By Todd Putnam, Reprinted from The Boycott Quarterly
April 1994 – The American Family Association (AFA) has been widely characterized in the media as a censorship organization, and its director, the Reverend Don Wildmon, has been extensively vilified as the leading censor in the United States. It is fine to disagree with someone’s views, but to brand a person a censor because of boycott activity is serious business.
The repeated charge is that Wildmon and the AFA seek to have television programming with which they disagree removed from the airwaves.
If peace activists had called for boycotts of sponsors of the ‘ball park,’ ‘play by-play’ coverage of the Gulf War, would that have been censorship, too? Or is a double-standard at work here? Where are the articles attacking Media Watch for boycotting advertisers in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition? As with Wildmon, Media Watch monitors the media for images it feels may harm society. It, too, is concerned about sex and violence in programming. But as a feminist organization targeting sexist images, it somehow avoids the label of censor.
Wildmon and his group are not asking that people’s first amendment rights be violated. They are not calling for legislation. They are simply saying that if they don’t believe in the views expressed on a particular network program, they have a right to withhold their economic support from that program. Just as anti-racists would not want to support the sponsors of shows that promote racism.
There is a difference between allowing people to have their say and actively supporting their views. Most people are not going to send the KKK a contribution just because they believe the Klan has a right to express its views. Backing free speech doesn’t mean a person should have to support – financially or otherwise – any viewpoint that happens to exist. These view points should be allowed to prosper or wither on their own merits.
Yes, we should see that minority viewpoints receive access to the public. But that is not to say that these views should come to dominate our airwaves simply because we recognize their right to exist. This is the gist of Wildmon’s argument.
Wildmon is no stranger to the view that, “If you don’t like what you see on TV, change the channel or turn it off.” That might be called “voting with the TV dial.” But the point is not Wildmon’s own dislike for the programming he targets. The point is that he does not want other people to view programs containing influences Wildmon feels may be harmful to society.
Certainly if prime-time was rife with shows advocating racism, anti-racists would not be expected to merely “change the channel.” In fact, this voting with the dial utilizes the exact same principle as Wildmon’s much-maligned advertiser boycotts. Theoretically, if enough people voted with their dials, this would affect programming. The same is true with the boycott. If enough people vote with their dollars, programming will change. In either case, viewers affect television content. But, plainly, the vote at the checkout counter seems more tangible and effective.
Voting with the dial is not widely perceived as an effective tactic. Furthermore, just because somebody watches a show with sex and violence doesn’t necessarily mean that the person believes sex and violence on TV is not a problem. Just as a majority of the American public believes the U.S. political system is corrupt and that the country is moving in the wrong direction, this does not directly translate into voters throwing out their own incumbent politicians. Often, it is easier for a person to see the faults of the larger society than to see one’s own shortcomings – or the shortcomings of one’s incumbent legislator. Like the drunk driver who “knows” he can handle driving his car home, he may yet be concerned about the high number of alcohol-related accidents. And while most people will say they are not negatively affected by sex and violence on television, a majority have said they think there is too much sex and violence on TV.
Wildmon’s boycott supporters have been called “a small group of extremists” out of touch with main stream views. If that is the case, Wildmon’s critics have no cause for worry. Boycotts do not succeed without broad support. TV sponsors would not give in to Wildmon unless they felt his demands would garner broad support and damage the company image in the eyes of a substantial number of consumers.
While Wildmon is accused of not tolerating other viewpoints, in reality he is being attacked not for his tactics but for his views and the success of his campaigns. The AFA’s boycotts simply carry the “dial-voting” principle to the logical next step. If you don’t like something, don’t support it. As long as we continue to buy products from the sponsor of an objectionable program, we reinforce its advertising sponsorship decisions.
If there is disagreement over the premises for these boycotts, then that is where the debate properly belongs. But too often the debate focuses on the appropriateness of using boycotts to resolve free speech issues. These narrow discussions seem to invariably taste of sour grapes and tend to trample over the rights of individuals to mount boycotts.
Perhaps it is that Wildmon’s critics realize that the TV sponsorship debate could eventually grow to encompass larger public issues such as public financing for works considered controversial. Does a member of the public have a right to oppose the government’s use of her money to fund some project with which she disagrees? The issue is huge. The National Endowment for the Arts, bombs, foreign “aid,” publicly-funded abortions, the CIA’s “blackbudget,” corporate subsidies, and Congressional pay raises are just several uses of public funds that have recently come under fire. But this is not an issue from which the “liberal” critics should run for fear of public opinion. It is precisely this fear of addressing controversial issues that has led to three consecutive “conservative” administrations.
In fact, the issue of advertiser boycotts is strikingly similar to issues such as tax resistance in which “tax boycotters” are accused of threatening other Americans’ right to a strong military defense. Of course, tax resisters respond that what they really threaten is the bloated “war establishment” kept in place by the weapons contractors that want to stay in business. Likewise, boycotters of TV sponsors say they do not threaten minority free speech in this country, but instead are attacking the sex and violence doctrine of a bloated and greedy media establishment.
Ultimately, it is not Wildmon’s success at affecting the media that is causing his critics so much consternation. It is the inaction within their own ranks which has led to the consequences that they so detest. But instead of launching their own democratic campaigns to oppose a sponsor’s capitulation to Wildmon’s group, the critics refuse to accept any responsibility and continue to point the finger of blame at Wildmon.
In elections, people are usually expected to go out and vote. And while Wildmon’s backers are lining up at the polls to decide the direction of American television, we too often find his critics sitting at home complaining about the election returns. 
