We also have procedures and the potential to improve those procedures-whereby parents and children can receive information about upcoming program content which can help them make informed viewing decisions. This is called classification, a fraught but essentially much more democratic service than censorship. New technologies are coming which will even enable parents to restrict reception of certain types of program content, and many may judge this a useful, if imperfect, option. Of course, not all children are raised in families in which parents have the time, skills and motivation to monitor their television experiences. Neglected and abused children are undoubtedly at greater risk, but it is not possible to maintain a serious argument that all television content should be regulated in accord with the viewing needs of neglected children.
Television is a diverse community resource, used.
It could certainly be improved, but improvement will not be accelerated by gearing all content to what experts judge suitable for child victims. For their part, child victims do merit urgent community assistance, but better to deliver it to them rather than imagine that censorship will somehow cure all, or any, of the stresses they face in unsatisfactory homes. The evidence of effects of media violence upon behaviour is controversial but, at best, weak. There is no scientific basis for assuming it plays a major role in the development of aggression, and history provides countless examples of whole societies that became extraordinarily good at aggression before the advent of the movies or television. The most potent weapons we have for combating aggression in the real world are community debate, scientific research, imagination and resourcefulness and goodwill - far preferable to the careless exaggeration of weak evidence, followed by the dull thud of censorship and finished off with a diet of politically correct viewing.