[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 85 (Wednesday, June 16, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7134-S7136]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. McCAIN (for himself, Mr. Lieberman, Mr. Lott, and Mr. 
        Conrad):
  S. 1228. A bill to provide for the development, use, and enforcement 
of a system for labeling violent content in audio and visual media 
products, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Commerce, 
Science, and Transportation.


                  MEDIA VIOLENCE LABELING ACT OF 1999

 Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I join my colleagues today in 
introducing the 21st Century Media Responsibility Act. This bill would 
establish a uniform product labeling system for violent

[[Page S7135]]

content by requiring the manufacturers of motion pictures, video 
programs, interactive video games, and music recording products, 
provide plain-English labels on product packages and advertising so 
that parents can make informed purchasing decisions.
  The most basic and profound responsibility that our culture--any 
culture--has, is raising its children. We are failing that 
responsibility, and the extent of our failure is being measured in the 
deaths, and injuries of our kids in the schoolyard and on the streets 
of our neighborhoods and communities.
  Primary responsibility lies with families. As a country, we are not 
parenting our children. This is our job, our paramount responsibility, 
and most unfortunately, we are failing. We must get our priorities 
straight, and that means putting our kids first.
  However, parents need help, because our homes and our families--our 
children's minds, are being flooded by a tide of violence. this 
dehumanizing violence pervades our society: our movies depict graphic 
violence; our children are taught to kill and maim by interactive video 
games; much of the music that inundates our children's lives delivers 
messages of hate and violence. Our culture is dominated by media, and 
our children, more so than any generation before them, is vulnerable to 
the images of violence that, unfortunately, are dominant themes in so 
much of what they see, and hear.
  It is beyond debate that exposure to media violence is harmful to 
children. Study after scientific study, beginning with the Surgeon 
General's report in the early 1970's, has established this. Certainly, 
there is a hard consensus in our society that something must be done. 
What this bill makes clear is that the manufacturers and producers of 
these consumer products should have a legal responsibility to provide 
plain-english so that parents can make truly informed decisions about 
what their children consume.
  This is not a rating system. It is a labeling system. it is not 
censorship. We are not talking about limiting free speech. Rather, we 
are talking about providing content labels on highly sophisticated, 
highly targeted, and highly promoted consumer products. This is common 
sense.
 Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to join my 
distinguished colleague and friend, the chairman of the Commerce 
Committee, Senator McCain, and my colleague from North Dakota, Senator 
Conrad, in introducing legislation that we believe will move us another 
step forward in ameliorating the culture of violence surrounding our 
children, and in helping parents protect their kids from harm.
  This is a problem that has been much on our minds in the wake of the 
school massacre in Littleton and the other tragic shootings that 
preceded it, a series of events which has continued to reverberate 
through the national consciousness, which has in particular heightened 
our awareness as a nation to the violent images and messages bombarding 
our children, and which has in turn spurred a renewed debate about the 
entertainment media's contributing role in the epidemic of youth 
violence we are experiencing across the nation, not just in suburban 
schools but on the streets and in homes in every community.
  We made an initial attempt to respond to this problem through the 
juvenile justice bill that the Senate recently passed, and I believe it 
was a good start. Senator McCain and I joined Senators Brownback and 
Hatch in cosponsoring a bipartisan amendment that would, among other 
things, authorize an investigation of the entertainment industry's 
marketing practices to determine the extent to which they are targeting 
the sale of ultraviolent, adult-rated products directly to kids.
  This amendment, which was approved unanimously, would also facilitate 
the development of stronger codes of conduct for the various 
entertainment media and thereby encourage them to accept greater 
responsibility for the products they distribute.
  The bill we are introducing today, the 21st Century Media 
Responsibility Act, would build on that initial response and 
significantly improve our efforts in the future to limit children's 
success to inappropriate and potentially harmful products.
  Specifically, it calls for the creation of a uniform labeling system 
for violent entertainment media products, to provide parents with 
clear, easy-to-understand warnings about the amount and degree of 
violence contained in the movies, music, television shows, and video 
games that are being mass-marketed today. Beyond that, it would require 
the businesses where these products are sold or distributed--the movie 
theaters, record and software stores, and rental outlets--to strictly 
enforce these new ratings, and thus prohibit children from buying or 
renting material that is meant for adults and may pose a risk to kids.
  This proposal is premised in many respects on our concerted efforts 
to keep cigarettes out of the hands of minors, and with good reason. As 
with tobacco, decades of research have shown definitively that media 
violence can be seriously harmful to children, that heavy, sustained 
exposure to violent images, particularly those that glamorize murder 
and mayhem and that fail to show any consequences, tends to desensitize 
young viewers and increase the potential they will become violent 
themselves. As with tobacco, and its mascot Joe Camel, we are beginning 
to see substantial evidence indicating that the entertainment industry 
is not satisfied with mass marketing mass murder, but that it is 
actually targeting products to children that the producers themselves 
admit are not appropriate for minors.
  And as with tobacco, we are seeking to change the behavior of a 
multi-billion dollar industry that too often seems locked in deep 
denial, that has shown little inclination to acknowledge there is a 
problem with its products, let alone work with us to find reasonable 
solutions to reduce the threat of media violence to children.
  Of course, there are differences between the tobacco and 
entertainment industries and the products they make. Cigarettes are 
filled with physical substances that have been proven to cause cancer 
in longtime smokers. Violent entertainment products have a less visible 
and physical effect on longtime viewers and listeners, and, more 
significantly, they are forms of speech that enjoy protection under the 
First Amendment.
  It is because of our devotion to the First Amendment that Senator 
McCain and I, along with many other concerned critics, have been 
reluctant to call for government restrictions on the content of movies, 
music, television and video games. All along, we have urged 
entertainment industry leaders to police themselves, to draw lines and 
set higher standards, to balance their right to free expression with 
their responsibilities to the larger community to which they belong. We 
repeated these pleas with a new sense of urgency in the days following 
the shooting at Columbine High School, asking the most influential 
media voices to attend the White House summit meeting the President 
convened and to engage in open dialogue about what all of us can do to 
reduce the likelihood of another Littleton.
  And there has been a smattering of encouraging responses emanating 
from the entertainment media. For example, the Interactive Digital 
Software Association, which represents the video game manufacturers, 
has acknowledged that the grotesque and perverse violence used in some 
advertisements crosses the line, and it is reexamining its marketing 
code to respond to some of the concerns we have raised. Disney for its 
part announced that it would no longer house violent coin-operated 
video games in its amusement parks. The National Association of Theater 
Owners pledged to tighten the enforcement of its policies restricting 
the access of children to R-rated movies. And several prominent 
screenwriters, speaking at a recent forum sponsored by the Writers 
Guild of America, raised concerns about the level of violence in 
today's movies and called on the industry to rethink its fascination 
with murder and mayhem.
  But overall the silence from the men and women who make the decisions 
that shape our culture has been deafening, their denials extremely 
disappointing. Not one CEO from the major entertainment conglomerates--
Sony, Disney, Seagram, Time Warner, Viacom, and Fox--accepted the 
President's invitation to attend the White House summit meeting. And 
since

[[Page S7136]]

then, not one has made a statement accepting some responsibility for 
the culture of violence surrounding our children, or indicating their 
willingness to address their part of the lethal mix that is turning 
kids into killers. What we have heard, from Seagram's Edgar Bronfman 
and Time Warner's Gerald Levin and Viacom's Sumner Redstone, are more 
shrill denials and diversions, along with attacks on those of us in 
Congress who are concerned about what they are doing to our country and 
our kids.
  This is the responsibility vacuum in which we are operating, and this 
is the vacuum we are trying to fill with the legislation we are 
introducing today. Ideally, our bill would be unnecessary. Ideally, the 
various segments of the entertainment industry would agree to adopt and 
implement a set of common-sense, uniform standards that would provide 
for clear and concise labeling of media products, that would prohibit 
the marketing and sales of adult-rated products to children, and that 
would hold producers or retail outlets that violate the code 
accountable for their irresponsibility. But there is no sign that is 
going to happen any time soon, which is why we feel compelled to go 
forward with this proposal today.
  We are not advocating censorship, or placing restrictions on the kind 
of entertainment products that can be made and sold commercially. What 
we are doing through this bill is treating violent media like tobacco 
and other products that pose risks to children, requiring producers to 
provide explicit warnings to parents about potentially harmful content, 
and requiring retailers to take reasonable steps to limit the 
availability of adult-rated products with high doses of violence to 
audiences for which they are designed. That is why we have chosen to 
amend the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, to accentuate 
the fact that we are not regulating artistic expression but the 
marketing and distribution of commercial products, and that we are not 
criminalizing speech, but demanding truth in labeling and enforcement.
  If a video game company is telling parents a game is not appropriate 
for children under 17, then parents should have a realistic expectation 
that this game will not be marketed or sold to that audience. 
Unfortunately, that is often not the case these days, and we would 
correct that by authorizing the Federal Trade Commission to investigate 
and punish retailers and rental outlets and movie theaters that in 
effect deceive parents about the products they are selling or renting 
to their kids. Specifically, it would authorize the FTC to levy fines 
of up to $10,000 per violation of the act's provisions prohibiting the 
sale or rental of adult-rated products to children.
  This bill does not just respond to concerns of today, but anticipates 
the media landscape of tomorrow. According to most experts, as 
technologies converge over the next few years, more and more of our 
entertainment is going to be delivered through a single wire into the 
home over the Internet. In this radically different universe, it only 
makes sense to modernize the ratings concept to fit the new contours of 
the Information Age, and develop a standard labeling system for the 
video, audio, and interactive games we will consume through a common 
portal. Our legislation will move us in that direction and prod the 
entertainment industry to help parents meet the new challenges of this 
new era, and hopefully usher in a new ethic of media responsibility, a 
goal that is reflected in the bill's title.
  In closing, Mr. President, I want to make clear that I do not 
consider this legislation to be ``the'' answer to the threat of media 
violence or the solution to repairing our culture. It won't 
singlehandedly stop media standards from falling, or substitute for 
industry self-restraint. No one bill or combination of laws could 
replace the exercise of corporate citizenship, particularly given our 
respect for the First Amendment. We must continue to push the 
entertainment industry to embrace its responsibilities. But this bill 
is a common-sense, forward looking response that will in fact help 
reduce the harmful influences reaching our children and thereby reduce 
the risk of youth violence. That makes it more than worthwhile, and I 
ask my colleagues to join us in supporting it.
                                 ______