The Censorship Crusade

Throughout the past 20 years, Washington’s censorship crusade has declared war not only radio, but also the entire entertainment industry. The article “Do kids need government censors?” from Policy Review highlights the important battles between government officials and the entertainment industry. Feeding off American parent’s desire to restrict their children’s access to explicit entertainment, politicians use threat of legal restriction as a way to persuade the industry towards use of self-censorship, instead of government regulation. However for some politicians, self-censorship is not enough; Senator Joseph Lieberman attempted to “prohibit the marketing of ‘adult-rated media,’ i.e., movies, music, and computer games containing violent or sexual material, to young people under the age of 17” with the introduction of the Media Marketing Accountability Act or MMMA in 2001 (Rabkin). While the first Amendment prohibits outright censorship, recommendations have been made to the entertainment industry regarding marketing and identification or parental permission requirement. Despite the notion that in Roth v. United States, 1957, the Supreme Court ruled that obscene material is not protected by the Constitution, it is extremely difficult to prove that any entertainment production meets the criteria to be considered legally obscene. As a result, most American parents will still consider the entertainment industry to be inappropriate and obscene, even though under current law, it cannot be defined as such. This article parallels with The Atlantic’s “Freedom’s Curse” regarding the concern for children and their exposure to explicit content. Both discuss that idea that the distinction between which material is obscene and which is appropriate is not all black and white.