Dr. Jonathan Freedman, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and author of a book on TV violence, has written a paper (PDF here and press release here) for DC-based First Amendment-oriented The Media Institute that takes the FCC to task for issuing its highly-publicized report on TV violence.
The Commission’s April 25 report (PDF here), engineered by Chairman Kevin Martin, minced no words. It concluded outright that “exposure to violence in the media can increase aggressive behavior in children” and recommended, among other things, that Congress should adopt new laws that either limit the amount of violence on TV during certain parts of the day or mandate TV ratings (which are now voluntary) or both.
In his report Freedman says that the FCC drew skewed and self-serving conclusions from the research it reviewed and that despite the Commission’s confident assertion, studies on the causal relationship between TV violence and violent behavior are “inconsistent, weak, and generally non-supportive.” He said that in its zeal to make a case for regulating TV content, the FCC missed a chance to actually perform a public service by looking seriously at the issue. “The FCC could have paid serious attention to the actual evidence” but did not, Freedman says.
Although Freedman’s report itself tends to read like a puffy piece of propaganda (the press release is far better, actually), he makes very valid points. No causal relationship between TV violence and violent behavior has been consistently established, although some studies show a correlation between the two. Therefore, the FCC was way out of line in drawing its own seemingly firm “scientific” conclusions.
A number of years back I was involved in a three university research project on TV violence (disclosure: I was involved in this research on behalf of the cable industry and I was formerly employed by The Media Institute) and the very impressive assembled team of independent academicians studying the matter had earnestly and fruitlessly hunted for a causal relationship between TV violence and violent behavior. In fact, the researchers sometimes found the opposite result.
For example, in some of their studies very graphic and disturbing TV violence tended to reduce aggressive behavior because many of the at-risk kids involved in the research had a cartoonish concept of violence. When exposed to video that showed the realistic aftermath of, say, a gunfight, many of these kids became less violent. (One movie scene, for example, showed a gunshot victim urinating on himself and that just mortified these kids.)
In any event, nobody can definitively say what the impact of TV violence is, despite the FCC’s contention. Moreover, nobody knows how to define acceptable versus objectionable violence. Unlike p*rnography, of which Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said “I know it when I see it,” violence is hard to pinpoint. It can mean anything from “Schindler’s List,” to “The Terminator” to Wile E. Coyote’s antics in the Roadrunner cartoons.
Cynthia Brumfield at 11:55 AM|Comments(0)
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