Email to Parents Television Council

I have been signed up for the PTC's email newsletter for quite some time now. I do not know if someone else signed me up, or if I did it, so I could peer into what little agenda they have. Anyway, these "compassionate" parents see it necessary to censor every little thing that they deem inappropriate for children, completely ignoring the fact that they can change the channel, block the channel, or block certain TV age ratings. Why these people need the government come in and do their job simply baffles me.

I wrote them an email this morning, talking about the ease of self-censorship, and making it clear that it's WRONG to take away the rights of others simply because they deem what others do as inappropriate. I realize that this will fall on deaf ears, or I will get some generic email in response, but I needed to get it off of my chest.

I felt the need to post it for you all…

Hello,

In a day where technology is booming, people have the choice to cure their boredom by doing hundreds of different activities, including watching television. When people decide to watch television, they are not stuck with just one or two choices. They have hundreds, if not thousands, of channels to choose from to watch. These channels show programming that covers all age groups and genres. From programming for children not old enough to walk to fetish pornography for the kinky adults. It's all available for us to watch. The choices are virtually limitless. In fact, we have so many choices, it's almost too easy to censor TV yourself. With the combination of hundreds of channels and parental controls coming with cable and satellite packages and the TVs themselves, the need for government legislation/censorship is little to none.

Television programming of today is absolute filth, I agree. There is a huge lack of respect for decency and morals in today's programming, and most of it should not see the light of day. It caters to people who are sadistic, perverted, and just plain immoral. It's not the type of programming that most of us want to watch, let alone let our children watch it. However, who are we to decide for other people what is appropriate for them to watch? We have nothing to gain by censoring these networks and programs that we can't gain by censoring our televisions ourselves. Besides, just as we want to watch what we deem to be quality entertainment, so does everybody else, and some people may just enjoy what we don't like.

Children are a precious commodity. We have to make sure they grow up right with morals and respect for others. Censoring what they watch is an absolute necessity. This can all be done by setting channel or v-chip locks, calling your service provider to block the channel, or by closely regulating when your children watch TV. These are all things that can be done by ourselves that have more of an effect on what is seen or heard on our televisions than what the FCC is capable of doing.

If you have a problem paying for certain networks that show certain programming, then contact your service providers and complain. All of this can be done at the private level without having to resorting to a cowardice approach of taking away the rights of everybody else because we disagree with what they want to watch and what networks are willing to show. If we want our kids to grow up with morals and respect, then maybe we should be the ones parenting them, and not our televisions. Perhaps, if we started being more involved in our kids' lives, they won't be watch TV as much, and the inherent need for censorship is lessened by that alone. I assume that what our children watch is the biggest issue, as the name of the organization is Parents Television Council. Unless, of course, you're just trying to cover up your power-tripping, censorship-happy agenda by using our children as an excuse to censor television.

Thanks for listening,

Jacob Ball
Libertarian Party Member