Ligouri Tells Congress Regulating TV Violence Is Not Government's Job
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 6/26/2007 6:00:00 AM
Fox Broadcasting Entertainment President Peter Liguori says that he is just as concerned about societal violence as Congress, but that no causal link has been established between real violence and TV violence.
"Without a causal link," he says "we cannot justify imposing content limits on the media."
That was the message Liguori was going to deliver to Congress Tuesday morning at a hearing on TV violence scheduled in the Senate Commerce Committee.
In prepared testimony, he planned to outline the various ways Fox warns parents about violent content in its shows/. Those include a "large" standards and practices department that vets every show and ad, ratings on each program, and PSA's that air in American Idol and other popular shows as part of the industry's TV Boss campaign.
Fox's drama 24 has been cited by some TV violence critics and. Ligouri pointed out that star Kieffer Sutherland provides a content warning voice-over for that show in addition to the on-screen ratings..
"Given the inherent difficulty of defining violence and drawing lines about what is appropriate," he said"any attempt to regulate the depiction of violence seemingly would be found unconstitutional. And it would have a profound chilling effect on the creative community's ability to produce authentic programming reflective of the world we live in."
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