Self-regulation fails because profits and public-relations defense override content standards

Evidence

A second approach to promoting social responsibility in television programming relies on the industry’s system of self-regulation. 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: Mirrors the structural rationalization pattern in the Frankfurt readings on how profit logic corrupts putatively principled institutions.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 986