"It's not about censorship," the Democratic presidential candidate said Monday on TV's "Oprah," a venue suited to the women voters he's courting. "It's about citizenship, including corporate citizenship."

Gore says he's giving the industry six months to stop marketing violent movies, recordings and video games to underage youth. If that doesn't happen, and he becomes president, he said, he would seek sanctions against offenders.

Republicans said Gore has privately assured Hollywood insiders in the past that they have nothing to worry about, and termed his crusade for family entertainment values an act perhaps worthy of an Oscar.

Gore launched his pursuit on the strength of a Federal Trade Commission report detailing efforts, mostly through advertising, to interest young people in movies, music and games rated for older people.

Republicans pointed to a published report saying that when the FTC inquiry began, Gore stressed to potential donors from the entertainment industry that it was not his idea.

"I think the man's short on credibility on the issue," said GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush. The Texas governor said the solution to improper entertainment influences on children rests with parents and political persuasion, not new federal regulation.

Gore's approach to Hollywood has been alternately critical and comforting.

In a nuanced speech on the entertainment industry in March, he urged industry self-restraint against the "violence being showered on the heads of young people." Yet he declared "it is not fair to make the industry a scapegoat when we have a flood of guns in our society."

But in a meeting at a Belleville, Ind., school Monday, the attack on guns was set aside in favor of a broadside on entertainment. "Kids now see 20,000 murders on television by the time they graduate," he said.

"It sounds like Al Gore is trying to distance himself from any political fallout the Hollywood money might be giving to his campaign," said Larry Makinson, director of the Center for Responsive Politics. The nonpartisan center tracks political contributions.

The TV, movie and music industries are together the fourth largest source of cash for the Democratic Party, raising $5.9 million so far this campaign cycle for the party and $928,000 for Gore. Those industries are 11th on the list of Republican sources, donating $3.7 million to the party and $726,000 for Bush.

Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, joined other industry leaders in rejecting the FTC findings. He attributed the attention to the issue to the political season.

Gore's selection of Sen. Joseph Lieberman as his running mate upset some in the industry because the senator's attacks on Hollywood have been long-standing, unvarnished and open to the idea of government intervention.

Indeed, the centrist Democratic Leadership Council pointed Monday to an article in its current issue by Lieberman, the group's chairman since the mid-1990s, in which he warns that many broadcasters may be breaching their "legal obligation" to serve the public interest with their licenses.

"There has been an explosion of crude, rude, and lewd material in prime time," Lieberman wrote. He said sexually explicit material on TV is even worse than the violence on the tube.

The same DLC issue reports on a survey commissioned from Democratic pollster Mark Penn indicating that most Americans are concerned about the violent and sexual subject matter young people are being exposed to. Women were especially worried.

Gore did not wait for the FTC report's official release to go on the offensive, an eagerness the Bush camp said was unconvincing given his previous hesitation.

Bush aides cited a Los Angeles Times story from August 1999 that quoted donors as saying Gore privately told them the inquiry was President Clinton's idea, not his own, and that he had no part in it.

Gore spokesman Chris Lehane confirmed the vice president at the meeting said that he had not requested the FTC report.

"However, he has a long record on these issues," Lehane said. "And one of the fundamental differences in this campaign is we believe that government should give parents the tools and support they need to help protect and raise their children."

Gore's wife, Tipper, led a successful effort in the 1980s to have the recording industry label albums containing offensive lyrics. Variety reported that during his failed presidential run in 1988, Gore privately told music executives that a Senate hearing on the issue was not his idea.

"I did not ask for the hearing," he said, according to a transcript of the meeting published by Variety. "I was not in favor of the hearing."