Found another information on disapproving/approving the programs for closed-captioning fundings. It is now in two different newspapers - one from Palm Beach (posted here on 12-February) and another one from Chicago. I am on vacation....and checked the email this morning. I decided that I must make time to publish this...but didn't have time to research further to learn more...It may be true that the Bush administration is moving forward on taking action to make it REALITY....More details as time permits (probably when I am done with vacation).
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-deaf20.html
February 20, 2004
BY ZAY N. SMITH
Chicago Sun-Times
The Bush administration has cut off its closed captioning for nearly 200 TV shows, prompting charges of secret censorship to promote an ideological agenda.
"Bewitched" and "Scooby-Doo" are out. So are "The Simpsons," "Law and Order," some American Movie Channel documentaries, "A&E Investigative Reports" and "X-Men Evolution."
"What they are doing is telling the nation's deaf what they can and can't watch," said Jeff Rosen, general counsel for the National Council on Disabilities, an independent federal agency.
"They put a fast one over on all of us because they didn't go to public notice and comment. They just secretly did it."
Kelby Brick, associate executive director of the National Association for the Deaf, agreed: "The department is now applying puritanical values to its funding."
The association says more than 28 million deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans depend on captions -- a major portion of them from the Department of Education.
The new ruling comes six years after the department rejected attempts to block the captioning of the "Jerry Springer Show," saying its judgment "should not supersede the individual judgment of millions of deaf Americans."
Officials at the department now say, however, that they are acting on the "intent of Congress" to limit captioning to "educational and informational" programming.
"We in the Department of Education had external experts come in and help us determine the parameters for what would be appropriate," said Troy Justesen, deputy secretary for special education and rehabilitative services.
Justesen declined to name the five experts who volunteered their time for "protective reasons" and "reasons of professional courtesy," or to offer the parameters indicating that "Andy Hardy" and "Inside Edition" are educational and informational but "Discovery Jones" and Lifetime's "Biographies of Women" are not.
He also denied that there was any ideological agenda. Some critics have wondered if religious fundamentalists may have disapproved of "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie" because of their sorcery and witchcraft.
The blocking of the 200 programs was not a cost-cutting measure, Justesen added.
"We haven't changed the amount of money on closed captioning and have no plans to make a change," he said.
But the critics remain unimpressed.
"I feel a little like we're revisiting Salem -- that they're putting deaf people at the stake for the purposes of their philosophical agenda," Rosen said.
He said the new ruling also discriminates against people who use captioning to learn English as a second language and hearing parents with deaf children who might want to choose what they watch on TV together. "Talk about family values."
This is not the first time the Bush administration has been accused of furthering agendas through censorship.
An internal memo in 2002 instructed federal government Web sites to eliminate content that "does not reflect the priorities, philosophies or goals of the present administration."
This included the disappearance from the Centers for Disease Control Web site of instructions on how to properly use a condom to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.
WHAT'S IN, WHAT'S OUT
National Association of the Deaf offers a list of the disapproved television programming. View the list online:
www.nad.org/openhouse/action/alerts/captioningcensorship/list.html
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