Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 16, 1993 TAG: 9308250345
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
To blame TV for America's epidemic of violent crime is scapegoating.
But anyone who'd argue that there's no possible link between the murder and mayhem that increasingly dominates the screen and the murder and mayhem that occurs increasingly in our homes, on our streets and in our schoolyards must still think it's Howdy Doody time.
Consider: There has been a 560 percent surge in violent crime - much of it among juveniles - since the 1950s, when television became the world's most influential communications medium.
Consider that the average sixth grader now spends more time in front of a television set than in a school classroom. (Academically speaking, it's been well established that the more time spent watching television, the lower a child's reading scores and verbal skills will be - but that's another story.)
And consider that, if a child watches commercial television two-to-four hours a day, the child will see an estimated 8,000 TV murders and 100,000 other violent acts by the age of 12. (And that's just on the big-three commercial networks. Cable television is even bloodier, many video-taped movies bloodier yet.)
In a simpler world, of course, the solution might be simple: All parents would see to it that their children didn't watch so much television. All families would have quality time together, sitting around the living room reading books or playing wholesome games.
The world is not so simple. In most families today - even where there are two parents - children, even at very tender ages, are often left on their own to choose how to pass their time, and television is their pastime of choice.
This is not to say that parents are off the hook. It is sad that children are not better supervised. However, if parents aren't going to see to it that their children avoid a steady diet of blood and gore, if they aren't going to counter the lessons taught by TV - that acts of violence are ordinary, acceptable, even glamorous, and have little consequence - doesn't something still need to be done?
Doesn't the television industry itself have some responsibility in this regard?
Surely it does, and some lawmakers are beginning to make the point. Mostly at the insistence of Sen. Paul Simon, D-Ill., Congress is pressuring the industry anew to clean up its act.
In 1990, Congress passed the Television Improvement Act, which set aside portions of antitrust laws for three years to permit time to establish industrywide standards for the reduction of violence. Network officials then said yes, yes, they would certainly cooperate.
And since then it seems violence on network TV has gotten more prevalent, not less. As the big three continue to lose audiences, they've tended to copycat the no-holds-barred format of many cable shows and movies. The result: more gratuitous violence and gratuitous sex, often combined as sexual violence.
So much so that Rep. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., noted that last month - the "sweeps" period when networks and local TV stations compete for high ratings - was a "carnival of murder and mayhem on our airwaves."
With the deadline fast approaching for the industrywide standards to reduce TV violence, moguls of the industry - including Valenti, a top industry lobbyist in Washington - are saying again that they will fully cooperate and rise to the challenge. They'd better.
The government, of course, must not trample on the First Amendment by attempting to dictate content of shows.
But the TV industry can no longer callously disregard how its violence-obsessed programming is affectng this nation's children and young people.
Perhaps a causal relationship between tube violence and real-life violence cannot be scientifically established; at the least, TV desensitizes.
A little self-restraint, a little more application of standards of decency and ethics, ought to be among the networks' coming attractions.
by CNB