
a lot different from the love songs or the fun songs.
In fact, Eminem's song, I find a lot less offensive than a
lot of the hip-hop songs you may find more offensive, because
they are critical of our realities. Eminem is a college kid
ranting and raving. Just like he said, ``Natural Born Killers''
was--you said ``Private Ryan'' was OK. ``Natural Born Killers''
is a movie with a bunch of funny references to violence, as
opposed to scary violence, to me. It did not hurt me or offend
me or I did not find it as harmful as I did ``Private Ryan.''
So that again is so subjective, and when you are talking about
cultural issues that divide us here in America, then it even
becomes much more subjective. And with the absence of anybody
from the hip-hop community on this Committee or involved in
this process, it is difficult for you to make these choices, of
which the other day, I think, that the FCC and the government
is already involved in aggressive censorship. They are suing
radio stations, or they went after a poet who I happen to
represent or work with very closely. Her name is Sarah Jones,
and they said that she said revolution is not between her
thighs. Well, it is not, and I thought that that was a pretty
good statement as part of her poem. It is kind of a feminist
poem.
Eminem flipping the bird is not so offense to me, either.
But then they decided those radio stations were to be sued for
playing those records. It is a very sensitive--and I know it is
an important issue, how parents know what their kids--but they
have to be parents. I think that is first, and I think
everybody on this panel has said that. So the cultural issue is
the most important issue when you start deciding what is good
and what is bad, because if you do not understand it, it is
impossible for you to rate it, and the universal rating system
is, in my opinion, and most people here have agreed it does not
work when you are talking about words, because then what would
you do about Mark Twain years ago or jazz or blues or rock-and-
roll and all those things that have become such important parts
of our American Heritage?
You have to understand that what is offensive today and so
scary today, with the depiction of our realities today, in most
cases, in rap's case, it has always been as bad as it has ever
been, from Shakespeare all the way until now, and this is not a
new discussion, as we have all said, as well. This dialogue
is--they are going to teach DMX, who you will probably find
offensive if you listen to his lyrics--they will be teaching
his poetry in UCLA in a few years. I am sure of that, and most
people in the hip-hop industry or who understand hip-hop will
believe that statement. So it is very complex. It is not as
simple as shutting down the reflection of our reality. The real
issue, I think--I just want to make this statement very clear--
is to address the issues, to listen to the songs, the
disconnect between young people and politics, and young people
and American responsibility--is clear in those songs. Again, it
is all America. I say blacks are delivering the messages, but
it is clear to all young people in America. So I hope you take
that idea and put it in your mix when you--thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Mr. Simmons, for a very
eloquent statement. You contributed greatly to the hearing. I
agree with you that the real issue is to deal with the problems
portrayed, described in hip-hop music, and I would like to
continue the dialogue with you.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you. I look forward to it.
Chairman Lieberman. On another occasion, because I have
kept everybody here too long. I appreciate what you said about
the interest that came out of the summit that was held----
Mr. Simmons. And we are planning two more; one in L.A. this
month and one in Miami next month.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes, and I appreciate what you said
about the sticker policy and putting the sticker into the
advertisement. It is very important, and sometime when we have
more time, I would like to ask you the same question I asked
Ms. Rosen, which is whether there is not a way for the stickers
to be more delineated, just give a little more information for
the consumer.
But, with thanks to you for ending the hearing on a
constructive note, I want to thank all of the witnesses. To me,
it has been a beneficial, informative day. I think we always
see, to me, how important these matters are, but also how, in
some senses, complicated they are. I guess, bottom line, I make
the appeal that I always make, with thanks to the industry and
creative artists for the steps forward, and to urge you to keep
moving forward. I mean, the best of all worlds would be for
government never to get near any of this, and that will happen
if mothers like Ms. Smit are feeling that they are better
informed and, in some sense, protected by what the industry
does. I thank you all.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:29 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BUNNING
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You don't have to look very hard to find profanity, sex and
violence in today's entertainment from movies and television to video
games and music.
Unfortunately, it seems that use of vulgar content is increasing
every year.
Parenting and grandparenting are wonderful roles and rewarding.
Raising children has never been easy, but it seems tougher today
because our popular culture is at war with parenthood.
There was a time when we could comfortably and confidently let our
child watch TV alone or flip through the radio stations. But anymore
those precious and innocent years of youth are being lost.
Movie ratings have been around for years. Yes, we have implemented
a television rating system and warning labels on video games and music
to warn of explicit sexual and violent content or profanity.
These warnings and labels may or may not help. But the question to
me is not always whether or not we are making sure we are properly
posting ratings and warnings.
The question should really be, why do we have to have these ratings
and warnings?
How did we get to this point in our history where we must always be
on guard and covering the ears and eyes of our children?
Before, we had to worry about our children going to a theater or
maybe a concert to see or hear improper content. Now, we have to worry
about the entertainment industry--especially Hollywood--directly
pumping inappropriate content into our homes. The home was always
thought of as the last safe haven. But not anymore.
Yes, ultimately parents are responsible for what their children
hear and see regardless of any type of ratings and warning system.
Parents are the first line of defense in protecting children from lewd
content.
But, I think it important that we also all ask the question as to
how we arrived at this point in time where in our entertainment the
objectionable is the norm, the shocking is the model, and morality is
mocked. We may not find these answers today, but these issues must be
raised.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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