Elder M. Russell Ballard
Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
Let us speak out and encourage a more uplifting, inspiring, and acceptable media.
The fall of the year is when television airs its season
premieres and introduces its new shows. A friend told me that there are 37
new TV series being inaugurated this fall. As he has read the reviews, he
has found few if any of them that he would want his children to watch. Most
of the sitcoms, dramas, and reality shows contain immorality, violence, and
subtle ridicule of traditional values and traditional families. Each year
the new shows seem to get worse, pushing the envelope of what the public
will accept. What comes out of Hollywood, off the Internet, and in much of
today's music creates a web of decadence that can trap our children and endanger
all of us.
Church leaders have the responsibility to speak out on moral issues and
to counsel individuals and families. The family is the basic unit of society;
it is the basic unit of eternity. Thus, when forces threaten the family,
Church leaders must respond.
The family is at the heart of Heavenly Father's plan because we are all
part of His family and because mortality is our opportunity to form our own
families and to assume the role of parents. It is within our families that
we learn unconditional love, which can come to us and draw us very close
to God's love. It is within families that values are taught and character
is built. Father and mother are callings from which we will never be released,
and there is no more important stewardship than the responsibility we have
for God's spirit children who come into our families.
Within this context of the preeminent importance
of families and the threats families face today, it is not surprising that
the First Presidency and the
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles used strong words in the proclamation to the
world on families: "We warn that individuals . . . who fail to fulfill
family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further,
we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals,
communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets."1
One such prophet was Malachi, who admonished parents to turn their hearts
to their children and children to their parents, lest the whole earth be
cursed (see Malachi 4:6).
To these warnings, ancient as the Old Testament and current as the proclamation
on the family, I add my own voice of warning, specifically concerning today's
media and the powerful negative effect it can have on families and on family
life.
Because of its sheer size, media today presents vast and sharply contrasting
options. Opposite from its harmful and permissive side, media offers much
that is positive and productive. Television offers history channels, discovery
channels, education channels. One can still find movies and TV comedies and dramas that entertain and
uplift and accurately depict the consequences of right and wrong. The
Internet can
be a fabulous tool of information and communication, and there is an unlimited
supply of good music in the world. Thus our biggest challenge is to choose
wisely what we listen to and what we watch.
As the prophet Lehi said, because of Christ and
His Atonement, we are "free
forever, knowing good from evil," able to act for ourselves rather than
be acted upon, "free to choose liberty and eternal life . . . or to
choose captivity and death" (2
Nephi 2:26–27).
The choices we make in media can be symbolic of the choices we make in life.
Choosing the trendy, the titillating, the tawdry in the TV programs or movies
we watch can cause us to end up, if we're not careful, choosing the same
things in the lives we live.
If we do not make good choices, the media can devastate our families and
pull our children away from the narrow gospel path. In the virtual reality
and the perceived reality of large and small screens, family-destructive
viewpoints and behavior are regularly portrayed as pleasurable, as stylish,
as exciting, and as normal. Often media's most devastating attacks on family
are not direct or frontal or openly immoral. Intelligent evil is too cunning
for that, knowing that most people still profess belief in family and in
traditional values. Rather the attacks are subtle and amoral—issues of
right and wrong don't even come up. Immorality and sexual innuendo are everywhere,
causing some to believe that because everyone is doing it, it must be all
right. This pernicious evil is not out in the street somewhere; it is coming
right into our homes, right into the heart of our families.
To be strong and happy, families need to be nourished
by the truths depicted in the thirteenth article of faith—by a belief "in being honest, true,
chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men." Gratefully,
there are many like-minded men and women of all cultures and faiths who also
seek that which is "virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy."
But we live in the "perilous times" to which the Apostle Paul
referred when he warned about our day as one when "men shall be lovers
of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient
to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, . . . false accusers, . . . despisers of those that are good, . . . heady, highminded, lovers of
pleasures more than lovers of God" (2
Timothy 3:1–4).
Conspiring men and women, intent on gain rather
than goodness, "stir
up the people" to "all manner of . . . wickedness" (see Alma
11:20), preventing the noble uses to which the media could be employed.
The new morality preached from the media's pulpit is nothing more than the
old immorality. It attacks religion. It undermines the family. It turns virtue
into vice and vice into virtue. It assaults the senses and batters the soul
with messages and images that are neither virtuous, nor lovely, nor of good
report, nor praiseworthy.
The time has come when members of the Church need to speak out and join
with the many other concerned people in opposition to the offensive,
destructive,
and mean-spirited media influence that is sweeping over the earth.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the percentage of television
prime-time shows with sexual content jumped from 67 percent in 1998 to 75
percent in the year 2000.2 Media with this kind of content has numerous negative
effects. It fosters a callous attitude toward women, who are often portrayed
as objects of abuse and not as precious daughters of God who are essential
to His eternal plan. The long-cherished values of abstinence from intimate
relationships before marriage and complete fidelity between husband and wife
after marriage are denigrated and derided. Children and youth are confused
and misled by the deviant behavior they see demonstrated by so-called stars
they admire and want to emulate. In the moral confusion created by the media,
enduring values are being abandoned.
We see a rapid increase in cyberporn, involving sexual addiction over the
Internet. Some become so addicted to viewing Internet pornography and participating
in dangerous online chat rooms that they ignore their marriage covenants
and family obligations and often put their employment at risk. Many run afoul
of the law. Others develop a tolerance to their perverted behavior, taking ever more
risks to feed their immoral addiction. Marriages crumble and relationships
fail,
as addicts often lose everything of real, eternal value.
According to one social observer: "Television . . . has replaced the
family, the school, and the church—in that order—as the principal [instrument]
for socialization and transmission of values. . . . Greed, debauchery, violence,
unlimited self-gratification, absence of moral restraint . . . are the daily
fare glamorously dished up to our children."3
We must be concerned with the violent and sexually
charged lyrics of much of today's popular music and the relatively new "art form" of the
music video. According to industry observers, 40 percent of the music video
audience is under the age of 18.4 One study reports that approximately three-fourths
of all the music videos that tell a story utilize sexual imagery, and nearly
half involve violence.5 And the fashion trends spawned in their images are
about as far away from being "virtuous, lovely, or of good report or
praiseworthy" as you can get. Ours surely is a time when men "call
evil good, and good evil" (Isaiah
5:20).
Let me say again that the family is the main target of evil's attack and
must therefore be the main point of our protection and defense. As I said
once before, when you stop and think about it from a diabolically tactical
point of view, fighting the family makes sense to Satan. When he wants to
disrupt the work of the Lord, he doesn't poison the world's peanut butter
supply, thus bringing the Church's missionary system to its collective knees.
He doesn't send a plague of laryngitis to afflict the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
He doesn't legislate against green Jell-O and casseroles. When evil wants
to strike out and disrupt the essence of God's work, it attacks the family.
It does so by attempting to disregard the law of chastity, to confuse gender,
to desensitize violence, to make crude and blasphemous language the norm,
and to make immoral and deviant behavior seem like the rule rather than the
exception.
We need to remember Edmund Burke's statement: "The only thing necessary
for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."6 We need to
raise our voices with other concerned citizens throughout the world in opposition
to current trends. We need to tell the sponsors of offensive media that we
have had enough. We need to support programs and products that are positive
and uplifting. Joining together with neighbors and friends who share our
concerns, we can send a clear message to those responsible. The Internet
Web sites and their local affiliates will have their addresses. Letters and
e-mails have more effect than most people realize, especially those like
one sent by a Relief Society sister that stated, "I represent a group
of over a hundred women that meets every week and often talks about the harm
your program is doing to our children."
Of course the most basic way to protest negative-impact media is simply
not to watch it, see it, read it, or play it. We should teach our family
members to follow the First Presidency's counsel to young people. From the
For the Strength of Youth pamphlet, their instruction regarding entertainment
and the media is very clear:
"Do not attend, view, or participate in entertainment
that is vulgar, immoral, violent, or pornographic in any way. Do not participate
in entertainment
that in any way presents immorality or violent behavior as acceptable. . . .
"Have the courage to walk out of a movie or video party, turn off a
computer or television, change a radio station, or put down a magazine if
what is being presented does not meet Heavenly Father's standards. Do these
things even if others do not."7
Brothers and sisters, refuse to be used. Refuse to be manipulated. Refuse
to support those programs that violate traditional family values. We may
be a small voice to begin with; nevertheless, let us speak out and encourage
a more uplifting, inspiring, and acceptable media.
Besides making our voices heard, let me conclude with seven things that
every parent can do to minimize the negative effect media can have on our
families:
1. We need to hold family councils and decide what our media standards are
going to be.
2. We need to spend enough quality time with our children that we are consistently
the main influence in their lives, not the media or any peer group.
3. We need to make good media choices ourselves and set good examples for
our children.
4. We need to limit the amount of time our children watch TV or play video
games or use the Internet each day. Virtual reality must not become their
reality.
5. We need to use Internet filters and TV programming
locks to prevent our children from "chancing upon" things they
should not see.
6. We need to have TVs and computers in a much-used common room in the home,
not in a bedroom or a private place.
7. We need to take time to watch appropriate media with our children and
discuss with them how to make choices that will uplift and build rather than
degrade and destroy.
May God bless us with courage and wisdom in doing what each one of us can
to help turn the tide in the media away from darkness toward truth and light.
And may God bless our families to be strong and true to the principles of
the gospel is my humble prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
NOTES
1. "The
Family: A Proclamation to the World," Liahona, Oct. 1998,
24; Ensign, Nov. 1995, 102.
2. See Dale Kunkel and others, Sex on TV 2003: A Biennial
Report to the Kaiser Family Foundation (2003), 40.
3. Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Weak Ramparts of the Permissive West," in
Nathan P. Gardels, ed., At Century's End: Great Minds Reflect on Our Times (1995), 53.
4. See National Institute on Media and the Family, "Fact Sheet," Internet,
http://www.mediafamily.org/facts/facts_mtv.shtml.
5. See Barry L. Sherman and Joseph R. Dominick, "Violence and Sex in Music
and Videos: TV and Rock 'n' Roll," Journal of Communication, Winter 1986,
79–93.
6. Attributed in John Bartlett, comp., Familiar Quotations, 15th ed. (1980),
ix.
7. For the Strength of Youth (2001), 17, 19.
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