Amnesty International Toes the Wrong Line

In a recent report entitled "It's in our Hands: Stop Violence Against Women", Amnesty International has come out in favour of voluntary censorship. As an article from the Globe and Mail online says:

Amnesty says it is not officially condemning Kill Bill, a film about an ex-assassin betrayed by her boss who swears revenge on her former master, or calling for censorship of Hollywood films.

Instead, the human-rights group, which also lobbies for freedom of expression, is calling on filmmakers, entertainers and the media to be more responsible in their depiction of women.

"People should think when they compose music or lyrics how their attitudes towards women may contribute to violence against women," said Gita Sahgal, who is with Amnesty's international secretariat. "We are not calling for a ban on films, or for more controls. The film industry contributes to a tolerance of violence towards women. We urge those in popular culture to think about ways they might be stereotyping women."

My problem is this:

I don't believe we need anyone handing Lieberman, Gore, and their future ilk (Liberal and Conservative alike) anymore fodder for pushing through censorship legislation (or anthing similar in Canada). In supporting the view that popular culture determines peoples' belief structure (I'm just making up terms here) and, hence (to some extent), their consequent action, Amnesty has given that movement (pro-censorship) greater credence and a larger voice. The problem is that politicians tend not towards voluntary arrangements, but to legislation and its consequent laws. As conceivable as it is that Amnesty and other censorship minded politicians may be right about the deleterious effect of pop culture on morality, the risk of government censhorship is a far greater evil than the possible consequences of any cultural artifact (books, movie, music, etc.). Though Amnesty states that they "are not calling" for censorship, their position on the underlying issue cannot but advance the cause of the would be censors.

An afterthought:

Having stated the case as I believe it needs to be, I am willing to admit that I was perhaps too polemical in arguing the above. Though I did admit that it is conceivable that art has a direct influence on morality, I didn't give any reasons as to why. This is in part because I haven't the faintest idea myself, at least not in any coherent articulable manner. But I will at least add here that some notable philosophers believe art to have a rather powerful ability in the domain of moral education/analysis. Both Martha Nussbaum and the late Iris Murdoch have written about the literary text as a focus for ethical issues. The former has asserted, controversially, that novels can themselves be works of moral philosophy.

If a text can elucidate morality, can it not then also obfuscate it, perhaps hampering it and bringing about a regression in moral aptitude? Could this not also be true of other mediums of communication (other arts). It seems rather odd to speak of moral aptitude. Being that I am not ethicist, I may have framed the question wrong, though in Mrs. Murdoch's view it would be my ignorance of metaphysics that has left me unable to formulate the proper question. If the question interests you, here are a couple of journals worth looking at (I haven't read them, but they were cited more than occasionally in my cursory research):
"Symposium on Morality and Literature" in Ethics, Vol. 98, No. 2 (January, 1988)
"Literature and/as Moral Philosophy" in New Literary History, Vol. XV, No. 1 (Autumn, 1983)