Time Warner’s Chief Blames Guns, Not Media

Reacting to the high school slaughter in Littleton, Colo., Time Warner Chairman Gerald Levin on Tuesday called for an end to the “proliferation of guns” and condemned the politicians he says have used the tragedy to grandstand about the corrosive effects of the media on American values.

“This is the season of political opportunism,” Levin said in a speech to the Hollywood Radio and Television Society at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel. “I can’t help but think that television is an easy scapegoat. Where is the cry to stop the proliferation of guns?”

The audience, which included hundreds of entertainment industry executives, interrupted Levin’s address with applause.

Levin said rather than crusade about the evils of television or the Internet, the nation should do more to support teachers, drawing reference to the one who was shot, along with 12 students, by two classmates in Colorado.

Levin’s son, Jonathan Levin, a popular public school teacher in New York, was tortured and shot to death in his Manhattan apartment two years ago.

Levin’s criticism of Washington did not end with his Littleton remarks.

The chief executive of the world’s largest entertainment company said it was time to “get rid of the entire antiquated regulatory system.”

Although Levin did not elaborate in his speech on what particular regulations or bodies of government he would like to eliminate, when questioned after the address he said “the FCC, Congress, everything.”

In the speech he also found fault with the contention in 1961 by Newton Minow, who was then the new head of the Federal Communications Commission, that television is a “vast wasteland.”

Minow threatened to impose regulations if television quality didn’t improve, but Levin said Americans have an abundance of riches on television because of the advent of cable and new digital technologies that are bringing more choices to households through TV and the Internet.

“The reason for this explosion of choices has little to do with federal intervention or regulation and everything to do with human creativity and innovation,” said Levin.