Changing Television: Why the Right Does It Wrong

KIM HAYS & PEGGY CHARREN

This article grew out of one of the weekly public programs and national radio broadcasts of Cambridge Forum at the First Parish in Cambridge, the congregation which was gathered in Harvard Square in 1636. At a Cambridge Forum event in the Parish House, Peggy Charren, the founder of Action for Children’s Television (ACT) spoke out about television and the New Right. Kim Hays was Executive Director of ACT.

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This article is abridged from Speak Out Against the New Right edited by Herbert F. Vetter (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982)

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The religious New Right worries a lot about television. The Reverend Donald Wildmon, founder of the National Federation for Decency and chairman of the Coalition for Better Television (CBTV), has been monitoring television programs and rating them and their sponsors for decency since 1977. His Coalition for Better Television's group of ultra-conservative leaders wants to eliminate what they consider violence, vulgarity, sex, and profanity from TV.

No matter how noble their intentions, no matter what their political leanings, these groups' ultimate goal is censorship, because they set up their own standards against which television programs should be judged and, ideally, eliminated. That the viewing tastes of the nation may not match the groups' standards is, to them, immaterial.

In contrast, Action for Children's Television does not support television reform that protests individual programs. ACT is proud of the fact that it has never once in its history told a broadcaster to "take this program off the air because we don't like it." ACT supports a broadening, not a narrowing, of television viewing options, and we believe that children and young adolescents are best served by programming designed especially for them, not cleaned-up adult TV fare.

Although ACT may have disagreed with the methods of a number of television reform groups in the past, we never actually protested the TV protesters until the Coalition for Better Television came along. The censorship tactics of this coalition of New Right groups are so disturbing that ACT launched a national petition campaign to provide citizens with a means of speaking out against the coalition's crusade to clean up the airwaves.

What is different about the Coalition for Better Television?

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the CBTV's program of reform is the group's focus on specific issues. Most TV reform groups are worried about the overall quality of TV programming and the quantity of sexual and violent program content. But Wildmon, Falwell, Schlafly, and the coalition backers are quick to list controversial topics they do not want television to deal with at all—or, worse, that they want television to portray from a New Right point of view. Issues like abortion, teenage pregnancy, sex education, contraception, homosexuality, premarital sex, nontraditional families, drug use, the Equal Rights Amendment, feminism, national defense, communism, prayer in public schools, and the teaching of evolution are the focus for moral outrage and political activity from many members of the CBTV.

What we seem to be threatened with by the New Right is another kind of blacklist, a blacklist of ideas. The message to broadcasters and advertisers is that a great many subjects for drama and even news had better not be dealt with . . . or else.

At Action for Children's Television, we believe that controversy is one of the things television does best. It is the responsibility of the broadcasting media to provide as wide a range of opinions as possible and to keep the public informed about all sides of a controversial issue. Of course not all controversial topics are appropriate subjects for children's television. But a surprising number are, if they are handled in an age-specific manner. Television can offer children the opportunity to learn about a wide variety of places, people, occupations, ideas, lifestyles, and value systems, many of which will effect the way they live the rest of their lives. The role of the television is not to replace families and teachers as the chief influence on children in our society. But television, viewed selectively and in moderation, can encourage children to discuss, wonder about, and even read about new things. Above all, it can lead them to ask questions.

ACT wants each American child to grow up with the ability to thoughtfully determine his or her own individual set of rights and wrongs, based on the widest possible amount of information that parents, schools, and television can provide.

The religious New Right would call ACT's goal for American children a sample of amoral secular humanism. We call it freedom. So does Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, professor, and statesman Archibald MacLeish. He has said, "What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for yourself the alternative of choice. Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing."

Action For Children's Television

WILLIAM RICHTER

 

A "grass-roots" activist group, Action for Children's Television (A.C.T.), was founded by Peggy Charren and a group of "housewives and mothers" in her home in Newton, Massachusetts in 1968. The members of A.C.T. were initially concerned with the lack of quality television programming offered to children. In 1970 A.C.T. petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) asking that television stations be required to provide more programming for the child viewer. In that year the organization also received its first funding from the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation. A.C.T. later received funding from the Ford and Carnegie Foundations as well, grants which allowed the group to expand from volunteers to between 12 and 15 staff members at the height of its activity.

A.C.T. was not generally viewed as a "radical right-wing group" advocating censorship. According to Charren, "too many people who worry about children's media want to do it in. A.C.T. was violently opposed to censorship." Partially due to this attitude, the group was able to gain support from members of the public and from many politicians.

A.C.T. also became concerned with issues of advertising within children's programming. Of particular concern was their finding that one-third of all commercials aimed at children were for vitamins. Partially due to their efforts, the FCC enacted rules pertaining to program length commercials, host selling, and the placement of separation devices between commercials and children's programming.

A.C.T. was responsible for many cases brought before the courts in regard to the FCC and its policies concerning children's television.

One of the major successes of A.C.T. was the passage of the Children's Television Act of 1990. Shortly after the passage of this act, Charren announced the closing of Action for Children's Television, suggesting that it was now up to individual citizens' groups to police the airwaves. In recent years Charren, a strong supporter of the First Amendment, has fought against FCC regulations limiting "safe harbor" hours.

Harvard Graduate School of Education ACT Collection

The ACT Collection documents the work of Action for Children’s Television (ACT), a national grassroots organization founded by Peggy Charren in Newton, Massachusetts in 1968. ACT claimed to ensure quality and diversity in television programming for adolescents and to eliminate commercial abuses directed at children. The work of this organization, which had thousands of members across the United States, had a major impact on the content and scheduling of children’s television programs and advertising, culminating in the passage of the Children’s Television Act of 1990, for which ACT lobbied vigorously.

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