The Public Interest

Censorship for the Common Good

William J. Bennett

Summer 1978

IN 1975, the average American household watched six hours and 49 minutes of television each day. Almost as much time is spent by critics who flog television programming and document its deleterious effects on the next generation of Americans. Television may be “junk food for the mind,” as Steve Allen recently put it in U.S. News and World Report, but there is no shortage of recipes for its improvement. At present, there are many proposals for upgrading the general quality of television consistent with its principal purpose: entertainment. Some of these proposals are intelligent. Window Dressing on the Set: Women and Minorities in Television, A Report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, however, is not.

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