ANA Argues That Government Regulation of Violent Programming Violates First Amendment

The Senate Commerce Committee is holding a hearing today on violence in the media. On April 25^th, the FCC issued a report urging Congress to define and regulate “excessively violent” TV programming. This effort would violate the First Amendment and place the government in the role of censor to decide the content of vast amounts of media that enter the homes of virtually every American. This would set a very dangerous precedent for both commercial and political speech.

ANA and our sister associations, the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) and the American Advertising Federation (AAF) have filed comments with the Senate Commerce Committee describing the major constitutional defects with this type of effort to regulate TV programming. We also included a copy of the comments that were filed with the FCC in 2004 on these issues. All of those comments are available here.

With the V-chip and parental control features provided by cable and satellite providers, parents already have effective tools to choose which TV programs they wish to receive or exclude. 

We sincerely hope the Congress will reject the invitation of the FCC to participate in this radical and unconstitutional effort to regulate TV programming.