Ending an American Deadlock: The First Amendment and the Dutch Model for Managing Media Violence

• NCJ Number: 150882
• Author(s): D K Renner
• Date Published: 1994
• Length: 18 pages
• Corporate Author: Hope College
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Conference Material
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: This paper was presented at the International Conference on Violence in the Media: Prospects for Change, held on October 3-4, 1994, in New York City. The conference was sponsored by St. John's University.

Annotation

The Dutch model for managing media violence is discussed.

Abstract

This essay argues that the introduction of the proposed 500-channel Information Superhighway offers the opportunity to end the deadlock between citizen concerns and judicial obstructions to legislation, increasing public accountability for media content without jeopardizing American freedoms. It further contends that the risk of harm to society from media violence creates a compelling public interest sufficient to justify overriding some First Amendment barriers to legislative action, providing the remedies are structural instead of content-directed. The Dutch model presents such a structural alternative by establishing programming authority in nongovernmental citizens' associations that have a greater stake in social concerns than the business organizations that were granted programming authority in the United States. The expanded switching and channel capacity of the proposed Information Superhighway makes it possible to accommodate both American advertiser-driven programming and programming from diverse religious and secular associations that support the needs of society more directly, the way programming does in the Netherlands. The author contends that Information Superhighway legislation can be passed that builds greater pluralism and public accountability into the structure of ownership -- legislation that would be sustainable in the courts. The essay's discussion is supported by media systems analysis, which views the State's conferral of ownership and control of media technologies as in itself an intervention in the political communication process, and by revisionist broadcast history that has deepened the understanding of communication policy formation in the United States. The author urges that the engagement of nonindustry constituencies is essential. The first step toward reclaiming communication policy issues for the political realm is the recognition that the prevailing First Amendment dialectic, which has largely disabled citizen involvement in the legislative process -- but has not disabled industry lobbying -- is historically conditioned, archaic, and increasingly vulnerable. Footnotes