Abandoned in the Wasteland: Children, Television, and the First Amendment [Hardcover]

Newton N. Minow (Author), Craig L. Lamay (Author)

Book Description

Arguing that the First Amendment can be used on behalf of children to make sure television nurtures rather than harms them, a pathbreaking book offers workable ideas for an effective children's policy to limit commercial interests dominating programming today.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Minow created news when, in 1961, as head of the Federal Communications Commission, he called television in the U.S. a "vast wasteland." Here, writing with communications scholar LaMay, he presents a cogent argument for replacing violent, brutal TV fare with constructive programs that motivate children to learn while transmitting democratic values. The authors charge that broadcasters, who exploit children for profit, invoke First Amendment freedoms of expression as a way of shirking responsibilities defined under the Children's Television Act of 1990, which requires them to air some educational and informational programs for children. Among the authors' proposals are: forbid commercials on TV programs for preschoolers; make the V-chip a required component in all TV sets, so parents can block reception of unwanted shows; Congress should redefine the Federal Communications Act's vague stipulation that broadcasters must serve the public interest; make media literacy courses a basic part of the school curriculum. This broadside should trigger a national debate.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A skillful amalgam of law, the history of broadcasting, sociology, and impassioned argument."--David Greenberg, The Washington Post Book World

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 237 pages
• Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub; 1st edition (July 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809023113
• ISBN-13: 978-0809023110
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,393,690 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully informative and extremely interesting, March 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Abandoned in the Wasteland: Children, Television, & the First Amendment (Paperback)

I read this book for a media class I took, and I enjoyed it very much. Minow has been an advocate for quality television since he was Kennedy's FCC chairman, and he obviously continues to champion for what should be a simple thing. Minow and LaMay have a great chapter in this book about the history of television that beats everything I've previously read. I particularly liked the way they talked about a stranger in the house, and how our society allows violence and bloodshed into our homes everyday without a care for what our children are seeing, or how they are reacting to it. Their discussion of the talk shows that are on TV during after-school hours was a shock to me. There must be something we can do as a society to give our children the gift of quality TV without violence.I think Minow and LaMay should be commended for their insights and willingness to tackle such a huge problem.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Book illuminates the power of the media to affect society, November 22, 2003

By 

Janice H. Kasten (Kingsport, Tennessee United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Abandoned in the Wasteland: Children, Television, and the First Amendment (Hardcover)

In the 1960's, one of the things requested by the leaders of the Black Movement was the more frequent appearance on television of Black performers. Specifically, these performers were to be in programs where they portrayed competent, contributing people. Such programs as Amos n' Andy, under pressure from Black leaders and Civil Rights advocates, were removed from television. Their demands were guided by the belief that the way in which Black people were portrayed on television would have a marked effect upon society's evaluation of the Black race.

In the Sep 2003 U.S. News and World Report magazine article regarding the 100 documents which affected our country's history, it is stated that the words we use to communicate our ideas to one another have the power to provoke images and emotions which can revolutionize our society.

The ability of literature, whether written or performed, to transform people's values and thus society is not a radical or new notion. It is the principle upon which our American education system is based. We do not believe that human beings are locked into a set of values which they either inherited or which were formed strictly from association with close relatives. We believe that education and environment can alter our principles.

I agree with all the previously stated ideas, so it always amazes me how so many of the people who are proponents of the power of education, proponents of the power of literature to shape our values, are often the most vehement in denying that television, music and movies have had a profound effect upon our society's values. The only way that I can reconcile these blatantly contradictory notions is that perhaps what these people are meaning to say is that, books, television, movies, and music do have the power to modify our ethics, to modify our stereotypical perceptions of a race or a gender, and do have the power to affect our notions of equity, but with regards to the sex and violence that saturate these mediums, these are just things that temporarily excite us and have little affect upon our values.

This belief is not supported by either logic or experience. The reason that our entertainment is saturated with sex and violence is because there are few things which have a greater capacity to affect us, to arouse us, to absorb our attention. For better, for worse we are chained to one another for our most intense emotions. The egocentric sweetness of self-fulfillment pales in comparison to the emotions generated by the adulation or domination of our fellow human being. Logically, you do not repeatedly arouse human beings' most intense emotions without creating an even greater appetite for more stimulation. However, although we might have a longing for this stimulation, most people will subordinate these desires to society's expectations of socially acceptable behavior. Thus few of us become sexual addicts or sadists or serial killers. Hence, the assertion by the media and others that this steady dose of sex and violence has little affect upon us. But it has. We have allowed ourselves to enjoy the reduction of a human being to a sexual object. We have allowed ourselves to enjoy seeing another human being physically harmed. This enjoyment reduces our aversion to these emotions and when a significant percentage of society finds pleasure in these emotions, its eventuates in the altering of socially acceptable behavior. And we are seeing the results of these changes, children killing children, a drug-infested youths, schools patrolled like prisons, babies having babies, a plethora of families without fathers.

However, many people feel that even if this type of entertainment does have deleterious effects, our freedom is more endangered by censorship than it is by these aforementioned negative consequences. First, let me state that we already have censorship. We do not allow nudity or acts of fornication in public or on commercial broadcast stations. We do not allow cigarette or alcohol advertisements in elementary or high schools. We do not allow teachers in these schools to teach hatred of a religion or race or gender. We do not allow the advertisement or sale or consumption of narcotics. In most states, prostitution is illegal. Censorship already exists. Second, the notion that censorship of literature or entertainment is a threat to the freedom of being able to criticize the policies of our government is a relatively new concept in the United States. Up until the 1960's censorship of entertainment was considered a given in the United States. The fact that this country, the most free society that the world has ever known, was able to not only survive but thrive for over 150 years while at the same time having a censorship of entertainment policy negates the notion that freedom is threatened by such a situation. England is another example where freedom to criticize the government was considered to be very different from the freedom to make one's living by appealing to the prurient interests of the public. Victorian England allowed Karl Marx to promote his ideas whereas libidinous France banished him from their country. There are a multitude of other examples where the government was a dictatorship but there existed no censorship of entertainment. It is to a dictator's advantage for the populace to be a slave to their passions, rather than a people working together to determine what literature and entertainment will promote within their children respect for the dignity of people.

I am very thankful for such books as "Abandoned in the Wasteland". Mr. Minow recognizes and is trying to combat the crisis which this steady dose of sex and violence and consumerism is breeding in our youth.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Expert Advice for Parents on Television, March 27, 2003

By 

Theodore (Ventura, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Abandoned in the Wasteland: Children, Television, & the First Amendment (Paperback)

Newton Minnow is a former chairman of the FCC. Minnow is also an excellent writer who argues in this book that television is most probably unsuitable for children. Why?

Television is focused on profit alone; sells young viewers to advertisers; wastes 23 hours a week of the average child; brings about violence and obesity, low grades, irresponsibility and poor social patterns in some children; is controlled by advertising agencies and not by people who serve the real needs of children; probably leads children away from reflective thinking and toward information-processing; gives some children negative impressions that will last a lifetime; hunts for children viewers like sharpshooters; is the subject of over three thousand sociological studies; has a history of calling "an intrusion" that which is a reasonable limit; is in the business of making a profit alone; has six and a half hours of program-length commercials on Saturday mornings; is motivated by a compulsion and not sound reasons based on studies in child psychology; and tends to trigger prejudice, fear and despair. The above is unsuitable for children.

Minnow writes on page 12, "Broadcasting and television industries quickly drew their own map of the United States. Communities became markets, citizens became customers, and children became fair game."