FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2000 FCC Chief slaps networks on sex, violence by Christopher Stern The Washington Post October 16, 2000 WASHINGTON - Stepping up his criticism of the broadcast industry, Federal Communications Commis sion Chairman William E. Kennard said that television networks have failed the educational needs of chil dren and have increased the amount of sex and violence in prime time. "Broadcast standards have coars ened," Kennard said Monday as he convened a hearing on the public in terest obligations of broadcasters. "There is indisputably more inap propriate content - more question able language, sex and violence - in today's prime time." Three years ago, the FCC began requiring TV stations to air at least three hours of educational and infor mational programming for children each week. Then-chairman Reed Hundt led the effort, citing a lack of high-quality educational shows on commercial networks. Now Kennard is looking toward a time when broadcasters will use their new digital channels to deliver a va riety of services. The agency wants to ensure that as broadcasters get into new businesses, such as data trans mission, they don't relinquish their obligations to provide educational television. WORLD & NATION •••11MOOMEMEN•111•WINII i n Brief... Below: Missouri Commissioner of Higher Education Kala Stroup, right, her daughter Megan Sappington, and Grandchildren Annika Sappington, 2, left, and Skylar Sappington, 1, leave flowers at the Governor's Mansion in Jefferson City, Missouri Tuesday. Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, campaigning for a seat in the U.S. Senate against incumbent John Ashcroft, was killed when the plane shuttling him to a campaign rally crashed in rainy, foggy weather Monday night 25 miles south of St. Louis, Missouri. : ritish see Earth between a rock and a hard place by T. R. Reid The Washington Post October 16, 2000 LONDON - Concerned that NASA may have dropped the ball, a blue ribbon scientific panel here has rec ommended that Britain take the lead in defending the people of our planet from an overhead threat of literally cosmic dimensions: killer asteroids. A recent report from the Task Force on Potentially Hazardous Near Earth Objects calls for spending as much as $lOO million on a defense system against space objects, with a blueprint similar to the military's missile defense systems - an early detection network coupled with some means to stop an incoming With thousands of objects flying near enough to our planet to be con sidered risky, panel members said the possibility of global destruction posed even by a relatively small as teroid should be enough to justify the expenditure. "I would think the pros pect of imminent death would con- The FCC is considering rules that would require broadcasters to air ad ditional educational programming in return for the digital airwaves they received in recent years. Kennard's power to impose new regulations on the industry are lim ited because he is expected to step down from his appointed position in January even if Vice President Al Gore wins the election. Any proposal he makes will likely be reviewed by the next chairman. Last week he criticized NBC and Fox for failing to carry full coverage of the presidential debates. NBC car ried the debates on its own stations but gave affiliates the option of car rying a baseball game. Fox has not aired the debates. Broadcasters maintain they meet their public service obligation, in part by providing billions of dollars worth of free advertising for public service announcements and by raising mil lions for charity. "Saddling stations with additional regulation cannot be justified, given the billions that broadcasters provide annually in public service," said Den nis Wharton, a spokesman for the National Association of Broadcast At Monday's hearing, James Steyer, chief executive of JP Kids Inc., which produces children's pro gramming, agreed that most net- PHOTO BY FRED BLOCHER/KAN centrate the mind remarkably," said Harry Atkinson, the task force chair man. "This is not science fic- tion," said Britain's science minister, Lord Sainsbury, as he endorsed the report and promised swift govern ment action to implement it. "The risk is extremely re mote ... but it is real. We put a lot of money into as tronomy. It's sensible to put just a little hit into making certain we know if there is any danger of an object hit ting our very fragile planet." Asteroids and their smaller cousins, comets, are chunks of flying debris left over from the formation of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago. Some are huge; the potato-shaped asteroid Eros is bigger than the whole of Washington, D.C. When they hit the Earth, the results can be cataclysmic. A single asteroid that hit ‘iV: , CaLD i''z lI.ATI'ON works are doing a poor job provid ing educational programming. The networks, he said, are looking for "inoffensive programming that you can slap an educational label on." "There is indisputably more inappropriate content - more Ques tionable language, sex and violence - in today's prime time." -William E. Kennard, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Another panelist, Susan Altman, who produces "It's Academic," a local trivia contest for high school stu dents, said TV stations can make money from educational programs, but not as much as they can from shows that draw larger audiences. In the current, highly competitive mar ketplace, broadcasters are interested in airing only the most profitable pro gramming, she said, adding, "It could be an infomercial, it doesn't matter." Competition has become so fierce PHOTO BY JULIE JACOBSON/KANSAS CITY STAR Above: File picture of Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan seen here glancing out the window of his moving campaign train, July 21, 2000. Carnahan, campaigning for a seat in the U.S. Senate against incumbent John Ashcroft, was killed when the plane shuttling him to a campaign rally crashed in rainy, foggy weather Monday night 25 miles south of St. Louis, Missouri. what is now Mexico about 65 mil lion years ago wiped out most ani- WASHINGTON POST GRAPHIC BY PATTERSON CLARK mal life around the world and is be lieved to have ended the age of di- nosaurs that broadcasters have all but forgot ten their obligation to the public, Kennard said. "I don't think we can rely on the corporate responsibility of broadcasters," he added. Competition has led programmers to increase the amount of sex and vio lence on television, Kennard sug gested. Several panelists confirmed that sexual and violent themes con- tinue to permeate programming, al though it is not clear if such adult oriented content is increasing, as Kennard said. Dale Kunkel. a professor at the University of California at Santa Bar bara, studied the content of more than 8,000 TV shows that aired between 1994 and 1997 and found that the amount of violence depicted on tele vision remained stable over the three years, with 58 percent to 61 percent of programs including some vio lence. A separate study, conducted by Kunkel for the Kaiser Family Foun dation, found that more than 50 per cent of shows include sexual themes. In prime time, when the television audience is the largest, two-thirds of programs include sexual content, the study found. Kennard and other members of the FCC called on broadcasters Monday to promote the content rating system, which surveys have shown is not used by most parents. The British panel warned that "the Earth is hemmed in by a sea of as teroids." One problem is that astronomers don't know how big that sea might be. The report says there may be as many as 2,000 space objects crossing Earth's orbit that are big ger than 1 kilome ter (about half a mile) wide. Im pact by a single object that size could kill up to a quarter of our planet's popula tion, the panel warned the damage can be massive, the actual risk is minimal. Asteroids don't hit us all that often; "we are talking about once every 100,000 years for a very seri- There's something fishy going on here... Above: Fishing boats sit docked in Futo Bay awaiting word of a dolphin sighting to begin the annual hunt. A kill of 22,000 has been approved by the Japanese government. Like the Japanese whaling that has prompted a global outcry, this hunt is being car ried out in defiance of interna tional protests. Right: Fisherman Naohito Hiyoshi, 43, says Japan's cul ture calls for "eating seafood, just like the U.S. culture is to eat beef." ■■■■ll■■■■■■lllo■■■■■■■llll■■■■llll■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ Below: File photograph shows the coastal mine-hunters USS Cardinal, left, and USS Raven resting above the submerged deck of the commercial motor vessel Blue Marlin prior to de-ballasting operations that will lift the mine-hunt ers onto Blue Marlin's deck in Ingleside, Texas in July 2000. The commercial motor vessel MV Blue Marlin is en route from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to Yemen to aid in returning the stricken U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole to Nor folk, Virginia. ous incident," Sainsbury said. Still, the report concludes that the poten tial harm is so great that preventive measures should be taken - particu larly because mankind now has the technological skill to protect itself. "Near Earth Objects" - the term "near" is a relative one here, refer ring to space debris within a third of the distance to the sun - pose a threat to all nations. Why, then, is it the British who are pushing the cause of asteroid defense? One reason is that the homeland of Isaac Newton has a long astronomical tradition. The other is that island nations face a par ticular risk; a large asteroid landing in the Atlantic could launch a tsu nami that would sink the British Isles (not to mention the East Coast of the United States) within minutes. The British panel's warnings echo several studies issued by NASA in recent years about asteroid dangers. Under pressure from Congress, NASA promised in 1995 to identify all dangerous space objects by 2005. NASA currently spends about $2 million annually on that task, but has But while KRT PHOTO COURTESY OF THE U.S NAVY fallen far behind the original sched ule. That's a key reason the British have decided to push ahead. The task force report urges con- struction of new teleseopes - particu larly in the Southern Hemisphere. which has fewer astronomical instal lations than the northern. The panel recommended spending ahout $24 million immediately on a new 10- foot telescope somewhere south of the equator. The team also suggested launching Spaceguarrf satellites to watch for incoming destruction. With improved vigilance, the study says, an asteroid racing toward Earth might he spotted a year. a de cade, or even a century before im pact. Rather than just sit around awaiting destruction, the team sug gests that humans might he able to destroy or turn away the unwelcome visitor. The report doesn't provide specifics, but U.S. nuclear scientist Edward Teller has suggested using nuclear bombs in space to nudge an asteroid off a collision course with Earth.
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