Industry self-regulation fails because profits trump standards and overseers lack authority

Evidence

However well intentioned many practitioners might be, when they are left to internal regulation, profits will dictate content. In the face of strong financial pressures and weak public sanctions, the operating guidelines are quite pliable. As previously documented, given the industry’s rejection of adverse media effects and the subordinate status of script overseers, the implementers of broadcast standards are more concerned with protecting the industry from public criticisms than in rooting out gratuitous violence. The level of brutality that is permitted testifies to a rather low standard. The fact that producers can get the upper echelons to overrule the judgments of their subordinate overseers indicates that the standards are easily circumvented. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 986

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general theory that self-regulatory regimes fail when the regulated party profits from noncompliance and sanctions are weak — parallels finance industry self-regulation literature. — connects to: Regulatory-system innovation is needed to sustain capitalism’s profit logic — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1139; Excess fraud and profit made the patent medicine industry collapse under its own weight — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 118