A panic of biblical proportions over media violence

Ombudsman

By Paul McMasters
First Amendment Ombudsman
First Amendment Center
pmcmasters@freedomforum.org

08.21.00

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Two lawyers have asked the German government to place the Bible on the national "not for children list" because it is too violent. This book contains a "gruesomeness difficult to exceed," said lawyers Christian Sailer and Gert-Joachim Hetzel in a letter to Germany's family minister.

"It preaches genocide, racism, enmity toward Jews, gruesome executions for adulterers and homosexuals, the murder of one's own children and many other perversities," they wrote.

In these days of panic and political pandering over violence in the media, it's difficult to know whether these lawyers are serious or just trying to make a point.

Certainly, the American Bar Association's Division for Public Education was serious last week when it announced the publication of a new guide to help teachers address violence in television programs, movies, video games and the Internet. The division quoted Mary A. Hepburn, professor emeritus of social science at the University of Georgia in Athens, as saying that media violence is "a powerful ingredient" in violent youth behavior. And the ABA group cited "an increasing number of studies linking media violence" and "violence in the classroom."

This is just the latest professional group to trump reason and science with political rhetoric about media violence as a cause of real violence.

Late last month, four major health groups issued a joint statement endorsing the scientifically dubious claim that media cause violence. They announced their conclusions at a political "summit" organized by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., a leading proponent of the idea that violence in the media translates into violence in the streets.

Later, a spokesman for the American Medical Association conceded (1.) that the groups issued their joint statement at the request of Sen. Brownback, (2.) that members of the AMA board had not read any of the studies they were citing, and (3.) that a report on the issue actually hasn't been written yet.

These groups are not the only ones who came to a conclusion before they came to a thorough study of the evidence. In this case, however, it's difficult to understand how they arrived at this particular conclusion when there are so many serious questions about a causal connection between media and violence.

Yet they trot out in the joint statement the tired claim, "At this time, well over 1000 studies ... point overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children."

It would be most difficult for these groups to produce a list of more than 1,000 studies on media violence. It would be even more difficult to produce a list of 1,000 studies that focus primarily on children and violence. It would be impossible to produce a list of 1,000 studies that state an unequivocal causal link between media and "aggressive behavior" in children, let alone violent acts by children.

Yet this "fact" has been tossed about so often by politicians and activists that even professionals and scholars feel safe in using it. That is just one example of the loopy nature of this debate: Political leaders exaggerate and distort what studies do exist, their rhetoric gets written into legislation as reality, experts adopt and cite the "official" position, and in turn are quoted by political leaders in proposing yet more legislation to solve the problem by limiting expression containing violence.

All of this takes place in an environment where terms are ambiguous and agendas are numerous. Definitions of "violence" as depicted in entertainment media frequently are broad and vary from one pronouncement to another. They conflate all so-called "violent acts" into one negative or harmful category, with little or no regard given to content or context or whether the depiction is fact or fiction, virtual or real.

A few studies do suggest a connection between television violence and "aggressive behavior" in a small percentage of the individuals studied (the causal link for other types of media is generally assumed since few non-TV studies exist). The reality is that there are significant scientific hurdles to overcome in demonstrating that media violence actually causes violence, no matter whether the research takes place in a laboratory study, a field study, a longitudinal study or a combination or variation of those approaches.

The methodological challenges are nearly insurmountable. Researchers are bound ethically not to produce actual violence among their subjects, so they must rely instead on measuring "arousal" or testing for "aggressive behavior" — responses that often are modeled or sanctioned by the studies or researchers themselves and sometimes cannot be distinguished from the emotional reactions to the medium itself rather than the content of the programming.

Those who cite these carefully qualified studies suggesting a connection between media and violence ignore the reality that there is absolutely no way of predicting with certainty whether a so-called violent depiction will produce a positive, negative or neutral result in a given individual.

They also ignore the word of criminologists, sociologists, biologists and others that media violence is not even a significant factor in determining the causes and interventions for violence. The real causes of violence, in fact, are well known and securely documented: poverty, drugs, gangs, guns, broken families, neglect and abuse, harsh and inconsistent discipline, peer association.

These problems, however, don't lend themselves to easy solutions or easy rhetoric.

So the political appeal of the idea of media violence causing real violence is such that many are unwilling to search for real solutions, which would be too complicated and expensive and take too long to yield results.

But policy-makers are not the only ones who deserve blame for allowing the nation's attention to be diverted from the real causes of violence and expending time, energy and resources on false solutions.

There is plenty of blame to go around among:

Health professionals, for lending their authority and credibility to this delay and denial.

Child advocacy groups, for letting others hijack their campaigns for addressing children's real needs.

Scholars, for failing to set the record straight when their studies are misrepresented, exaggerated and harnessed to a political agenda.

And the rest of us, for allowing all of that to go on while our children still wait for answers.

There is an inevitable line of logic that must issue from the assertion that media cause violence: We must censor TV, the movies, the Internet, music and video games. Gloria Tristani of the Federal Communications Commission even endorses the idea that violence can be treated as obscenity and banned accordingly.

There is a reason, of course, that violence as obscenity or the concept of "copycat crimes" have not taken hold in the courts, where evidence and reason trump assertions and wishfulness, and where freedom of expression is a constitutional mandate rather than a political irritant.

But it isn't in a court a law where this story is playing out. It is in the court of public opinion, and right now rant and rhetoric are winning out over science and reason. In such an environment, it's only a matter of time before the Bible winds up on the censored list.

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Related

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Democratic presidential nominee blasts violent movies, video games marketed to children in appearance on Winfrey's talk show.  09.11.00

FTC report: Entertainment industry markets violent material to youth
Releasing results of long-awaited study, commission urges industry to expand voluntary codes, sanction companies that run afoul of guidelines.  09.11.00

Lieberman condemns 'culture of carnage' at Senate hearing on media violence
Lawmakers use occasion to accuse entertainment executives and to criticize them for failing to show up to defend themselves.  09.13.00

Lawmakers blast marketing efforts of entertainment industry
Sen. John McCain leads committee hearing echoing FTC report’s claim that companies ‘routinely’ market violent products to kids.  09.14.00

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Meanwhile, free-speech advocates debunk theories that causal link exists between entertainment, real violence.  08.29.00

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