Code of Practices for Television Broadcasters

Seal of Good Practice

Seal of Good Practice as it appeared in 1958

The Code of Practices for Television Broadcasters, also known as the Television Code, was a set of ethical standards adopted by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) for television. The code was established on December 6, 1951. Compliance with the code was indicated by the "Seal of Good Practice", displayed during closing credits on most United States television programs, and on some US TV station sign-on and sign-offs from 1952 through the early 1980s.

The code prohibited the use of profanity, the negative portrayal of family life, irreverence for God and religion, illicit sex, drunkenness and addiction, presentation of cruelty, detailed techniques of crime, the use of horror for its own sake, and the negative portrayal of law enforcement officials, among others. The code regulated how performers should dress and move to be within the "bounds of decency". Further, news reporting was to be "factual, fair and without bias" and commentary and analysis should be "clearly defined as such". Broadcasters were to make time available for religious broadcasting and were discouraged from charging religious bodies for access. Most importantly, it limited the commercial minutes per hour.^[1]

In the wake of a settlement with the Justice Department, the code was suspended in 1983.^[2][3][4]

A scholarly discussion titled "Self-Regulation and the Media" by Angela J. Campbell, (1999) examines media self-regulation and concludes that "Applying these five factors to digital television public interest responsibilities and privacy on the Internet, it concludes that self-regulation is not likely to be successful in these contexts." This is a well-documented report.^[5]

See also

• National Association of Broadcasters
• Hays Code

References

External links

• Text of the Code of Practices for Television Broadcasters
• The Television Code - Fifth Edition, March 1959 Complete with Interpretations and Amendments. Courtesy of J. Alan Wall's TV-signoffs.com
• 1970s Television Code PSA - video available for download at the Internet Archive

Censorship
Media regulation	Books (books banned) Films (banned films) Internet circumvention Music Post Press Radio Speech and expression Thought Video games
Methods	Bleeping Book burning Broadcast delay Burying of scholars Censor bars Chilling effect Concision Conspiracy of silence Content-control software Euphemism Minced oath Expurgation Fogging Gag order Heckling Heckler's veto Internet police Memory hole National intranet Newspaper theft Pixelization Prior restraint Propaganda Purge Revisionism Sanitization Self-censorship Speech code Strategic lawsuit Surveillance computer & network mass Whitewashing Word filtering Damnatio memoriae
Contexts	Criminal Corporate Hate speech Ideological Media bias Moralistic fallacy Naturalistic fallacy Politics Propaganda model Religious (Islamic) Suppression of dissent Systemic bias
By country	Censorship Freedom of speech Internet censorship