WASHINGTON – Advisory committees inside the federal bureaucracy usually inhabit that featureless terrain between obscurity and futility: There's no pay, scant power and little prestige.
But when a group is created by the respected National Academy of Sciences, and when the topic is the politically heated brew of sex, kids and the Internet, traditional rules no longer apply.
With an eye to making a recommendation to Congress next year, the academy's committee on Internet pornography and inappropriate material met on Wednesday to hear social science experts describe the effects of smut and violence on the youth of America.
It's a sure bet Washington will be paying close attention to the results. Republicans have pledged that the Justice Department will pounce on "obscene" websites should George W. Bush gain the presidency. Bush himself has railed against offensive content online, and he has endorsed library and school filtering.
"One of the reasons we've had very little success (getting sex and violence off TV) is that television controls the message," said Joanne Cantor, a communications professor at the University of Wisconsin.
"The positive thing may be that television is more willing to focus on the horrors of the Internet than the horrors of television," Cantor said.
Cantor, like the other presenters, didn't confine her remarks to porn. Although figuring out how to shield kids from digital prurience is the group's primary task, it's also charged with considering "other inappropriate Internet content."
That's arguably a pretty vague mission, but the committee members were too busy agreeing with the speakers to quibble.
Winnie Wechsler, a former Walt Disney executive and committee member, complained about "the pervasive problem that existed before the Internet and that the Internet has raised to a higher level."
"As people watch more and more of this material, they become less and less bothered by it," said Ed Donnerstein, a communications professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who presented his research. "There then emerge changes in that person's evaluations of real victims of real violence."
"If you're a child, have a computer and know how to type, you can access anything you want on the Internet," Donnerstein said. "The question is, what does this material do? What effects does it have?"
He cited negative effects including "desensitization" to violent sex, sexual arousal from violent behavior, a more accepting attitude toward rape, and aggressive behavior in laboratory experiments.
Jane Brown, a communications professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told the committee that magazines like YM spread the notion that it's bad to be a virgin, while sitcoms such as Murphy Brown misrepresent the single mother lifestyle, and porn allegedly causes men to objectify women.
The idea that violence or sex necessarily causes harmful results, however, is far from settled among social scientists.
Eight eminent sociologists last month wrote an amicus brief in a video game violence lawsuit, American Amusement Machine Association v. Kendrick, currently before a federal appeals court.
The sociologists – who were not represented on Wednesday – argue "that media effects theories are simplistic because they fail to consider either how different individuals respond to identical stimuli, or how different individuals' psychosocial, neurological, and hormonal characteristics interact to produce behavior."
"Art, entertainment, and other aspects of our culture influence different individuals in widely varying ways, depending upon their characters, intelligence and upbringing," their brief says. "For a relatively few predisposed young people, a particular film, TV show, or video game may inspire imitation; but for a far greater number the same work may be relaxing, cathartic or simply entertaining."
That's one reason why free speech advocates are beginning to fret about the possible conclusions the panel may draw. "There is growing concern about where this panel is going," says David Horowitz of the Media Coalition, an umbrella organization representing publishers, librarians and booksellers.
First Amendment advocates have never forgotten the notorious Meese Commission, created by President Reagan in 1985 to investigate the allegedly harmful effects of pornography.
Reagan likened the effort to closing hazardous waste sites, and said at the time "it was about time we did the same with the worst sources of pornography."
A history of the commission says that 160 of 208 commission witnesses were antiporn. Porn actress Linda Lovelace of Deep Throat fame showed up to make the dubious claim that she was "a victim of pornography," and some commissioners quizzed witnesses about their vibrator collections.
Wednesday's meeting of the National Academy of Sciences panel was designed to explore "non-technical" strategies for protecting children from offensive material – such options include providing guidelines for parents and educating kids about sexuality. Technical options the panel will weigh include filtering software, the creation of a new top-level domain, rating systems, and regulations or new laws directed at sexually explicit sites online.
The committee's stated goal is to "provide a foundation for a more coherent and objective local and national debate on the subject of Internet pornography" while avoiding "specific" recommendations directed at new laws or regulations.
This week's meeting is the third. The group will next meet in March in the San Francisco area to discuss technical options, and finally in June 2001 in Chicago.
