MEDIA MOBILIZE TO BLOCK TV VIOLENCE LAW

Congressional efforts to regulate TV violence are not yet on a fast track.

But the TV industry is already mobilizing to derail legislation if and when it does start moving.

The National Association of Broadcasters along with the major broadcast networks, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and the Motion Picture Association of America have formed an ad hoc coalition to oppose the expected legislation and it has already made its first move.

According to those involved in the effort, the coalition has hired one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars, Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe.

Not only can Tribe make the First Amendment case against regulating TV violence, but as a respected liberal Democrat he can also appeal politically to the liberal Democrats who are driving the legislation.

“Larry Tribe is a great First Amendment advocate and the NAB is working closely with a coalition of partners on the TV violence issue,” says NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton.

“Our position remains that responsible self-regulation is far preferable to government regulation in areas of programming content,” Wharton says.

Adds one communications attorney: “Tribe’s a very able guy. If he’s involved, it’s serious business.”

Tribe declined to comment for this article.

At least some members of the coalition expect Tribe to testify at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on TV violence. No date has been announced for the hearing, but June 26 is still a possibility, they say.

Senate interest in the issue picked up last month after the FCC issued its long-awaited TV violence report.

As first reported by TVNEWSDAY, the report suggests that Congress adopt a measure that would allow the FCC to deal with violent content in the same manner as it treats indecent broadcast programming.

And, also mimicking indecency regulation, it recommends a “safe harbor” limiting violent programs to after 10 p.m.

The agency, however, left the job of defining excessive violence to Congress.

The report also recommends that legislation give consumers the ability to purchase cable channels on an “a la carte” basis.

Central to the FCC report is its finding that the preponderance of studies show that children exposed to TV violence can become more aggressive.

But that finding was refuted earlier last week by University of Toronto professor Jonathan L. Freedman.

In a report commissioned by the Media Institute, Freedman concludes: “In sum, there is no convincing scientific evidence that television violence causes children to be aggressive, or that any particular depiction of violence on television has this effect, or that it affects any particular type of children more than others.”

The Media Institute is funded by Time Warner, Tribune, Gannett, Viacom and other media companies.

Tribe is a well-know champion of liberal political causes  He is also highly regarded among veteran Senate Democrats who remember his role in leading the opposition in 1987 to the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork. Tribe also represented Al Gore in contesting the 2000 presidential election.

The media coalition will need Tribe’s help.

The Senate has already demonstrated its willingness to tackle TV violence. In 2004, it unanimously passed a measure that would have relegated violent programming to the after-10 safe harbor.

The measure, sponsored by former Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.), was later deleted from a defense spending bill.

Leading the charge today is Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), a key member of the Senate Commerce Committee and long-time proponent of TV violence legislation..

In 2005, Rockefeller offered a bill aimed at reducing violent and indecent programming on cable, satellite and broadcast television.

That measure would also have increased the amount of children’s programming from three to six hours per week on broadcast TV and allow local TV stations to preempt network programming  that violates ``standards in their own communities and protects them against fines for decisions imposed on them by national networks.”

Rockefeller has not revealed what his new bill will look like, although Hill insiders expect it will be similar to the 2005 version.

The measure is expected to be introduced to coincide with the Senate hearing.

“He [Rockefeller] thinks the FCC should have that authority to go after gratuitously violent content just the same way they go after gratuitously indecent content,” says the senator’s spokesman.

But Rockefeller's office gave no clue as to how the measure might define unsuitable violence.

“I think that the Senator feels that the FCC certainly gave Congress guidance on how to do that,” the spokesman says. “I think he would have preferred if they would have developed that definition themselves. Ultimately, they’re going to be responsible for enforcing that definition.”

The bill will not include an a la carte marketing requirement as the FCC suggested, the spokesman said.

The House response to the FCC report has been muted, even though it was a request from a group of House members that led to the FCC’s report on TV violence.

There’s been no mention of hearings or TV violence legislation in the House at this juncture. Rather than call for legislation, House Telecommunications Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has called on the industry to “redouble its efforts to educate parents about the tools they already possess—such as free per-channel blocking on cable systems as well as the V-chip—to limit young kids’ exposure to gratuitous or excessive violence on television.”

Markey was the driving force behind Congressional passage of language mandating the V-chip in the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

Some lobbyists believe Markey is reluctant to back government regulation of indecency since it would be an implicit admission that his V-chip solution had failed.

In any event, Markey now appears focused on obesity and junk food advertising.