So why am I, the Reveille’s cartoonist, writing a column today?
Well, there’s something interesting about me that you might not know. I’m deaf. Or rather, I’ve got sensorineural bilateral severe-to-profound hearing loss in both ears. Sounds terrifying, doesn’t it? It’s really not that bad.
Being deaf affects me on a day-to-day basis. Not a day goes by without my having to ask people to repeat themselves. All too often, I find myself hopelessly lost in midst of a conversation going back and forth between several people.
I require captioning or interpreting services for the classes I take here at LSU, due to the fact that it is nearly impossible for me to understand my professors, much less listen and take notes at the same time.
In the social scene, doing things like going to the movies and watching television also present difficulties. Have you ever tried lip reading people on TV or at the movies? It’s tough. Tried it with the sound off? Darned near impossible. I must have captioning on any program that I watch on TV.
The FCC describes closed captioning as “assistive technology in which the audio portion of programming is displayed as text superimposed over the video.” It’s pretty neat stuff, and brings me to what this column is about.
On Oct. 1, 2003, the Department of Education deemed nearly 200 television programs inappropriate for closed captioning and is denying federal grants to make them available for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals.
Kelby Brick, the director of National Association of the Deaf’s Law and Advocacy Center, said the government used to caption these shows, but has abruptly changed their course, saying that the aforementioned shows do not fit into “educational, news or informational programming.”
This issue is actually a rehashing of similar attempts to censor captioning.
In 1998, Sen. Joe Lieberman wrote the then Dept, of Education Secretary Richard W. Riley and requested that captioning be yanked from the ‘offensive’ “Jerry Springer Show.”
Riley replied the government should not “supersede the individual judgment of millions of deaf Americans, nor should the Department single out particular TV programs resulting in a denial of access for deaf and hard-of-hearing programs.”
Unfortunately, the Department doesn’t hold that attitude anymore.
After this recent decision by the Department to censor captioning, Brick said “the Department wants to limit captioning to puritan shows, and to ensure deaf and hard of hearing persons are not exposed to any non-puritan programming.”
Never mind that the rest of the country is allowed to be exposed.
The Dept. of Education apparently used a panel of five individuals and made the censorship decisions based on the individuals’ recommendations.
Nancy J. Bloch, the NAD’s executive director, described this as a secretive process [amounting] to censorship.
The NAD has urged President Bush to overturn this decision. Bloch said that the NAD hopes the Department realizes that its actions run counter to the Bush Administration’s positive accomplishments.
Set to take effect in 2006, this move by the Department is one that violates freedom of speech.
There are about 28 million deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals in the United States, and by censoring captioning on mainstream shows unfairly excludes them from accessing programming that is available to the general public.
Not only will the censorship affect these individuals, it will also impact millions of other Americans, including the families of those with hearing disabilities; children learning how to speak; people who use captions to learn English; and so on. Discrimination, anyone?
It appears the Dept. of Education only wants deaf people to watch stuff that’s newsworthy, informational or educational. But education doesn’t stop at school.
People, whether they are deaf or not, should have the right to be able to view shows of their choosing, regardless of content. Deaf and hard-of-hearing parents need to be able to decide which shows are appropriate for their children. Hearing impaired children should be able to view shows like Powerpuff Girls and PokÈmon, (which are included in the list of censored shows) because such shows are staples of today’s youth, and help those children absorb the trends, culture and other aspects of the society which surrounds them.
Even college-aged kids shouldn’t be denied the right to view shows like “I Dream of Jeannie,” “MTV-Cribs,” sports programming and various other shows which have also made their way onto the censored list.
I never thought I would see the day when the government thinks the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have ill-desired effects on the hearing-impaired youth of America.
In a few years, I’ll probably need to start buying the Simpsons’ DVDs to watch them with subtitles, unless the government decides I shouldn’t do that either.