@ Beyond Primetime NYC: Media Execs To Parents: We’re Not Nannies

While content companies have an “envelope of responsibility” to the public in terms of what they air or produce, parents must be more vigilant when it comes to their kids’ media environment, a trio of top media execs said during a panel discussion at the Beyond Primetime conference. In particular, the proliferation of digital media will change the dynamic of the “too much sex and violence” in the media, said Leslie Moonves, chairman and CEO of CBS, who was joined on the panel by Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons and former Miramax head Harvey Weinstein, now president of the Weinstein Company. “You can’t prevent a 12-year-old from getting what he or she wants to see on the internet,” Moonves said at the beginning of the day-long conference in New York.
Weinstein noted that technology has afforded parents more control over their childrens’ media consumption than ever before: “We get a record of when our 12-year-old is using IM, for example.”
Ken Auletta, the New Yorker journalist who moderated the panel, noted the Pope’s recent admonitions about media violence. Parsons responded with a question: “Have you read the Bible lately? You should check it out… Maybe I got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, I’m feeling feisty, but I think that for too long, groups and institutions have focused too much on the responsibility of ‘the media.’ I believe that kids need all of society’s institutions to help mold and prepare them for adulthood, including religious institutions. But the Pope is an advocate for a particular point of view. We’re supposed to offer fare to all viewpoints. We are not an advocate. It comes down to this: do you give the people what they want or what we think they should want? You don’t want someone else deciding for you. You don’t want a central authority determining what’s good media and what’s not. It’s up to the parents, it’s up to individuals and we as good corporate citizens have to meet those wants within an envelope of responsibility.”
More from Moonves: After the panel, I asked Moonves to elaborate. He said that the increase in media choices was surely going to change the nature of the dialogue regarding media companies’ responsibility by putting the onus more on parental supervision: “When you go from a universe of six channels to 500 and then to thousands and then millions, the idea of restriction is virtually impossible. You can get whatever you want whenever you want it — I don’t care what age you are. There is no question about it: this puts the ball in the parents’ court. It’s not easy, but they will have to be as vigilant and as knowledgeable as they can be.”

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