It has been several years since the terrible shootings at Columbine High School. Obligation has never mentioned the fact that Columbine students were under contract to Channel One and had to watch their TV show virtually every day of school.
We had hoped that Columbine would clean up their school and remove the Channel One TV sets that routinely promote violent entertainment to the captive audience of children. Unfortunately, Channel One remains at Columbine.
Shortly after the shootings, Channel One executives made the decision to run commercials for the violent movie, The Mummy. It was a bold move for Channel One. The nation was still reeling from the horrific shootings. Teachers, administrators and, of course, students, were on edge about potential copycat shooters.
According to ScreenIt.com (one of the most credible movie review sources on the Net), The Mummy was a rough movie for kids. ScreenIt gives each movie a rating for various types of content. They then give a complete description of scenes that helped earn the ratings.
In the “Blood/Gore” category, The Mummy earned an “Extreme” rating, which is ScreenIt’s maximum rating. “Fightening/Tense Scenes” was “Extreme.” “Violence” was “Extreme” and “Guns/Weapons” content was rated “Extreme.”
Jim Metrock said, “A school that has been so terribly touched by violence ought to remove anything like Channel One from its classrooms. Some of the most vile aspects of our popular culture come through that Channel One TV set. The January after the shootings at Columbine, those students had to watch the Supernova commercial that actually had images of people being killed on the classroom TV. All done for one purpose. To get students to go see that ultra-violent movie. All done so Channel One could make some big money from Universal Studios. It is regrettable that the school administrators at Columbine apparently still don’t pay attention to what’s going on in their classrooms.”
Metrock said, “The fact that the Columbine adminstrators still don’t think their own students are worth buying their own TV sets is disturbing. They continue to rent their TV equipment from Channel One. That means Channel One determines what these students see for one hour a week instead of the community. Columbine should have thrown the Channel One TV sets out into the street before the students came back after the tragedy. If any community needs to kick Hollywood and their partner Channel One out of their classrooms, it should be Columbine.”
