Congress has already approved a system to help parents block violence in movies, as President Trump called for Thursday, but major Hollywood studios like Disney are stopping it with lawsuits.
A 1995 law called the Family Movie Act permitted new technology to “sanitize” offensive DVD and video on demand content.
Suicide Squad – Unfiltered and Filtered from VidAngel Examples on Vimeo.
But while liberals Hollywood have been attacking Republicans for not imposing draconian gun control, it is fighting efforts by companies to follow the law and develop filtering equipment to cut violence from films.
And they are pumping out record violence in movies. A 2013 study from the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that gun violence tripled in PG-13-rated films.
And while movie makers decried gun violence, they released the hit “Black Panther” with 163 shootings, according to the Media Research Center.
Following Trump’s call for a better rating system, the Protect Family Rights Coalition issued a statement reminding Washington policy makers that there already is a law on the books to support violence filtering and urged officials to force it to go into effect.
Bill Aho, executive director of PFRC and former CEO of ClearPlay, said, “Citizens all over America are offering ideas and demanding action to address the problem of gun violence in schools. One element that must be considered is the impact of violent media on children. The Family Movie Act was made law in 2005 to give parents the ability to automatically skip violent content in movies.”
But, he said, “due to a lawsuit launched by Disney, Fox and Warner Bros., it is currently impossible to skip this disturbing [content] on Amazon, Netflix or any other streaming service.”
To show how it works, they produced a video of a violent scene from last year’s hit “Suicide Squad” that filtered out the murder of FBI agents.
“No one thing is going to solve this problem. But the less graphic violence our kids are exposed to, the better and healthier they will be. This is an easy step for elected officials from both parties to support families, oppose violence and move our country in the right direction,” said Aho.
“We call on elected representatives in both parties to take immediate action and pass legislation that will allow American families to have unfettered access to any platform offering parents the tools to address this serious issue,” he added.
Hollywood has claimed that one major filtering firm, VidAngel, was offering filtered films for pennies, costing them millions. Their suit forced the company into bankruptcy.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
