Bill seeks rating code for violence in TV, cable programs

MANILA, Philippines - Authorities may soon set up a rating code for violence in television and cable programs to protect impressionable child viewers, if a bill in the House of Representatives is passed into law. House Bill 5625 also seeks to impose ban on violent and sexually themed non-educational programming on TV during certain hours of the day. In an article on the House of Representatives Web site (www.congress.gov.ph), authors and CIBAC Party-list Reps. Cinchona Cruz-Gonzales and Emmanuel Joel Villanueva said their bill is in line with the State policy to protect the welfare of children. The two said there are no laws allowing the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) and the National Telecommunications to block violent and sexually themed non-educational programming. Presidential Decree 1986, which created the MTRCB, does not authorize the MTRCB to prescribe ratings for violence and non-educational sexual themes in television programming. Neither does it give specifications for blocking violent and sexually themed non-educational programming in apparatuses with such technical capability, the two added. Also, they said the Public Telecommunications Policy Act of the Philippines does not give such authority to the NTC for broadcast operations of public communications entities. On the other hand, they cited repeated warnings of the Journal of the American Medical Association since 1975 about the adverse effects of televised violence on child development. These effects include an increase in the level of behavior among children viewers. A report dated May 1999 of the Hany Frank Guggenheim Foundation in the United States reveals that there is irrefutable connection between the amount of violence depicted in the TV programs watched by children and increased aggression among them, they added. Under the bill, the MTRCB and NTC shall jointly prescribe, in consultation with the television broadcasters, cable operators, concerned non-government organizations for children, and interested individuals from the private sector, the rules for rating the level of violence and non-educational sexual themes in television programming. This includes rules for the transmission by television broadcast systems and cables of signals containing specifications for blocking violent and sexually themed non-educational programming. It also assigns the MTRCB and NTC to jointly pass rules and regulations which shall prohibit the broadcast on commercial television and public telecommunications entities of programming that contain violent and obscene scenes for children based on the established ratings code, including the broadcast by cable operators, from the hours of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. - GMANews.TV