Censorship is berated and attacked verbally by proponents of freedom of expression. Yet these same individuals seek solutions to the problems needling society. A cause is always sought after and more often than not one of its causes, the freedom of expression, particularly in television, is not given enough consideration. Our free speech and our decisions to act and behave according to how we see fit is covered under the (#) Amendment(s). However, the First Amendment is not an excuse to allow networks and their shows writers to pass on just nything to the viewing public.
Andrew Carnegie himself was a patron of the arts and thus said in his dedication address at the library of Pittsburgh: There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing elseMy aspirations take a higher flight. Mine be it to have contributed to the enlightenment and the joys of the mind, to the things of the spirit, to all that tends to bring into the lives of the toilers of Pittsburgh sweetness and light. I hold this the noblest possible use of wealth.
Imagine the look on Mr. Carnegies face if he were to witness the noblest possible use of his wealth going towards not the high-minded art of producing noteworthy things, but to the production of such adulterated shows as Temptation Island or the tasteless jokes told on late-night television. An argument frequently made that it is the parents responsibility, and not a government to impose on the public what is good and bad to watch. The invention and introduction of the V-chip wrenches the control from parents and laces it into the television set, an already untrustworthy source of images prone to create more of a harmful dependence than enlightened independence.
The V-ship, in its technological glory, is supposed to read a program and search for the very things the parent has dictated to be unsuitable, and then filter out those images. Unfortunately, the coding of ratings is voluntary, and though compliance is progressing or has progressed, it still remains to be seen whether information of the V-chip itself will be made readily available to the arenting owners of television sets. The July 5, 1999 deadline for half of all TV sets to be installed with the new technology has since been past and met.
Most major companies (Philips, Sanyo, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, Thomson and Zenith) have fully complied, with the hope that the remaining companies fall readily into compliance. Last but not least is the trumpeting cry for the children. When learning tasks, skills, and non(acceptable) behaviors, children take a monkey see, monkey do approach. Perhaps the reason why Sesame Street is so popular is because hildren are allowed to imitate the Count counting or repeat the sound of words being sounded out from the television screen.
In the same way that television can aid in the learning of young children, it can also help foster within them aggression. : The average American child will have watched 100,000 acts of televised violence, including 8000 depictions of murder, by the time he or she finishes sixth grade (approximately 13 years old). These acts of violence that flash across the pupils of the young does harm from the fact that children follow examples.
