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<title> Violence on TV: parental or governmental responsibility? </title>
Over the last decade, violence on TV seems to have increased immensely, not only when it comes to motion pictures, but also in children's programmes. A person can be beaten black and blue on TV, and still an alarming number of people seem to be indifferent to this type of events. The article "Locking out violence", written by Ginia Bellafante and published in Time Magazine on July 24, 1995, shows that, in America, measures are being taken to try to regulate the occurrence of violence on TV, by proposals of the installation of an antiviolence chip in TV sets. In this paper, I would like to discuss whether this is such a good solution to the problem of violence on TV, by dealing with the two main pros and cons of this method, namely parental control versus censorship, which both lead to the question of parental responsibility.

The most apparent advantage with the antiviolence chip, also called the V chip, is the fact that it is an easy way for parents to control what their children watch on TV. There is often no way for parents to supervise every single programme that their children watch, so they trust the makers of the shows not to expose children to violence. However, in many cartoons, there are often cases of severe violence (if it is possible to regard an act of violence as being better or worse than another), which ultimately contributes to a child being numb and indifferent to violent deeds. With the installation of the V chip, this problem would be easily solved, as parents then could choose what shows they feel are appropriate for their children.

This solution, however, creates another great problem, namely the one of censorship. Many people feel that this is actually a way of introducing government control of what people see on TV, and this adaptation of the offering to children's needs seems exaggerated to some. Moreover, it seems as if the technology is not sufficiently well developed yet, as the chip would not be able to distinguish between the staged violence of films and real violence. Then what would happen with the news, if a TV set is equipped with the V chip? Another relevant question concerning censorship is the one regarding who sets the degrees of violence in programmes on TV. Who decides what is violent and what is not? In the light of these questions, it is easy to understand those who say that this is the first step to government control of the programmes that people watch. Personally, I feel that everyone should have the right to choose what he or she wants to watch from one occasion to another, so the V chip in its present form does not seem very appealing to me, as it is a form of censorship.

The advocates of the V chip maintain that it is really not a question of censorship, but of parental responsibility. However, that is a statement which I cannot fully endorse, as the installation of the V chip to me is an evidence of lack of parental responsibility rather than the existence of it. Nowadays, too many parents use TV as a babysitter, as it is an easy way of controlling what their children are doing without having to participate actively in their doings. I feel that it is ultimately the responsibility of the parents, and not the government, to see to it that children are not exposed to violence. Having a child is a lifelong commitment, and people should not be tempted to take the easy way out by letting other people decide what is best for their children. In France, the problem of violence on TV has come to a solution which seems more appropriate to me: every programme has a small coloured square in a corner of the screen, where the colour green indicates that the show is apt for children, yellow suggests that parents should be present when children watch this particular show, and where red means that the programme is not suitable for young viewers. This is a solution that seems more convenient to me, as it requires the active participation of the parents in what their children are doing.

In conclusion, my opinions are, consequently, opposed to those of Ginia Bellafante, as I regard what she calls parental control as a lack of responsibility on the part of the parents. Parental responsibility is a must when it comes to solving the problem of violence on TV, but this responsibility does not, in my opinion, correspond to the mere installation of an antiviolence chip in every TV set.
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