Here’s a story, brought to my attention by Carpetbagger regular Chief Osceola, which has not yet received the national attention it deserves.
If you have a relatively new television, you know that most sets are equipped with the technology to offer viewers closed-captioning — real-time transcripts of programs that allow 28 million hearing-impaired Americans to read on-air dialog. Closed-captioning is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and it’s hardly ever been controversial.
But (and you had to know a “but” was coming) it appears that Bush’s Department of Education has concerns about some programs it deems “inappropriate.” As a result, according to a report in the Palm Beach Post, the federal agency is denying federal grant requests to make about 200 programs accessible to the hearing-impaired.
What, pray tell, does Bush’s Department of Education find troubling? I’ll let the Post’s Dan Moffett explain:
The department made its decisions based on the recommendations of a five-member panel. Who the five members are, only the government seems to know, and it isn’t saying. But the shows they censored suggest a perspective that is Talibanesque.
The government is refusing to caption Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, apparently fearing that the deaf would fall prey to witchcraft if they viewed the classic sitcoms.
Your government also believes that Law & Order is too intense for the hard-of-hearing. So is Power Rangers. You can rest easy knowing that your federal tax dollars aren’t being spent to promote Sanford and Son, Judge Wapner’s Animal Court and The Loretta Young Show within the deaf community. Kids with hearing problems can forget about watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, classic cartoons or Nickelodeon features. Even Roy Rogers and Robin Hood are out.
Sports programming took a heavy hit, too. The government has decided that people with hearing problems don’t need to watch NASCAR, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League or Professional Golf Association tournaments….
How imperiled the nation might be if The Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle reached into the living rooms of the impressionable hard-of-hearing. Or, for that matter, Scooby-Doo.
It’s hard to know for sure what the government’s motivations are. Moffett speculates about why Bewitched got cut off, but it’s certainly possible that the administration just needed to make more money available for tax cuts for millionaires and the hearing-impaired are just another constituency getting screwed by Bush’s “compassionate” conservatism.
Nevertheless, it appears that all of these programs have enjoyed closed-captioning in the past and no one ever raised a fuss. Now, however, Dept. of Ed wants shows to fit a stricter definition of “educational, news or informational” programming to qualify for grants.
And who are the members of the five-person panel deciding which shows get the closed-captioning? Moffett reported that the agency “refuses to reveal the names” and won’t publicly report on the standards for what constitutes a caption-worthy program.
The National Association of the Deaf is most unhappy about this. Who can blame them?
“They’ve suddenly narrowed down the definition of those three kinds of programming without public input,” says Kelby Brick, director of the NAD’s law and advocacy center. “Basically, the department wants to limit captioning to puritan shows. The department wants to ensure that deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals are not exposed to any non-puritan programming. Never mind that the rest of the country is allowed to be exposed.”
[…]
“They apparently used a panel of five individuals and then made the censorship decisions based on the individuals’ recommendations,” Mr. Brick says. “We have found the identity of one of the panelists. This individual tells us that he never knew he was on such a panel and that his views would be used for censorship. No panel was convened. The five panelists were contacted individually and separately.”
[…]
The NAD is lobbying Congress to change the policy. Some networks and sponsors are stepping in and providing captions for some of the “inappropriate” shows. But the government’s dismissive treatment of 28 million Americans defies words.
“We are outraged the department has taken paternalistic steps to exclude deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals,” Mr. Brick says. “Such censorship is offensive and insulting.”