Parents Television Council: “MTV Smut Peddlers"

[rainbow4321]

When are these fools going to take responsibility for their OWN kids and learn how to use the friggin' remote control???



http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/publications/release/2005/0201.asp


LOS ANGELES – The Parents Television Council (PTC), the nation’s most influential advocacy organization protecting children against sex, violence and profanity in entertainment, released a new study, “MTV Smut Peddlers: Targeting Kids with Sex, Drugs and Alcohol,” which found that MTV programming contains staggering levels of sex and foul language – far higher than anything found on adult-targeted television.

“MTV is blatantly selling raunchy sex to kids. Compared to broadcast television programs aimed at adults, MTV’s programming contains substantially more sex, foul language and violence – and MTV’s shows are aimed at children as young as 12. There’s no question that TV influences the attitudes and perceptions of young viewers, and MTV is deliberately marketing its raunch to millions of innocent children,” said L. Brent Bozell, president of the PTC.

“The incessant sleaze on MTV presents the most compelling case yet for consumer cable choice. MTV is a subsidized network. As it now stands, parents have no choice but to take – and pay for – MTV if they want basic cable in their homes. Given a choice, how many parents now being forced to take and pay for MTV as part of a basic cable package, would continue to do so?” asked Bozell

[autorank]

1. My God I'm shocked!!! These people are such sleuths!

[FreedomAngel82]

9. Oh good grief!

I mean: hello! It's MTV!!! Like someone else said: turn the channel! Also now days I believe most new tv's have control blockers to where you can block certain channels if you're a parent with someone in your house who's not an adult you can use the blocker. Doy! People are so ignorant! I really do think America has dumbed down since Bush has been in office. :\ Anything to whine and blame it on the dems! :grr:

[autorank]

14. All I can say is "Where was MTV & cable when I was a teenageer"

It would have made life so much more interesting...just for "the interviews" (haha).

[Sandpiper]

2. Popular Music selling sex and drugs to impressionable Youth? *Gasp*

I had no idea!

lol

[jfs1000]

3. I don't care for MTV

MTV is pretty bad, I am sorry it is and I don't think we should be defending it. This is what fundie's do to us. They have us defend trash. MTV has very little redeeming value. I am 28, and if it was just music video and artistic stuff I could live with it.

While I don't think they peddle smut they do push a certain agenda (not liberal or conservative). MTV is very materialistic and every time I watch their shows, especially the reaility ones, the characters are all so selfish. The shows are so narcistic.

It is always about them, and there life, and their struggle. No social conscience or feeling of community. It drives me sick, and yes I am under 30 and I used to like MTV, especially Beavis and Butthead.

On MTV, no one can ever be happy for someone else, it always has to be THEM that is the star, that gets the accolades. When something happens in this world, they try and find out how it affects thems. Watch the men on theses shows. They are so selfish and egotistical it is disgusting.

That is not how real people are. MTV promotes selfishness and excess. So please, let's not hold MTV up as a bastion of progressive values.

I want to feed the poor, care for the sick and educate people so they can better themselves and their family. I am for equal rights for all people regardless of color or sexual orientation.

I am sick of losing elections, and not helping people, because people want to defend culture issues like MTV. When has MTV ever helped anyone?

[Sandpiper]

6. MTV is selling a product

Just like any other for profit endeavor.

I don't think the world is either better or worse for having MTV, and singling out their particular brand of crass commercialism just seems like splitting hairs.

The right wing's complaints against MTV are the same complaints they've had against popular music since Elvis shook his hips on the Ed Sullivan Show: "it's corrupting our youth."

This article is just another rendition of an old tired refrain and barely even worth mentioning.

[Old and In the Way]

8. Tell me what you like.

I'll be sure not to defend your favorite program when a special interest group starts attacking it.

Do you see what's happening? There's a full scale cultural war underway and when they are done they'll be a handful of sanitized shows on, in between 24/7 religious programming.

I'm a lot older than you. I can't stand MTV. I never watch it. But I'll be goddammed if I will let these religious-fascists dictate what I, or my kids, will and won't watch. I'll do the deciding. It's about choice and the freedom to choose. Remember freedom? That's the word Bush pays lip service to while he's taking it away from us.

[FreedomAngel82]

10. They all want us watching

preaching channels. I don't watch much MTV (boring) but I do like a few shows on there. There's a good show on there called "True Life" and they have a lot of really great stuff on there that COULD HELP parents if they watched and they could get inside a teenagers life now days. Of course they just think MTV is about sex and drugs. :eyes:

[The Minus World]

18. "MTV Get off the Air"

I agree with you. Also being under 30, I've ingested my fair share of teen-oriented programming during the marketing blitz of the 80s and 90s; I can see a distinct line where the alleged "smut" that I watched as a teenager (Ren & Stimpy; Beavis & Butthead) at least had some satirical value, whereas much of the entertainment being pre-packaged and marketed to the current MTV generation is nothing more than exploitation of a distorted value system.

Of course, I would never go so far as to support an ideological war against MTV; I believe there are far too many factors leading to the dereliction of our culture - unabashed greed, championing of hypocrisy, derision for the unattractive - that many of these witch-hunting councils are little more than a distraction (If these judges of media ethics were truly objective, certainly they would focus their lasers on the compulsive fabricators like Limbaugh and Coulter who seem to be quite talented at finding ample forum for their rhetoric).

However, there is a dilemma that I find few people exploring in this thread: The very same immoralities that many of us Democrats struggle against in our daily lives (selfishness, superficiality, childishness), are given credence and validity by much of the material the MTV machine pumps out. An educated youth is someone who does not bother with the trifles of empty socialization, and they certainly don't vote Republican - MTV's agenda is to pander to the uneducated among us.

We support freedom of speech and expression regardless of a claim's validity, yet we criticize FOX news for using subterfuge to pander to the Right. Could it be said that MTV may be using some of the same tactics to contribute to the dereliction and incuriosity of our youth, or would that be taboo?

Before there was FOX, MTV was well at work, building the foundation for a sedate, uncritical, group-thinking mentality which has now become social institution.

[ThorsHammer]

26. Under 30 here as well, and I agree

I wouldn't support the PTC campaign to ban them, but personally find MTV a bunch of crap and choose not to watch. I'd rather have them be censored by people in the free market than by the government. If enough people did this, they'd be forced to change their act.


Sandpiper: Elvis looked like a choirboy compared to some of these videos. The envelope has been pushed about as far as possible, and IMO MTV contributes little positive to our culture (I will give them a lot of credit for 'Choose or Lose'), and unfortunately does affect kids.

[MirrorAshes]

19. I'm 24 and completely agree.

And you didn't even get into what they've done to the music industry...first they made music image-based and hollow, now they are are exploiting real people in the same way.

[newyawker99]

20. Hi jfs1000!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[MadHound]

27. Sorry friend, don't buy the arguement.

It isn't MTV that we're defending here, it is the entire concept of free speech. Personally, I dislike MTV, thought it went to hell twenty years ago. But I think that it should be allowed to broadcast what it wants, because this is America, and in this country we have the right of free speech, period. If you don't like MTV, you have the right to criticize it. But we shouldn't engage in censorship simply because a small minority, or even a large majority, dislike what is being said. If we were to follow that concept to it's logical conclusion, we would all be silenced sooner or later.

That is one of the great things about this country, that we do have the right to speak our mind. Sad to see that so many people are so willing to give that hard earned right away so easily.

[IrateCitizen]

31. How is "a la carte cable" equal to censorship?

It's much along the same lines as just turning off the television. If you don't want it, don't buy it.

I'm all in favor of free speech. A la carte cable is not infringing free speech. I'm also not about to enter the fray of defending a media outlet whose primary purpose seems to make self-centered, narcissistic behavior mainstream.

I would think that DIMINISHING commercial influence and the legitimization of a questionable values system would be an area in which a large part of the left and the right could agree. I guess I was mistaken.

[MadHound]

33. I have nothing against a la carte cable friend,

Though I doubt that is going to happen anytime soon. I am sick of a minority of people from the PTC filing thousands of FCC complaints in order to censor what the vast majority of Americans watch. That is simply wrong IMO.

[Dorian Gray]

35. Right...

I don't disagree with your points, at all. Most shows on MTV are the equivalent of a Intelligence Wasteland. Miles and Miles of smut.

But, are you advocating censorship?

I don't watch MTV. If I had kids, they wouldn't either. I can control that. I don't think that the answer is making MTV "illegal." Many people enjoy it, and who the heck are we to dictate what they can or can't watch?

[liveoaktx]

4. I agree with the concept of Ala Carte programs-I'd get rid of

all the faux news media shows and get only the shows I want, like Turner Classic Movies and Comedy Channel.

[mattclearing]

5. God, campaigning against MTV is so 1985.

I'll never forget the day I learned that Al and Tipper "PMRC" Gore were Democrats.

I've since gotten over it, but there's something downright disturbing about the witchhunt that Tipper oversaw. Especially if she played drums.

I'll never understand that.

edited for date correction.

[Old and In the Way]

11. Well, her point was to put labels on albums noting that they had

sex content. I guess that is the parent thing coming through. She wasn't trying to censor the music, just give the buying public education on the content. Is that so bad? If you're a parent, you might think that's appropriate.

BTW, she's a big fan of the Grateful Dead.

[UdoKier]

13. Do you have kids? All they wanted was labels.

I'm glad they're there so I can monitor my kids' music purchases to a degree.

[ohio_liberal]

39. All they wanted was labels...

Sure, they wanted labels, and not just the "parental advisory: explicit lyrics" labels you're seeing today. They wanted to label them specifically as "sexual content", dealing with the occult, and so on. And these labels are targeted specifically at rap and rock music, not country, not opera, not comedy tapes. Labeling almost always goes hand-in-hand with restrictions on sales (think Walmart).

From the ACLU:

All a label means is that, in somebody's opinion, some parents might consider the labeled material unfit for their children. The only way parents who want to supervise their children's musical experiences can really learn anything about a tape or CD is to personally examine the package (or look up the lyrics on the internet--emphasis mine), which often includes printed lyrics. Then, they can decide for themselves whether it's acceptable or not.

[ohio_liberal]

32. I'm gonna have to agree with you

Tipper and the rest of the "Washington Wives" were disturbing. The PRMC had obvious ties to the religious right.

[murielm99]

7. Do they sell different televisions to fundies than to the rest of us?

The type of TV that I have in my house has an off button. Don't fundie-brand TVs have off buttons?

The type of children that I raised understood the words, "No, you can't watch that show." Do fundie parents not know those words?

[rainbow4321]

15. They are throwing a hissy fit with the FCC people...

These must be the same people who got NYPD Blue banned from the local Dallas ABC station back when that show first came on...the station finally caved when the show became a hit and they wanted the ad $$...we've come a LONG way down here..gotten to see Desperate Housewives right from the very FIRST episode!!

http://news.com.com/FCC+Saving+Private+Ryan+not+indecent/2100-1026_3-5549428.html


A majority of U.S. communications regulators have voted to deny viewer complaints that ABC television stations violated indecency rules when they aired the movie "Saving Private Ryan" last November, an FCC official said Monday.
<snip>

Separately, the FCC on Monday rejected 36 complaints that television stations violated decency limits by airing episodes of popular shows like "Friends" and "The Simpsons," as well as the movie "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me."
<snip>

"We find that none of the material referenced in PTC's complaints rises to the level of being patently offensive under our indecency definition," the FCC said in its order. The agency also said the material was not profane.

<snip>
"The FCC is only deeming everything indecent that is way over the top" and not just inappropriate, said Lara Mahaney, a spokeswoman for the PTC. "We know of no community in America where like words like 'd**k' and 'd**khead' would be considered decent or commonfare language." Those expressions were aired on the programs "Dawson's Creek" on the WB Television Network, owned by Time Warner and "NYPD Blue," on ABC

[Sandpiper]

17. They know of no community where "dick" or "dickhead" would be common?

They must not get out much.

These are commonfare on any elementary school playground in America.

[lectrobyte]

42. My TV predates the V-chip, and is just a cheapo model, but it has

parental controls to lock out any channel so desired, assuming I could not otherwise guide the kids viewing habits. Just don't see the problem here, unless it really is true that they are worried about someone actually having fun somewhere.

[rainbow4321]

43. Cable companies offer blocking, so there is no excuse..

for these folks to be complaining about something that THEY want controlled in THEIR OWN house. At least Comcast does..they show those goofy commercials w/ the kid trying to get the parents password to the blocked channel and the one with the kid's friend saying "hey, your TV is broken" when they can't get thru to a parental blocked channel and the kid saying "nooo...it's working".
And who the hell has the JOB that requires them to sit and watch the shows that the complaining groups bitches about?? Their stats like "12.6 sex scenes per hour"....geez...

[UdoKier]

12. I agree with them to a point.

I disagree with their motivations, but I totally think we need to force cable systems to offer "a la carte" menus of channels. I would only order about a dozen channels. I do NOT need any of the bible channels, Fox News, MSNBC, Home Shopping Channels, or MTV, which IS a purveyor of trash that never even shows music videos anymore. Why SHOULD I pay for that crap?

[durablend]

25. Definite agreement with you there

I'd be glad to get rid of ESPN and their constant money-grubbing annual whining for more money.

[Book Lover]

16. Excuse me, I have Xian cable channels that I don't want

How do I get rid of *them*? Oh, that's right, by blocking the channels using the tech the cable co. put on the remote!

[htuttle]

24. No kidding -- I think I'm stuck with at least 3 of those

Plus a whole number of shopping junkie channels I don't want either.

[cags]

30. Some people find that block button to hard to understand

They shouldn't be watching TV in the first place.

[SmokingJacket]

21. Throw the TV out the window.

It's all a load of crap.

[durablend]

22. STFU already fundies!

Chimp-in-chief already (shockingly) said to change the fucking channel or turn the TV OFF so all this constant whining is for nothing.

You losers are yesterday's trash--GET OVER IT!

[cags]

23. Art imitates life, If thier kids weren't doing it, MTV wouldn't show it

because they would have nothing to relate to.

All thier kids are doing all that is on MTV and instead of blaming themselves they choose to blame MTV.

Please, does anyone have a TV anymore that doesn't allow a parent to block a channel.

[IrateCitizen]

28. This is actually an area I find some agreement with PTC

You know what? MTV IS trash. I don't watch it. I find most of the stuff they have on to glorify self-centrism and narcissism.

Do I think that it should be outlawed? No. But I'm all for the proposal of an "al a carte" cable TV menu. If I had that, it would enable me to keep channels like HGTV, Discovery, TLC while getting rid of the vast majority of trash that I never watch.

Let's not fall into the trap of defending complete crass and glorified selfishness of the kind that MTV churns out.

[cags]

29. I love MTV and I'll defend it all day long

Its very simple, If you don't like it, don't watch it.

Cable is not a right, its a paid service, complain to your cable company if you want a la carte cable, but don't try to force them to do it.

[libnnc]

34. I'm in my mid 30's and part of MTV's first generation

I see a huge difference between today's MTV and what I watched as a teen. It would be nice if their programming was just about the music and less about bling-bling. However, there is some programming that is really informative and interesting, like their documentary series.

[killbotfactory]

36. Wow. The put out press releases..

Stating that they are "the nation’s most influential advocacy organization protecting children against sex, violence and profanity in entertainment"

I need to get on that train.

How does one issue press releases?

"Killbotfactory, the nations most influential advocate for democracy, rights, and the American way, is dismayed with stupid sitcoms on todays television"

Alert the media.

[msanthrope]

37. 1986 called. It wants its "false moral outrage" issue back. n/t

[lateo]

38. I know these guys are a bunch of clowns but...

they are right on this one...and VH1 is joining this smut peddling crowd alongside MTV.

[noonwitch]

40. MTV does peddle smut, but parents shouldn't let their kids watch it

I miss the days when MTV played music videos that weren't rap videos. Now, not even VH1 shows many classic videos.

[GRLMGC]

41. Yes, but most of all

they're crap peddlers