A mother called me from the East Coast to help her convince her daughter's school to stop showing news clips to fourth graders without screening them first. Her daughter had become enormously distressed over news coverage of the JonBenet Ramsey murder that she had seen in. Many parents watch the news while their children are in the room, thinking that their children aren't watching, but many of them are absorbing the news' disturbing messages. Yes, they can. But parents need to know what the ratings don't say, as well as what they can't say.
Movie ratings can be very misleading.
Television ratings have recently improved by adding content letters to let parents know whether it s sex, violence, or coarse language that caused a program to get its rating, but it s often hard to find out what a program's rating is, and not all networks are using the new system. In addition, TV ratings are quite complicated, and that's why I've spent many pages in the book explaining the rating systems.