FTC nearing release of report detailing marketing of violent material to youth
By Phillip Taylor
Special to
The Freedom Forum Online
08.29.00
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Senators attacking the entertainment industry for producing violent
images in movies, music videos and video games are anxiously planning yet
another hearing on media and violence, anticipating the September release of an
investigative report from the Federal Trade Commission.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former presidential hopeful and frequent
Hollywood critic, hopes to conduct a hearing on Sept. 13 on the report before
the Senate Commerce Committee, which he chairs.
"The FTC were asked to answer the question: Does the entertainment
industry market violent media to children?" said David Crane, a McCain staffer
at the Commerce Committee. "The broad speculation is that the report has found
that."
The FTC report — ordered by President Clinton in the wake of the
April 20, 1999, schoolyard massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton,
Colo. — remains confidential. But The
Washington Post reported Aug. 27 that a draft report from the
FTC's investigation found the entertainment industry to be aggressively
marketing violent films, records and video games to children.
An FTC spokesman, however, said such a draft report doesn't exist. The
spokesman said commissioners were still investigating and hoped to release a
final report next month.
In the 16 months since the Columbine shooting shocked the nation, the
White House and Congress have promoted numerous studies and legislation to
regulate violent content in the media.
Most notably, McCain, along with vice-presidential candidate Sen.
Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.,
introduced the Media Violence Labeling
Act, a measure that would compel the entertainment industry to draft a
uniform rating system to monitor all forms of entertainment, from movies to
video games to television shows.
The senators have eagerly awaited the completion of the FTC report in
hopes of using it to bolster a new wave of hearings.
Although the report remains confidential, the FTC, according to its
Web site, is studying the various entertainment rating systems such as those
adopted by the Motion Picture Association of America and the Interactive
Digital Software Association. The commission is also examining how the industry
markets its products and restricts access to youngsters.
The Post, speaking to
sources privy to information in the FTC report, said investigators learned that
current rating systems are poorly enforced. For example, movie theaters often
sell underage children tickets to R-rated films even though such a rating
restricts children under 17 from attending without a parent or guardian.
The Post also reported that
the FTC conducted a poll that found that parents demand more information than
existing rating systems provide.
The impending report will follow last month's
announcement from four major health
groups of their endorsement of studies that found a causal link between the
violence depicted in movies, television shows and video games and the violence
that occurs in schools and on the streets.
But a coalition of free-speech advocates last week submitted their own
report to the FTC contending that such studies fail to link real-life violence
to media violence directly.
"When violent crimes hit the headlines, people want to lash out at
something, anything, and assign blame," said David Horowitz, executive director
of the Media Coalition, which released its report last week. "The media is too
often that something, even though, as our report found, there is no causal link
between the violent content in the media and real violence."
The report, titled "Shooting the
Messenger: Why Censorship Won't Stop Violence," reviewed a wide range of
current studies and found many discrepancies. Researcher Judith Levine wrote
that "contrary to the claims of politicians and pundits, the experts do not
agree on the 'obvious fact' that violent content in media causes real-life
violence."
The report notes that the National Research Council's highly regarded
study "Understanding and Preventing Violence" devised a matrix of "risk factors
for violent behavior." Factors included poverty, access to weapons,
communication skills, drug use and genetic traits but did not include exposure
to violent entertainment.
The coalition also noted that while some statistics show an increase
of violent content in the media, reports of violent crime have been at their
lowest level since 1973.
"Media do not reach children in a vacuum," Horowitz said. "Children
process the messages they receive in the context of their value systems. By
giving children the tools they need to understand what they are seeing and
hearing, parents can help their children absorb a wide range of media and
messages."
McCain expects a number of entertainment industry executives, as well
as scientists and medical experts, Crane said, to testify in the hearing, even
though the entertainment industry has been hesitant in recent months to attend
such hearings.
"A lot of people like to characterize this as a social-conservative
issue when the support to deal with this is quite broad," Crane said. "This is
not a hearing about opinions anymore. This is a hearing based on an FTC study
of business practices."
Crane said if the entertainment industry ignores the Sept. 13 hearing,
it "might be in for a rough ride. But if they address the concerns, the desire
is to work more in a cooperative manner."
Update
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
Previous
FTC probes entertainment industry's sale of violence to kids
'We're examining the self-regulation put in place by the entertainment industry to see if it works and how it works,' says agency official.
04.27.00
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