    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [March 1, 1996]
    [Pages 346-350]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 346]]

    Remarks in a Roundtable Discussion With Families on Television
    Programming
    March 1, 1996

        The President. Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President. I might say,
    aren't we all glad to be in his big, beautiful office here. I love to
    come over here. I want to thank all of you for coming and to say to you
    and to the members of the media who are here, yesterday we heard for 2
    hours from a remarkable assemblage of people who are involved in the
    television industry: people who broadcast the programs; we heard from
    cable people; we heard from the people who write the programs, people
    who represent the actors, producers. It was an amazing assemblage of
    people who got together and came to Washington to announce that they had
    decided to develop a rating system for television programs like the
    movie rating system and that as the Vice President said, that that would
    be able to be used then when the V-chip becomes available in
    televisions.
        Now, the V-chip, of course, will start coming into televisions in a
    couple of years. And we replace about 25 million televisions a year, I
    think, in America, so it will quickly be a fixture in a significant
    percentage of America's televisions. But the rating system presumably
    will still be helpful for parents even before they have the V-chip.
        We wanted to have you in here today because we want to get a feel
    and we want the country to get a feel for what kinds of things parents
    feel about this rating system and the V-chip, what the young people feel
    about it, what you expect out of it. What do you think it will do? What
    won't it do? What would you like to see? How would you like to see it
    work? And of course, we have some advocates and professionals here who
    can talk about the impact of this on childrearing in America and on
    childhood.
        I must tell you, this is going to be a very complicated and
    difficult thing for these people in television to do in the sense that
    they have--there are many, many thousands of--tens of thousands of
    programs on all of these television stations, and as we get more cable
    channels, they will multiply exponentially. So the job of rating them is
    very different from the job of rating a couple of thousand movies a
    year. So as they undertake this task, I think it's important for the
    people in the entertainment industry and the public at large to get just
    a feel for how parents feel about it, how young people feel about it,
    and kind of how it should proceed, because they committed to have this
    done by the first of next year--no later than the first of next year,
    and perhaps sooner.
        So we really just felt we ought to have this conversation today, and
    we thank you for joining us. And maybe we ought to start with you, Mrs.
    Somson. If you could tell the press--everybody, if you could tell the
    press your name when you speak and how you happen to be here.

    [At this point, parent Barbara Somson praised the rating system and the
    V-chip as tools for enforcement of parental standards for television
    programs watched by their children. Another parent expressed her hope
    that the V-chip and the industry meeting on ratings would be a first
    step toward production of better children's programming.]

        The President. I want to talk about the better programming in a
    minute because I think that's a big part of it, especially when I ask
    the young people about it. But I want to give the parents who are here a
    chance to say anything they'd like to say about the V-chip and the
    ratings issue, and then I want to come back and talk about the V-chip
    with you. I want you to tell your story.

    [A parent said that the V-chip technology would assist individual
    families in defining their own viewing standards and let them vote for
    more family programming in a way that advertisers and programmers would
    understand.]

        The President. I'm so glad to hear you say that, because there
    were--you made two comments; I just want to say that to kind of resonate
    with the discussion we had with the people from the industry yesterday.
    Ted Turner said--and he went out and said in public, so I'm not saying
    anything in private he didn't say in public--that he strongly supported
    the rating system and what we were doing, what they were doing, but he
    did think it would be very costly. And

    [[Page 347]]

    I think it will obviously cost a lot of money to figure out how to do
    this and then review all these programs, to set up the system. But I
    think he meant he thought it would be costly over the long run because
    programs would not have the same viewership and their advertisers would
    drop.
        I think I see it more like you do; it's a voting system. It would be
    another--it's like the Nielsen ratings, except you won't have--this
    won't be a sample, you'll be able to actually know. You'll be able to at
    least sample all the V-chip homes--you take a representative sample--and
    it might actually change the content of programming so that the market,
    the market forces actually produce more positive programs.
        The other thing you said I think is important, a couple of the folks
    who were skeptical yesterday talked about how this wouldn't be a
    panacea, it wouldn't solve all the problems. And one of the men in the
    broadcasting meeting said--I mean, the industry meeting--he said, ``I'm
    going to take off my industry hat now and tell you that I'm a parent of
    three small children. I'm not looking for panaceas; I'm looking for a
    little help.'' And I think that's the way all of us who are parents look
    at this. There is no such thing as a panacea; we're looking for a little
    help.
        So you made that point, and I thought it was very good.

    [A parent noted that the V-chip could replace her husband's use of the
    television's remote control to enforce their standards.]

        The President. Hillary almost fell off the chair when you said that,
    the keeper of the remote. [Laughter]
        Participant. So we're really delighted with both the V-chip and the
    rating system.

    [Another parent said the combination was a vital first step for working
    parents who could not always be present when their children watched
    television. The Vice President then introduced Dr. Robert Phillips,
    deputy medical director, American Psychiatric Association, who discussed
    the powerful effect of gratuitous television violence on children and
    thanked the President and the Vice President for their efforts to
    address the problem.]

        The President. Hillary, do you want to comment on that, based on
    what you said in----

    [Hillary Clinton said that more information on the link between
    television and child behavior would encourage parents to use the rating
    system and the V-chip in their homes.]

        The President. I want to get to the young people here. And let me
    tell you, it's okay if you disagree with us about this; we want to hear
    what you really think. But I want to ask the doctor one more question.
        Before I had this job, as I used to say, back when I had a life--
    [laughter]--I was Governor of my State when I ran a big prison system
    and a big criminal justice system, obviously. And then I was attorney
    general, and before that I taught criminal law. So I've been following
    issues of crime and violence closely from that perspective for more than
    20 years now. For most of my time, it was an article of faith that 75
    percent of all the violent crimes in America were created by people
    between the ages of 17 and 26 and that there was almost a hormonal
    problem--if you could literally just get violent people and put them
    somewhere until they were 27, you could let them out and then they would
    not do that again--that there really almost seemed to be sea changes.
        Now we see an astonishing thing with the crime rate going down among
    people 18 and over and, I might add, drug use going down among people
    over 18, and violence going up among people under 18, as well as casual
    drug use. And I think there are plainly other reasons for increasing
    violent behavior among young people, including the lives that many of
    them have to live, virtually raising themselves on some of the meanest
    streets in America. But I gather from what you said that you really
    believe that the sort of cumulative, almost deadening impact of all this
    media-generated violence is at least partly the explanation for rising
    rates of violence among juveniles.

    [Dr. Phillips concurred, pointing out that the increase in juvenile
    crime was a multifactorial problem. The Vice President noted that the
    upcoming White House Conference on Youth Violence would address other
    factors involved, thanked the industry for taking the steps that they
    agreed to, and suggested that the children might have a different
    perspective.]

        The President. I thought maybe we ought to start with Catherine next
    to me, because Catherine Murphy actually passed the first V-chip

    [[Page 348]]

    bill--[laughter]--in the United States of America. I think you all need
    to know that. It wasn't us; it was her. And so I think you ought to hear
    her story. And I'd like to know how you came to propose this legislation
    and what you think of it.

    [High school student Catherine Murphy described her presentation of V-
    chip legislation at the Girls Nation Senate she attended, mentioning
    that it passed but was then vetoed.]

        The President. They'll do that to you. [Laughter] Let me ask you
    this. Do you believe--I want to ask and then I want to go around to the
    students here--how do you think the V-chip should be used? And how much
    difference do you think there is in the age of the children in terms of
    the regulation of the programming?

    [The participant described her family's television viewing habits and
    said that elementary school children watched too much television.]

        The President. You watch television a lot?

    [A student responded that he only watched the news and a few other
    programs, but that his peers based their lives on television as a major
    activity and a model for behavior.]

        The President. If you've actually seen that in your friends who
    believe it----
        Participant. Yes.
        The President. ----that they're acting, they model what they do
    based on what they see on television.

    [The participant confirmed that his peers modeled themselves after
    television characters, and he then endorsed the V-chip to help parents
    prevent such behavior.]

        The President. What about you? You're 11, right?

    [A participant said that he spent hours playing on the computer and
    asked if there would be a V-chip for computers.]

        The President. Let's talk about that because that's going to be a
    big issue.

    [The Vice President pointed out the need for an industry-wide system to
    rate computer games and to allow parents to screen the Internet to
    prevent children's access to inappropriate material. Other children then
    described their friends' television viewing habits.]

        The President. What do you think? Do you think your mother should
    have some influence over what you watch on television, or should you
    decide?

    [A participant said that parents should have influence over what their
    children watched, and she then described classmates who annoyed her by
    pretending to be television characters.]

        The President. Playing out what they saw on TV.
        Participant. Right.
        The President. What about you all?

    [A 13-year-old said that children tended to act out television shows
    instead of playing and expanding their imagination. A parent said that
    although watching television could be safer than some other activities,
    parents should encourage children to be critical viewers.]

        The President. What do you think?

    [After a participant remarked that children could be scared by some
    television programs, the Vice President said the V-chip would give
    parents a tool to prevent that. Several parents stressed that older
    children should be taught to make good choices for themselves. Another
    parent pointed out the benefits of television.]

        The President. I'm so glad to hear you say that as well. But that--I
    don't know how much time we have left, but I think we ought to hear from
    the young people especially on the flip side of this because we believe
    it's important. We applaud the industry for developing the rating system
    and making it compatible with the V-chip. But the Children's Television
    Act, which was passed a couple of years ago, also calls upon producers
    of the television programs to develop more and better programs that will
    be appealing to children in a positive way.
        And I just want to make two points and then ask anybody who wants to
    comment to comment. There were two interesting ideas which came out
    yesterday. One is, the people who were there--not us; the Vice President
    and I just watched--but in the room there, in the industry, there was a
    genuine argument about whether particularly younger people would be as
    likely to watch any kind of educational program as they would a sort of
    a violent cartoon or something. And there was a woman there from the
    Discovery Channel who was a very powerful advocate and said, ``That is
    not true.

    [[Page 349]]

    If you make education entertaining, it will be watched.'' And she gave
    some examples. That's the first thing: Would you like to have more
    positive programming on television?
        The second thing I think's important to point out--one of you sort
    of inched up to it when you were talking about the Internet, young
    people on the computer--all these technologies, the Vice President knows
    100 times more about this than I do, but it looks to me like they're all
    merging. I mean, it won't be very long before you can call up any movie
    you want on your computer and before a lot of the things you see on your
    television screen are interactive. So that I think that basically we're
    watching, we're seeing a process--and that, by the way, will engage more
    young people because as they become more computer literate, if they have
    interactive programs on television, it will bring them up, or if they
    can call movies up on the computer, it will. So we really need to also
    focus on the positive things that we ought to be doing for our children.
        And so, what do you think? Do you think--would young people be just
    as likely to watch more constructive programs if they were genuinely
    entertaining, or do you believe there's just an inherent predisposition
    to watch the violence?

    [A participant stated that interesting educational programming for young
    children could open doors of opportunity for them later on. Hillary
    Clinton pointed out the industry's concern that older children would not
    choose educational programming for themselves and asked the teens to
    respond. A 14-year-old stated that she and her friends preferred
    nonviolent movies.]

        Mrs. Clinton. You are an exception--[laughter]--based on the numbers
    that are out there.
        Participant. I think also it has to do with where I live and the
    family upbringing that I had.
        Mrs. Clinton. That's exactly right.

    [Participants discussed targeting programming for high school children,
    the lack of good children's programming on broadcast television, and
    local campaigns to encourage better programming. The Vice President then
    concluded that the V-chip and the rating system would enable parents to
    make categorical viewing choices for their children rather than just
    pull the plug on the television.]

        The President. First of all, I would like to thank all of you for
    being here, especially the young people. Thank you, doctor, it's good to
    see you again.
        Dr. Phillips. Good to see you, Mr. President.
        The President. I want to thank Tipper Gore. When she first proposed
    a rating system for records, it was considered heresy. And now she's
    lived and worked hard at this long enough to make it a matter of
    American conventional wisdom in television.
        And let me say that for Hillary and for me, based on our experience
    over the last 15 or 20 years, maybe the most important reason to have
    this conversation today was the point that Catherine made when she first
    talked about her work for the V-chip, and that is that technology is
    intrinsically action-oriented but neither intrinsically good nor bad. It
    depends on the values and the action of the people in control of the
    technology. And while this gives more--the V-chip and the ratings
    information will give more power to parents, it's utterly useless unless
    they use it.
        And so what I'm hoping that this did today is to convince other
    people in other community settings and every community in our country to
    begin to discuss these matters and to begin to now, if their community
    does not have an advocacy group like the one you are involved in,
    perhaps to form one or at least figure out how friends and neighbors can
    get together and figure out how they're going to use this ratings
    information and figure out how they're going to use the V-chip as the V-
    chip comes in.
        But I was glad to hear Mrs. Somson say what she did about this. You
    don't have to wait for the V-chip to make use of the ratings
    information. You know, most parents are still influenced--most children
    still have some influence about what their parents say, and parents are
    influenced by their children. So I just want to encourage that we need
    that every place in America.
        But this law that was passed and this remarkable effort by the
    industry will not amount to a hill of beans if the parents do not take
    action in their homes and if in each community the community activists
    who know how to make the most of this don't work with the parents to do
    it.
        Thanks a lot. It's great to see you.

    [[Page 350]]

    Note: The President spoke at 9:55 a.m. in the Vice President's
    Ceremonial Office in the Old Executive Office Building. In his remarks,
    he referred to Ted Turner, chief executive officer and president, Turner
    Broadcasting Service, Inc.