Free Republic

...The sweeping votes reflected widespread bipartisan support for extending expired tax breaks, including the research and development tax credit for businesses, sales tax deductions for people in states without income taxes, the tax deduction on college tuition, a tax credit for hiring welfare recipients and others facing difficulties finding jobs and tax credits for alternative energy producers and purchases of solar energy equipment by homeowners and businesses.

A television watchdog organization dedicated to protecting children from sex, violence, and profanity has released its annual "Top Ten Best and Worst Advertisers." Topping the "best list" was Coca-Cola Enterprises -- and taking the honors of the "worst" was General Motors Corporation.  The Parents Television Council (PTC) says its list spotlights companies for how frequently they use their advertising dollars to support family-friendly, prime-time TV broadcast -- and also calls out those that frequently sponsor graphic television content. As PTC president L. Brent Bozell puts it: "Responsible broadcasting is possible -- and this responsibility not only falls on the entertainment...

George W. Bush and the Curse Heard ‘Round the World By Jim Dyke The National Ledger August 2, 2006 Is license to curse on live television a presidential perk? If George Bush were a NASCAR driver or an NFL quarterback, his use of the s-word might have triggered a six digit fine from the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC commissioners aren’t making a fuss over their boss’s on-air swear at the G-8 summit, but the incident brings some clarity to the indecency debate. It demonstrates that live broadcasts cannot always be appropriate for most children if they are also appropriate...

As promised, Republican Tom Osborne (R-Neb.) and Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) Thursday introduced bill that would give cable a "column A,B,C," choice of content regulation. The bill is billed as the Family Choice act, the preferred term for a la carte cable with groups like Parents Television Council, which backs the legislation and touted it to the press on Wednesday. ... Multichannel video providers--cable, satellite, telcos--would be required to abide by FCC indecency standards that that currently don't apply to them, or they would have to scramble any channel, without charge, a subscriber doesn't want, except channels that have to be...

TV Watch Statement on Government’s Role in Controlling What’s On TV: President Bush signs broadcast indecency bill into law, but is that what Americans really want? When the FCC slapped local broadcasters with a record $3.5 million in fines this March, it said it was reacting in part to an increase in public complaints about broadcast television. But a closer look at the pattern of complaints the FCC receives shows that the vast majority of individuals file complaints at the prompting of just two special interest groups, and complainants often admit they didn’t watch the episode in question. TV Watch...

PTC Praises Senate for Passing Indecency Bill Parents Television Council Press Release May 19, 2006 “Legislation Will Protect Families from Barrage of Raunch on Public Airwaves” LOS ANGELES (May 19, 2006) – The Parents Television Council™ praised the U.S. Senate for passing legislation that would increase broadcast indecency fines from $32,000 to $325,000 – a ten-fold increase. “This is a major victory for families. We applaud Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) for pushing through legislation that would help to protect families from the barrage of raunch that has flooded the public airwaves,” said L....

(AgapePress) - The director of research and publications for the Parents Television Council (PTC) says violence pervades children's programming -- and it's not the "cartoonish" kind of violence with which many adults are familiar from their own childhoods.The PTC recently completed a study of television programming specifically created for young kids. The pro-family media watchdog group revealed its disturbing findings in a report called "Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: A Content Analysis of Children's Television" (See related story).According to the PTC's Melissa Caldwell, the not-so-surprising revelation of this study is that much of kid-targeted TV is not terribly child-friendly. In fact,...

(AP) NEW YORK Children's television is studded with violence, much of it darker and more realistic than when Road Runner dropped an anvil on Wile E. Coyote's head, a watchdog group reported on Thursday. The Parents Television Council analyzed 444 hours of kids' daytime programs last summer and detailed 2,794 violent incidents, even after sifting out "cartoony" moments. That's 6.3 incidents an hour -- more than the PTC found in prime time aimed at adults during a 2002 study. Programs like "Teen Titans" on the Cartoon Network and ABC Family Channel's "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" often feature intense fights with...

“This study is proof positive that there is an element of Hollywood deliberately attempting to poison the minds of children. The ultimate insult is that their method has parents pay them to do it.” This astounding statement is one that every parent, and anyone concerned about our culture and its affect on children, must investigate. Brent Bozell spoke these words over lunch as we discussed a recent study of programming content on MTV conducted by his organization, the Parents Television Council. In case you’re not familiar with Brent, in addition to his work with PTC, he’s also the president of...

Lawmakers See Indecency Bill Moving Quickly 8 minutes ago Politics - Reuters WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation to significantly hike fines for broadcasters airing indecent material will move quickly in the U.S. House of Representatives, leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said on Wednesday. After a series of high-profile incidents on television and radio, a bipartisan group of House lawmakers has proposed boosting fines on stations and entertainers to as much as $500,000 per violation, up from the current $32,500. The measure would also require the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites) to decide whether to revoke...

Cato Lobbies for Hollywood by L. Brent Bozell III January 7, 2005 There is a sound component to the modern libertarian movement in America today, but all too often it’s overshadowed by the impulse toward social irresponsibility. Adam Thierer of the Cato Institute has savaged the Parents Television Council in “'Desperate Housewives' and Desperate Regulators,” an op-ed marked by stunning incoherence and juvenile low blows. If this is the best Cato can do, it goes a long way toward explaining why the libertarian movement is not taken seriously on the American political scene. The premise of Mr. Thierer’s screed is...

Get ready for another impassioned censorship crusade by the "let's-censor-television-to-protect-the-children" crowd. The latest Nielsen TV ratings are out, and they reveal that in addition to being the most popular show among adults, ABC's smash-hit "Desperate Housewives" is also the most popular broadcast-network TV show with kids ages 9-12. No doubt, the relentless censorship advocates at the Parents Television Council are already firing up the engines at their automated complaint factory to bombard Federal Communications Commission regulators with letters. Recent Freedom of Information Act requests to the FCC have revealed the PTC has been responsible for more than 98 percent of...

As Christians prepare to celebrate the birth of the Christ child and Jews give thanks and praise to God for sustenance even in alien lands and hostile cultures, it's a great time to reflect on how the relentlessly secular entertainment industry reflects -- in fact, mocks -- the religious beliefs of its American audience.  In the arid land of secular orthodoxy, there is no alarm at simple "spirituality" if it is trendy and harmless, and the God-idea is conveniently controlled by the individual, instead of the individual submitting to a sovereign you-know-Who. Even traditional faiths can be tolerated by Hollywood...

Concerned friends & offended parents: Please visit parentstv.org & watch the most offensive TV Clip of the week. I was sickened & stunned by what Television is getting away with these days. We all know NO MEDIA OUTLET will help Americans with decency defend our children, so, I thought I'd use this Forum to help spread the word. The group was started by Brent Bozell, who many of you may know from The Media reasearch Center. A true under the radar warrior for Conservative values. I am new to this web site....Thanks for your time.

In the home stretch of 2004, the Federal Communications Commission, the official enforcer of the nation's anti-smut standards, has so far received more than a million complaints about public radio and television programming. That's a record and so is the close to $8 million in fines levied, half of them against Clear Channel Communications and Viacom. The numbers suggest a few things: the minds of entertainment industry honchos are getting a whole lot dirtier, Americans are fed up, and indecency watchdogs in Washington, D.C. are writing tickets faster than a traffic cop on a quota. But things are never what...

(CNSNews.com) - A new study by a television watchdog group finds that television's treatment of religion has become increasingly negative and doesn't reflect the viewpoints of a majority of Americans. The study, entitled "Faith in a Box: Entertainment Television and Religion, which was released Thursday by the Parents Television Council (PTC) in conjunction with the National Religious Broadcasters, also found that NBC by far leads the other major networks in terms of the number of negative depictions of faith. "Religion and the public expression of faith is a crucial element in the lives of most Americans. Our findings should challenge...

Leaders of The Parents Television Council today released a study of prime time programming that they say shows that Hollywood "has virtually no respect for religion." The study, put out in conjunction with the National Religious Broadcasters, counted 2,344 treatments of religion — such as the mention of prayer or the presence of God — from September 2003 to September 2004 and deemed 24.4% of them negative. Most were neutral, and 22.1% were positive. Even so, Frank Wright, president of the NRB, called the negative portrayals "dehumanizing" and compared them to representations of Jews prior to the Holocaust, and blacks...

Couch potatoes, it's time to drop the remote. E-mail the FCC. Stop the Parents Television Council before it gets beyond the TV. My vote for best media/television story of the year goes to one you may have missed. Mediaweek reported on Dec. 6 that of all the "indecency complaints" to the Federal Communications Commission in 2003, a startling 99.8 percent of them came from one conservative group, the Parents Television Council. And through October of this year, apart from complaints over Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction," a full 99.9 percent of the complaints about indecency have again come from the...

Unsatisfied with increasing TV censorship from the FCC, the Parents Television Council is threatening the FCC with a Congressional audit in retaliation for a supposedly inaccurate complaint count. In case you didn't know, 99.9% of the indecency complaints to the FCC came from the PTC. The PTC points out that these complaints come from individuals via PTC, not the PTC itself. In a statement reminiscient of an election recount, the PTC says: “The FCC needs to count each and every complaint, regardless if the majority complaining are PTC members. ..." Even though the PTC is technically right, so is the...

In an appearance before Congress in February, when the controversy over Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl moment was at its height, Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell laid some startling statistics on U.S. senators. The number of indecency complaints had soared dramatically to more than 240,000 in the previous year, Powell said. The figure was up from roughly 14,000 in 2002, and from fewer than 350 in each of the two previous years. There was, Powell said, “a dramatic rise in public concern and outrage about what is being broadcast into their homes.” What Powell did not reveal—apparently because he was...