FOX and CBS: Keeping You Uninformed
Posted on | July 16, 2007
The two networks are similarly puritanical about condom ads. Oh, they’ll air ‘em, but only if they emphasize disease prevention rather than contraception, notes Courtney E. Martin:
The first time I met 23-year-old Marvelyn Brown at a Washington, D.C., luncheon celebrating young women’s achievements, she reached for her lemonade and I noticed a tiny red ribbon tattooed on her hand. Marvelyn and I got to talking, and I learned that she had been diagnosed with HIV at the age of 19. She contracted it from unprotected sex with a boy she described as “prince charming” back in her hometown of Nashville, Tenn. Her mother, whose only attempt at sex education was “just don’t get pregnant,” begged Marvelyn to tell everyone she had cancer instead.
I thought of Marvelyn when I heard that Fox and CBS networks recently refused to broadcast condom advertisements. Had they somehow missed the memo that there are 19 million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) each year or that HIV and AIDS are now the leading cause of death among black women between the ages of 25 and 34?
Marvelyn, as scrappy as she is beautiful, eventually made her way to New York City and became a spokesperson for AIDS awareness. She has been on BET, MTV, and even sat on the all holy couch of Oprah. She told me, “The weird thing is that if I hadn’t gotten HIV, I think I would have ended up like so many of the girls in my hometown — pining for a man and raising babies on welfare.”
In fact, the networks are OK with playing a role in preventing fates like Marvelyn’s, but not those of thousands of teen girls pregnant with babies instead of their own potential. According to The New York Times, FOX’s decision was based on their policy that condom ads “must stress health-related issues rather than the prevention of pregnancy.” In other words, TV execs feel entitled to glorify sex, but not educate viewers about the realities of it…
It is inexcusable that television networks, one of the best public sites for widespread education about safer sex, is acting coy at the cost of these young women’s fullest lives. Until all women understand their reproductive choices, none of us can be sure that we are benefiting from the full range of gifts — intellectual, spiritual, and otherwise — that one half of the population has to offer.
Something there is in the right-wing mindset that hates sex, especially when it’s not aimed at making babies.
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