New Bill in Congress Seeks to Protect Children from Violent and Obsence TV and Cable Programs

Two party-list solons have sought to limit the exposure of children to violent and obscene programming on television and cable systems by proposing television violence rating codes for children and a ban on violent and sexually themed non-educational programming on TV during certain hours.

CIBAC Party-list Reps. Cinchona Cruz-Gonzales and Emmanuel Joel Villanueva jointly filed House Bill 5625 or the proposed "Children's Media Protection Act" in pursuit of the State policy to protect the welfare of children by limiting their exposure to violent and obscene television and cable programs and shows.

Justifying their proposal, the lawmakers explained that existing laws lack the necessary provisions by which the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) and the National Telecommunications can block violent and sexually themed non-educational programming to protect children's welfare.

For one, Presidential Decree 1986, which created the MTRCB, does not authorize the MTRCB to prescribe ratings for violence and non-educational sexual themes in television programming and rules for signals containing specifications for blocking violent and sexually themed non-educational programming in apparatuses with such technical capability according to the lawmakers.

Neither does Republic Act 7925 or the Public Telecommunications Policy Act of the Philippines give such authority to the NTC for broadcast operations of public communications entities, according to the lawmakers.

Citing the significance of their proposal, Cruz-Gonzales and Villanueva referred to the repeated warnings of the Journal of the American Medical Association since 1975 about the adverse effects of televised violence on child development, including findings of an increase in the level of behavior among children viewers.

A report dated May 19999 of the Hany Frank Guggenheim Foundation in the United States, according to them, reveals that there is irrefutable connection between the amount of violence depicted in the TV programs watched by children and increased aggression among them.

The bill provides that the MTRCB and NTC shall jointly prescribe, in consultation with the television broadcasters, cable operators, concerned non-government organizations for children, and interested individuals from the private sector, the rules for rating the level of violence and non-educational sexual themes in television programming, including rules for the transmission by television broadcast systems and cables of signals containing specifications for blocking violent and sexually themed non-educational programming.

It also assigns the MTRCB and NTC to jointly pass rules and regulations which shall prohibit the broadcast on commercial television and public telecommunications entities of programming that contain violent and obscene scenes for children based on the established ratings code, including the broadcast by cable operators, from the hours of 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.

Source: House of Representatives