Book banning has been a familiar part of the educational landscape in the twentieth century, and even such literary masterpieces as Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice have not escaped the censor’s wrath for their allegedly racist views. Since the beginning of the century, public schools have felt increase pressures within their communities to maintain a cautious vigil over the materials used in teaching children. For

Children today are just a push button away from the influence of media and the effects that may be forced upon them. The number of innocent years of childhood is decreasing as they are bombarded with adult media content. Although this is a result of an advancing technical world, efforts are increasingly being put in place to allow children time to be children and to learn through their own imagination. Those who are writers, more or produce television programming, produce movies, music artists, and recording companies will make these efforts successful and the need for censorship will be lessened. However, nothing will take the place of parental guidance.

Changes in society resulted in more realistic literature being published and former literature patterns, designed to be uplifting and to free the imagination of the child, were changing with the times. Young readers, whose lifestyles differed from those of their parents, had different interests (Day 363). Authors began writing books about new lifestyles that interested youth. Personal and social problems often became the theme of the new books.

In light of this electronic influence on the socialization process, producers and programmers should as least pause to consider the nature and extent of their moral responsibility to develop positive role models for children and adolescents (Kieran 51). They must be sensitive to the moral needs of the young viewers who might be less innocent that their predecessors but are nevertheless still vulnerable and impressionable. This obligation is particularly important in an era of declining parental supervision and influence. Of course, this responsibility does not absolve adults of their parental mandate to guide children’s viewing habits. Nevertheless, many parents are imperfect guardians; either because they are not present to witness their children’s program selections or have not learned how to “just say no.” Under such distressing circumstances, the pressure inevitably would be on the producers and distributors of television programming to step into the moral vacuum left by this parental abdication (Mann 23).

There was a time when childhood consisted of a parade of fictional heroes, youthful icons whose virtuous qualities and message were unambiguous. Such heroes were influential in reinforcing positive values and helping build self-esteem. The comic books that children read and TV shows that were derived from those comics, such as The Adventures of Spiderman, reflected that belief in heroes. However, the social upheaval and counterculture movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s severely undermined our faith in heroes (Kane 58). Programs reflected this new sad reality as a new generation of action-packed adventure shows either from primetime dramas to daytime cartoons, in which the “good guys” were virtually indistinguishable from the “bad guys”. In recent programs one is to wonder who the heroes are in such shows as The Sopranos, Sex in the City, and Queer as Folk. These shows display topics of living on the edge, mixing murder with pleasure, strong sexual contact wit

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