SpeakSpeak News

PTC spokesperson Melissa Caldwell chatted with Fox News Channel’s Brian Wilson this weekend. After lamenting the quality of the broadcast media and implying that the current generation of video game players are future Jack the Rippers (or Jacks the Ripper, depending on your style guide), Caldwell went on to offer an actually tenable solution: Remove the TVs from your kids’ bedrooms.

Who’da thunk it?

Watch the video at the PTC’s site, or read the [painstakingly transcribed] transcript inside.

The FCC has been awarded a Muzzle Award by the Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. The commission won the honor by “substantially escalating sanctions for broadcasting ‘indecent’ material over radio and television airwaves but doing little to define such material.”

The FCC has not yet issued its thanks for the little people who made it possible.

Read up on this year’s winners at the Thomas Jefferson Center for Protection of Free Expression.

Florida’s News-Press has published a dough-faced, mealy-mouthed, blarnified testimonial to the Parents Television Council’s efforts to censor TV.

With fawning words that could have come straight from a PTC press release, writer Chris Wadsworth hails PTC activists as TV’s white knights. In fact, Wadsworth seems to believe – as does Brent Bozell – that the PTC speaks for all of us, with a unified voice.

“I don’t think it’s right that you can turn on the TV and find almost anything,” said Kathy Graff, a Cape Coral mother of four who bemoans the loss of the old-fashioned “family hour.”

But the Parents Television Council says it’s not promoting censorship or pushing its values on others.

“I don’t really see it that way. I see it more as Hollywood having come in and imposed their values on me and my family … to the point that they’re putting things on the air that meet their profit objectives,” said Florida chapter director Matt Butler said.

Parents such as Michelle Tello back Butler’s view.

“I love the fact that someone is trying to fight for my kids besides me,” said Tello, a Cape Coral stay-at-home mom of five.

Mitzi Ibarra of south Fort Myers agrees. “I know the whole free speech thing, but we’re getting off track with what we’re letting into our homes,” said Ibarra. “I can’t say there is anything wrong with a little bit of censorship or at least having a time during the day when we know there’s nothing trashy on TV.”

“The whole free speech thing"???

Does the PTC speak for you? Speak up now!

Talk back to reporter Chris Wadsworth and the News-Press editors. Remind them that we’re out here.

The Rev. Al Sharpton held a public meeting in NYC to give concerned citizens a chance to discuss the intersect between rap music and real-life violence. (Sharpton entered the fray after a recent shoot-up between rival rappers outside a New York radio station.)

The meeting, however, devolved into a war of words between competing stations, with two DJs ganging up on a third no-show DJ. “Some people talk a lot, jump on the soap box, then don’t show up,” said morning host Miss Jones of Hot 97. “Scared.”

Miss Jones also took aim at the right reverend: “We’ve supported every cockamamie scheme of his over the years. Now he’s putting all this on Hot-97. It’s not one station’s fault for everything. We don’t tell artists if they’re going to [shoot someone], do it in front of Hot-97.”