A bill to help curb the amount of television violence children view may survive the U.S. House and Senate this year, but its effectiveness will depend on the willingness of the television industry to cooperate. In fact, analysts warn that the bill will be meaningless without continued public pressure against violence in television programming.
The Television Violence Act, sponsored by Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), will exempt industry members from antitrust laws for 36 months so they can discuss, develop, and implement voluntary standards on television violence. Current antitrust measures prevent representatives of various networks from even meeting to discuss the problem.
Stations, networks, cable operators, and other industry members have argued that violence is necessary to insure favorable ratings in an intensely competitive marketplace.
Chain-Saw Graphics
Simon says he sponsored the legislation after turning on a television in a hotel one evening during prime time. “All of a sudden I was watching someone being cut in half with a chain saw in living color,” he said. “I remember wondering what effect this would have on a ten-year-old.”
Simon’s staff turned up 85 studies showing the negative relationship between TV violence and children. He met with television executives and visited network screening bureaus before sponsoring the bill, which has passed the Senate unanimously, but failed to come to the floor of the House before last year’s session ended. The House sponsors are Congressmen Dan Glickman (D-Kan.) and Edward Feighan (D-Ohio).
According to Feighan, “The prospects are very good for passage in both chambers. The bill has a lot of momentum, and we have assurance from Jack Brooks [chairman of the House Judiciary Committee] that the bill will get a good start.”
Supporters of the bill say the research shows clearly that violence on television contributes to aggressive and hostile behavior in children. Aletha Huston, codirector of the Center for Research on the Influence of Television on Children, says “There is more published research on this topic than on almost any other social issue of our time.”
But, she says, the situation, as far as children are concerned, is getting worse instead of better. Speaking before Senate hearings last summer, Huston said the growth of cable movie channels and the videotape industry have made R-rated and X-rated films readily available to children.
Broadcast television has not improved either. In fact, notes Huston, children may see more violence on commerical television than their parents do; adult programs have an average of 5 violent acts per hour, while children’s programming averages 15 to 25, according to Huston.
Reducing the amount of violence children see will not be easy since compliance with any standards developed will be voluntary. But Simon thinks the bill will be effective because it “is a strong signal from Congress [to the industry] that we think something is wrong.” He concedes that the level of competition that has resulted in increased violence on TV could remain, but he says, “If one network refused to cooperate, we would put a lot of public pressure on the network.”
Regulation Or Censorship?
It is this threat of pressure that has caused the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to oppose the bill, arguing that exempting the industry from antitrust regulations is inconsistent with constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression. Barry Lynn, legislative counsel for the ACLU, calls the bill “a dangerous precedent.”
The bill has also received tacit opposition from the television industry itself. Bruce McGorrill, chairman of the legislative committee of the NBC-TV affiliate board, a group that represents over 200 NBC stations, says the bill is simply unnecessary. He says the networks already limit violence in their programming, and the stations themselves can also eliminate programming that is not in the interests of their constituencies. “There already exists an effective system of institutional safeguards and marketplace checks and balances,” he told a Senate subcommittee on antitrust regulation.
But Quentin Schultze, professor of communication arts and sciences at Calvin College, is skeptical. “The networks are increasingly competitive, given their dwindling audience in the face of cable and VCR markets. Their goal is to maximize ratings, period,” says Schultze. “We can be optimistic, but if they wanted to do something, they would do it on their own and not need to get together.”
Bruce McKeown, associate professor of political science at Westmont College, is a little more hopeful. McKeown, who did content analysis studies of children’s cartoons and commercials in 1982, says, “The first thing to keep in mind is that the networks are aware of the pressures in the marketplace.”
McKeown believes pressure from Congress and from citizen groups can make a difference. “If they begin to perceive pressure for changes in children’s programming, they will do what is necessary. The Christian community needs to take that realistic appraisal and work with it.”
By Wally Metts, Jr.
Sidebar: Blasting Thyra
A ten-year-old watches intently as Thor the Warrior, Thyra the Valkyrie, Merlin the Wizard, and Questor the Elf gang up on Morak the Evil One, who has garrisoned his castle with ghosts, grunts, demons, and sorcerers.
It’s not a new Saturday cartoon, but “Gauntlet,” a new video game from Nintendo.
Video games are back in a big way, sparking concerns about the effect the violence in these games has on the kids who play them.
Nintendo was the best-selling toy in America last year, and its video game competitors, Atari and Sega, were also among the top 20 best-selling toys. Combined sales for these games and the equipment to play them was over $2 billion.
A study by the National Coalition on Television Violence (NCTV) says violence and war themes dominate the video-game market, NCTV surveyed the 95 most popular games and reported that 58 percent of them were games of warfare, and 83 percent featured violent themes.
NCTV developed a rating system for the games, similar to movie ratings. For example, “Gauntlet” received an “XV” for “extreme violence.”
Critics, however, say the ratings may be too sensitive. For example, NCTV gave an “R-13” (which cautions parents to be concerned about the level of violence) to “Burger-time,” a game in which the player tries to make hamburgers while fighting off Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle, and Mr. Egg. The player is instructed to hit the “enemy” with “patties” or other “handy ingredients” that will result in “fatal indigestion.”
NCTV concluded that “by giving Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle, and Mr. Egg human characteristics and telling the player to kill them when they interfere, the game teaches children that killing opponents is acceptable behavior under certain circumstances.”
Whether or not children giving indigestion to pickles is a violent act, NCTV’s concerns about the effects of video games with war themes have been echoed by a number of citizen groups opposed to war toys.
More than 200 such groups participated in a “War Toys Boycott” last year, including Families for Peace, a Seattle group that picketed the Nintendo U.S. headquarters.
