Sex, Violence, Drugs and Explicit Language on Music T.V.

In the article Children Assaulted by Sex, Violence, Drugs and Explicit Language on BET and MTV, the Parents Television council released new data about daytime music video programming that was very shocking. Specifically, the council has documented 1,647 instances of offensive/adult content within 27.5 hours with 746 sexually explicit scenes. The council said, “What BET and MTV are offering to children on these three programs is full of offensive and vulgar content, the likes of which cannot yet be found on broadcast television.” There were 221 depictions of violence, including deaths, punching/hitting, rioting, threats and weapons. There was an average of 8 instances of violence per hour, or one instance every 7.5 minutes. Approximately 40% of the audience was made up of children under the age of eighteen. The report was prepared for the Enough is Enough Campaign to fight for better indecency enforcement and to try and improve programming for parents and their children. I agree with the Parents Television Council. In my view much of this type of programming is too violent and filthy for families to watch. In addition, I believe that most adults actually find vulgarity and violence on T.V. offensive and most kids are drawn to it. Some might object, of course, on the grounds that as citizens of the United States we should have freedom of speech and expression, but that doesn’t mean that we should have the freedom to corrupt our children. Overall, then, I believe that there should be more restrictions on daytime music video programming-considering that children, who are almost half of the viewers of music videos, are watching during the day.