Bipartisan lawmakers want to ban TikTok. That’s not likely to happen any time soon.
Just consider what unfolded on the Senate floor the other day when Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., asked the Senate to agree – by unanimous consent – to prohibit TikTok. Sen Rand Paul, R-Ky., objected.
That was the end of one major attempt to ban the app, but what’s past is prologue.
It may be instructive to dive deeply into how Congress faced pressure to ban or severely limit another controversial product decades ago: cigarettes.
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Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., grills Colleen Shogan, nominee to be Archivist of the United States, about her Twitter feed during her confirmation hearing in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in Washington on Tuesday, February 28, 2023. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images). (Bill Clark)
You couldn’t have watched the news on TV in the late 1940s and 1950s without first hearing about cigarettes.
Cigarette advertisements haven’t aired on TV in decades, but NBC’s first TV news program was called “The Camel News Caravan,” hosted by John Cameron Swayze. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco sponsored the program — in color. Swayze was often seen at the anchor desk, taking a few drags in between stories about President Eisenhower and the Korean War. In the late 1950s, R.J Reynolds reduced its sponsorship, and Plymouth automobiles took over as the advertiser. It wasn’t long until TV legend David Brinkley succeeded Swayze.
That was the advent of television news.
In 1964, Surgeon General Luther Terry released a report about cancer and bronchial dangers caused by smoking. That prompted Congress to require warnings about the dangers of cigarettes. By 1969, Congress approved The Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, which led to the iconic, rectangular block on all cigarette ads in magazines or on packaging: “Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined that Cigarette Smoking is Dangerous to Your Health.” That also led to the eventual ban on cigarette ads on TV and radio.
More on that in a moment.
The TikTok Inc. building is seen in Culver City, Calif., on March 17, 2023. TikTok on Tuesday, March 21, 2023, rolled out updated rules and standards for content and users as it faces increasing pressure from Western authorities over concerns that material on the…
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