A Positive Step Toward Social Responsibility Pro-TV Deal New Standard Will Pay Big Dividends For Nation’s Children

Kids love TV. We want them to spend more time reading, riding their bikes in the sunshine and creating elaborate adventures. But if they want to watch television, they’ll do it.

So, while President Clinton’s recent “media summit” may have been the result of election-year pressure, we should not dismiss the quality policy-making that emerged from it.

Parents, educators and children’s advocates have tried for years to get better children’s TV programming. The new agreement, requiring the four major networks to air three hours of educational children’s television a week, enhances the Children’s Television Act of 1990. The networks easily had found loopholes in that law, calling shows such as “The Jetsons,” “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” and “Leave It to Beaver” “educational.” So the president’s push for better children’s TV programming is good problem-solving as well as good politics.

When kids flick on the tube, they shouldn’t have to choose among cheesy talk shows, crime dramas, soap operas and sitcom reruns. Parents shouldn’t have to grit their teeth because the only programs for their children to watch are violent or unintelligible cartoons.

The three-hour rule challenges the networks to produce entertaining and informational children’s shows. Broadcasters will have to be creative. Now, new children’s shows might compete for ratings and expensive advertising slots. All of this means an increase not only in the quantity but also in the quality of educational programming for children.

This is not an issue of First Amendment rights or over-regulation. Left, right and center agree that the First Amendment is vital to the American way of life and that excess regulation is stifling. These are the reasons that watchdog groups and competing political parties check lawmaking, preventing it from becoming counterproductive.

We also should applaud every step that big business takes to improve community well-being. The most positive work toward a better society is done when business recognizes its responsibility to give back to the community that generates its success.

Clinton simply challenged the TV networks to exercise their social responsibility. They agreed to do so, and our children will be better off as a result.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view, see “A troubling extension of government’s reach”

The following fields overflowed: SUPCAT = COLUMN, EDITORIAL - From both sides CREDIT = Elana Ashanti Jefferson/Editorial writer