COMMENTARY: TV ratings system are an inadequate guide for parents

c. 1997 Religion News Service (Frederica Mathewes-Green is a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. She is the author of”Facing East: A Pilgrim’s Journey into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy”(HarperCollins), and a frequent contributor to Christianity Today magazine. UNDATED _ One side of the debate over ratings for television shows is expressed in a political cartoon […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Frederica Mathewes-Green is a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. She is the author of”Facing East: A Pilgrim’s Journey into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy”(HarperCollins), and a frequent contributor to Christianity Today magazine.

UNDATED _ One side of the debate over ratings for television shows is expressed in a political cartoon by Mike Peters for the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News titled,”What it takes for a child to watch decent TV.” On the left, stands a wobbly stack including a television, videocassette recorder and cable box with the label”A. V-Chip, New proposed federal censorship legislation, Network censors checking 2000 hours of TV a day, New rating system.”On the right, is a casually-dressed woman with a remote control in her hand. She is labeled”B. One parent.” If you look at the cartoon tomorrow, a week from now, 10 years from now, that woman would still be standing there. And that’s exactly what she’d have to do.


Television programming has become so unpredictably salacious, crude, and bloody that separating appropriate shows from garbage constitutes a full-time job. Television has become a household appliance _ something like a chainsaw _ that should not be operated by a child without close adult supervision.

No wonder parents are frustrated.

The reason most toddlers don’t have chainsaws is that even if parents don’t know for sure what would happen, they have a strong suspicion it would be bad. Television is somewhat safer to have around, but the content of shows is unpredictable. Even at the price of eternal vigilance _ allowing a child to watch television only when an adult is poised with a remote nearby _ merely enables the show to be snapped off once the offensive material has already bathed the child’s brain circuits.

If parents are not going to throw out the set entirely, they’d appreciate some help predicting which programs are going to be safe and which are likely to be poison.

Under pressure, the TV industry responded in January with a rating system similar to the one used for movies:”TV-G,””TV-PG,””TV-14,”and, for viewers who are ostensibly mature,”TV-M.” Parents and parent-advocacy groups on the left and the right were not appeased. These brief labels don’t reveal what the content of the show is, nor whether a rating was earned for sex, violence, or language.

These three categories appear to be the ones that concern parents most, though they don’t answer all my questions.

For example, what about the way TV family members insult and ridicule each other? Or lying and deceit presented as funny human foibles? Or the celebration of vengeance as a virtue? (Even religious conservatives, usually gung-ho on biblical standards, forget”Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord”and”Turn the other cheek”when it’s payback time for bad guys).

The industry reasonably asks, Why aren’t these ratings sufficient? They’ve functioned well enough for movies.


But parents aren’t limited only to the age rating when they decide to see a movie. They’re able to make those decisions on the basis of an”information cascade.”If you want to learn more about”Liar Liar”than you can guess from its rating, you can find plenty in the form of reviews _ on TV, in papers and magazines, on the Internet and from friends. Content descriptions abound, and the parent can make a pretty good guess as to what scenes or elements inspired a particular rating.

The same isn’t true of television. Content descriptions are limited to a phrase or two in newspaper TV listings, and perhaps not even that. Since TV shows often aren’t screened by professional reviewers before being piped into your home, no one but the producers know what a particular episode’s specific content is. If the industry itself will not reveal this information, no one else can get it.

The other difference with movies has to do with that phrase”piped into your home.”If every film coming to town were being played constantly on our home televisions, a parent’s job would be much harder.

But television bombards us like the tide; we don’t go out and select items to bring home. Our ability to limit this inflow is imprecise and clumsy: we can junk the television entirely, or cut off cable and rely only on broadcast channels (limiting the quantity but not improving quality), or police the set rigorously. Parents do all those things. And complain about them.

So what’s a parent to do? Demand the government step in?

No, there are resources available that, while imperfect, can go a long way toward helping guide the way. But examining and evaluating these resources will have to wait until next time.

END RNS

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