Seventy-five percent of Americans favor enforcement of government restrictions on television content during hours when children are most likely to be watching, a new survey has found.
“New Concerns About Internet and Reality Shows” was released April 19 by The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The survey interviewed 1,505 adults March 17-21 and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points.
In addition to favoring restrictions on television during prime child-viewing hours, 69 percent of those surveyed supported steeper fines for indecent network programming. Sixty percent favored extending the same rules to cable-television stations.
Americans also largely agreed that parents are primarily responsible for keeping explicit or offensive content away from their children.
The survey found a “tug of war” in public opinion, however.
Forty-eight percent of those surveyed see a significant danger in the government imposing restrictions on the entertainment industry, compared to 41 percent who say that harmful content is the greater danger.
This divide follows political and religious lines. Fifty-seven percent of those who identify themselves as conservative Republicans feel the entertainment industry is a greater danger, whereas 72 percent of liberal Democrats say that excessive government restrictions are the more pressing concern.
Fifty-one percent of white evangelical Protestants object to the entertainment industry more than the government initiatives, compared to only 27 percent of “secular” Americans. A majority – 68 percent- agrees that children’s exposure to sex and violence on television gives them “the wrong idea” about what’s permissible in society.
The survey was released in the midst of an ongoing, and often heated, debate over proposals before Congress that would further involve government in enforcing decency standards in the media.
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