Parents, not networks, should decide what kinds of programming their children watch, which is why ratings exist. But a rating system that withholds material facts about its content is no longer a reliable filter — it is a blindfold.
Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 based on this very premise. The law pressed the television industry to build a ratings system that families could use to judge what content is allowed into their homes using the TV Parental Guidelines, the codes in the corner of the screen. TV-Y and TV-Y7 sort children’s programming by age, and content descriptors flag the reasons behind a rating: V for violence, L for coarse language, S for sexual situations, and D for suggestive dialogue. The list has expanded since the 1990s. If you turn on a kids movie from the 1940s, you will now often find a warning label for “smoking.”
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Those labels are not assigned by the government. They are assigned by the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board, a body composed largely of the same networks and studios that produce the shows. The arrangement asks the industry to grade its own homework and to report honestly to parents about what each episode contains.
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FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has identified a place where the self-grading has broken down, where dishonesty flourishes in service to the ideological goals of Hollywood and Silicon Valley executives, rather than parents. In April, the FCC’s Media Bureau opened a public comment proceeding asking whether the ratings still give parents accurate information.
The Commission specifically noted: “The industry guidelines that parents rely on are rating shows with transgender and gender non-binary programming as appropriate for children and young children, and doing so without providing this information to parents, thereby undermining the ability of parents to make informed choices for their families.”
That sentence describes a transparency failure, not a content ban. Consider the record. Cartoon Network’s “Steven Universe” features dozens of LGBT characters. Netflix’s “Dead End: Paranormal Park” centers on a transgender lead. The Independent Women’s Forum catalogued more examples in a letter to Carr. Each show carries a children’s rating. None carries a descriptor that would let a parent screening for “gender identity” themes know they are present. A mother who can filter for violence and language cannot filter for this, because the board declines to tell her it is there.
Carr’s proposal gives parents the choice to filter. The existing descriptors already coexist with constant broadcasts of sex, violence, and profanity. Adding a label for “gender identity” content would not pull a single episode off the air, would not dictate what studios may produce, and would not tell any household what to watch. It would simply provide parents with another data point and allow them to decide what’s best for their kids.
Critics describe the proposal in misleading terms. GLAAD told supporters the FCC is “trying to control what you see on television” and called the effort “government overreach.” More than 40 organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign, filed comments warning of a “censorship spree.” The objection collapses on inspection. Censorship removes content from public view. A descriptor adds information to it. The board is free to keep rating these shows for children — Carr is asking only that it disclose what the shows contain when it does so. Opponents who insist that disclosure itself is dangerous are conceding that the information matters to parents, which is precisely why it should be provided.
The deeper principle here is the one conservatives have defended across every fight over schools, social media, and medicine: a parent’s authority over a child’s formation should not stop at the living room door.
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The Telecommunications Act recognized that authority 30 years ago. Republican lawmakers are pressing the same point now, with Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) urging the FCC to act. A ratings board that hides relevant content from the people the system exists to serve has substituted its own judgment for theirs.
Carr has not seized the ratings system, nor has he silenced anyone. He has asked a simple question on the public record: Should the board tell parents the truth about what their children are watching? The answer should not be controversial. Parents who want to spot this content and steer around it deserve the same tool they already have for language and violence.
Jon Schweppe is a senior advisor at American Principles Project. He is the author of the Populist Solutions substack. Follow him on X @JonSchweppe.