Media Censorship: Keeping Parents in the Dark [Presented at the Freedom Forum Conference on Media Violence,
Washington, DC, December 9, 1999]
Research on media violence is often misunderstood.
This is because we can't randomly assign some children at the beginning of their lives to watch different doses of violence on television and then 20 years later see which children committed violent crimes. But it=s also true that we can't randomly assign groups of people to smoke differing amounts of cigarettes for 20 years, and then count the number of people who developed cancer.
With tobacco research we conduct correlational studies in which we look at how much people smoked during their lives and then see the rate at which they have succumbed to cancer. We control statistically for other factors, of course C other healthy and unhealthy behaviors. Then we can find out whether smoking contributed to cancer, over and above these other influences.
And since we can't do cancer experiments on people, we use animal studies. These are artificial, but they tell us something about the short-term effects of tobacco that we can't find out from correlational studies. Putting the two kinds of research together, we get powerful data about the effects of smoking on cancer rates.
Similarly, we can do longitudinal studies of children's television watching and look at the types of behaviors they engage in later. We also control for other factors, such as previous aggressiveness, family problems, and the like. We don't look at media violence in a vacuum; we examine whether there is a correlation between television viewing and violent behavior, even controlling for other influences.
We also do experiments. Like the animal experiments for cancer, these are not natural situations, but such experiments fill the gaps we cannot fill otherwise. They are meant to show short-term effects, like increases in hostility or more accepting attitudes toward violence -- changes that we know increase the likelihood of violent actions.
As with tobacco, the two types of media research form a powerful picture. Even though there are many studies that can be criticized, there are many others that are valid. A recent meta-analysis putting all the studies together paints a compelling case that media violence does contribute to anti-social behaviors, including violence.
It=s misguided to say the effects of media violence on violent behavior are trivial. To give an example, when World Wrestling Federation was introduced to Israeli TV in 1994, the widespread imitation produced an epidemic of playground injuries. The mayhem continued until educators offered extensive counseling to counteract the media=s impact.
Of course the effects of media violence vary: The way violence is depicted and the characteristics of the viewer influence whether media violence will promote violent behavior, produce intense fears and nightmares, have some other effect, or no discernable effect at all. The question should not be: AIs TV violence the most important contributor to violence?@ Instead we should ask: "Does the addition of gratuitous violence to children=s media diet make a difficult situation worse?@ The answer is clearly "yes."
Here we have identified something that is potentially unhealthy and poses risks to many children. And what do we do? We pipe it into our homes automatically and market it aggressively to kids. Not only that: We make it hard for parents to screen and control children's access to it. And then we criticize parents for not doing their job.
What solutions do we have? First of all, we need to promote media literacy. Children need to know what the effects of watching media violence might be. We need to help them be critical of the messages they see C that violence is easy; that it typically has few negative consequences; that it's a good way to get what you want.
Parents also need help in limiting their children's exposure to media violence. Clearly, parents should have information about what's in a program, movie, or video game before they buy it or let their child see it.
Blocking technologies like the v-chip are a good way to help. This is not censorship. It's telling parents: If you've already decided you don't want Jerry Springer in your home, you can automate that decision.
Particularly with very young children, parents need a convenient way to shield them from harmful content. This is far from censorship: Parents have a duty to make their home environment healthy.
But censorship is going on in another form. I participated in a taping of the "Leeza" show in 1997 after the new TV ratings system came out. Many parents on the show criticized the new system. And NBC refused to let the program air. Why? NBC was opposed to adding content information to the ratings, a change parents wanted and ultimately received (except for shows on NBC).
This failure to inform parents is happening with the v-chip, too. For the first time ever, parents have control over their TVs, with the ability to let some shows in while keeping other shows out. Most parents don't even know that the v-chip is now standard equipment in all new TV's 13 inches and larger. The media mostly refuse to cover this story. And when they do cover it, they usually suggest that the v-chip is only for lazy parents or that it will never work. And they've hardly covered the changes in the rating system that parents demanded: Practically no one knows what the content letters in the amended rating system mean.
Unfortunately, the media are making too much money on business as usual to let parents know about these developments. We now know tobacco executives had information that smoking was dangerous, but didn't release it. The media aren't doing most of the research on TV violence, but they do control the airwaves. So they have greater control over whether this message gets disseminated than the tobacco industry ever did.
We can't force the networks to report anything they don't want to. But the networks get the airwaves free, and they use them to protect their profits and remain silent about information could help parents and children.
I know most of this group is very much against censorship and so am I. But I think we really ought to press the users of the public airwaves to give more coverage to stories that might affect their bottom line in a negative way. I believe the networks do not adequately cover stories about themselves, especially stories that may be harmful to their public image. I think this is particularly true with regard to coverage of the harmful effects of media violence.
I agree that media violence is not the predominant cause of actual violence. But we have enough information to say that for already troubled kids, it can make a bad situation much worse. And we know that even for healthy kids, a high level of violence in their media diet is psychologically harmful.
The solution is less, not more censorship: Let's make available to both parents and children all the known information about the risks of media violence. We need to make sure the consumers of media know what the consequences might be and the best ways to prevent and reduce the harmful effects.
Notes
Paik, H., & Comstock, G. (1994). The effects of television violence on antisocial behavior: A meta-analysis. Communication Research, 21(4), 516-539.
Lemish, D. (1997). The school as a wrestling arena: The modeling of a television series. Communication, 22 (4), 395-418.
Kurtz, Howard. (1997, July 21). Looking for Leeza. The Washington Post, p. C3.
Bauder, David. (1997, July 25). NBC accused of censoring Leeza. The Boston Globe.
Stern Christopher. (1997, July 28-August 3). Peacock net muzzles grating ratings talk. Variety.
Joanne Cantor is Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the author of "Mommy, I'm Scared": How TV and Movies Frighten Children and What We Can Do to Protect Them. (Harcourt Brace, 1998).