Latest Promises Better Come True
It reads like something out of a suspense thriller. A giant industry conspires to lie to the public about its marketing practices to inflate its profits at the expense of children.
It is from Hollywood but it’s not fiction. The Federal Trade Commission this past week revealed that violent movies, music and video games that are supposedly meant for an audience 18 and older are deliberately marketed to children as young as 12.
That’s hardly a shocker. Lots of very violent movies and video games have juvenile themes. What’s surprising about the FTC report is how openly aggressive the entertainment industry is about attracting underage customers. Internal memos outline strategies for promoting R-rated movies such as “to find the elusive teen target audience and make sure everyone between the ages of 12-18 was exposed to the film.”
An M-rated video game memo targeted its primary audience as “males 12-17.”
By the entertainment industry’s own admission, most of its offerings that carry restricted, mature or explicit language warnings are marketed to children under 17 - the exact segment the ratings were created to exclude.
The rating systems are voluntary. They were adopted by the industry in response to the outcry over the pervasive violence and mature themes in popular entertainment.
Trust us to police ourselves, the industry said. We did trust it - and boy, did we pay.
Most experts stop short of blaming violent entertainment directly for violence in society. But as FTC chairman Robert Pitofsky said last week, “Exposure (to violence) does seem to correlate with aggressive attitudes, insensitivity to violence and exaggerated view of how much violence occurs in the world.”
Caught red-handed, the entertainment industry is in a charitable mood and finally seems willing to craft some meaningful standards that it really would follow. Congress, for its part, has offered legislation that would allow the industry collaborate in setting marketing standards without violating anti-trust laws.
In addition, major retailers such as Wal-mart and Kmart have promised to restrict sale of mature-rated video games to children under 17. And ABC TV has pledged to keep commercials for R-rated movies off the network until after 9 p.m.
These are all steps in the right direction. But it’s important that the public and the government keep the pressure on the entertainment industry to ensure a happy ending to this Hollywood thriller.