Controlled viewing or a form of censorship?

OVER the next five years television will grow at a rate never known before

OVER the next five years television will grow at a rate never known before. Hundreds of channels will offer a diet of gluttonous proportions leaving viewers bewildered. Already pornography band violence are being used to attract the attention of viewers on what were mainstream channels in Europe. The response from an increasing number of politicians is a piece of technology called the V-chip.

The V-chip, developed by a Canadian professor of engineering, allows people to blank out, or encrypt, certain programmes from their television sets. Parents, V-chip advocates say, will be able to monitor more closely what their children watch. They may control what enters their homes via the TV.

Last year President Clinton signed a law that from 1998 all new television sets be fitted with the device.

In Europe it was added to the proposed television directive, Television Without Frontiers, as an amendment by the European Parliament, and supported by Irish MEPs.

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That directive is the cause of tension between the Parliament and the Commission and is on the agenda for the Irish presidency. The directive itself was the main instrument for deregulating European television and allowing for the massive growth that politicians are now trying to control.

For the past 10 years politicians in Europe and the US have been de-regulating television and applying to broadcasting the strictures of the free market. Television, freed from constraints, has grown enormously. Every week there are new channels. At the last count there were about 400 in Europe alone. With digital television just around the corner it is expected that more than 500 channels will soon be available.

Much of this television is of poor quality. Broadcasting time is filled with repeats and the very cheapest of programming. Cheap television has to use cheap tricks to be noticed among all the channels.

LIVE TV in Britain, for instance, broadcasts "atop less" darts. In the US television news has become more and more lurid, reporting violent crime with actuality and reconstructions. Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are now faced with the results of their own policies.

The V-chip, the V stands for violence, is seen as offering some sort of solution to the confusion and worries about the multi-channel future, with homes bombarded by thousands upon thousands of images every day.

For the V-chip to make any sense, a programme classification system like that used for films, would have to be established. Parents going out for the night would then look at the television page of the newspaper, note the programmes that contain scenes of sex or violence and ensure that they would not be available.

They can then enjoy a guilt free evening knowing that their children are watching wholesome fare.

Decisions have to be made as who will police the system and whether it will include news and sport. In the US both categories have been exempted. Television is not film and much of it is live. Content is often not decided until the last minute, making it impossible to classify individual episodes. It would have to be decided if the Late Late Show, for instance, would be rated one way for a particular programme because the show is dealing with a adult theme, and the next week be rated differently when the material is less controversial.

Classification systems become almost impossible on a European basis. Countries such as the Netherlands have fewer problems with explicit sex than we do, but worry about the showing of violence. Ireland has different standards toe Britain, as film classifications already show. So how will we classify all the television that now comes from Britain and increasingly from Europe?

If the V-chip is made compulsory on all televisions tomorrow, it would take 20 years or more before all the present sets were eliminated. Even with the chip in place, children with technological, know how might well be able to break the code and watch what they want.

A compulsory V-chip is effectively a licence for television to show whatever it wants, without regard to any social norms or social responsibility. Instead of a society retaining some control over what is broadcast, the chip allows television to show more violence and more pornography in order to maximise an audience. If people say that some material is unacceptable, so what? Use the V-chip to blank it out.

And then, of course, there are parents who will not be able to operate the new technology and those who will not bother to use the Chip. Children would then be watching increasingly violence and pornographic material.

The days of censorship are over, whether it is in the home or by a government appointed censor. Trying to control what is available, whether on TV or from the Internet, is like trying to hold back the tide. What is needed now is not a V-chip but decisions over what we want as a society.

Despite what politicians might wish there are no quick fixes or instant solutions.