[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 127 (Tuesday, September 13, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 13, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                             ``VIDEODROME''

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, recently, the August 13, 1994, issue 
of the Economist, a British publication, had an article titled, 
``Videodrome'' about television violence and our conduct.
  It is of interest because it goes beyond the American studies and 
points out that there have been similar studies in Israel, Poland, 
Australia, among other countries that reach the same conclusion--that 
television violence is a part, if only a small part, of the cause for 
violence in our society.
  For example, the article says ``the common-sense view remains that a 
boy who watches chainsaw massacres all day is going to be a rougher 
character than the one who favours romantic comedies.'' They also cite 
a British study: ``Britain designed a more rigorous project in 1978, 
interviewing 1,500 12- to 17-year-old boys about their viewing habits, 
backgrounds, school and police records.'' The report concluded that 
``high exposure to television violence increases the degree to which 
boys engage in serious violence.''
  I ask that the entire article be placed into the Congressional Record 
at this point.
  The article follows:

                  [From the Economist, Aug. 13, 1994]

                               Videodrome

       When a judge sentenced the two ten-year-olds who had 
     attacked and killed James Bulger, a toddler, in Liverpool 
     last year, he implied that violent videos might have helped 
     to turn naughty boys into killers. Neither the police nor the 
     prosecution ever claimed such a thing. Nevertheless, it is 
     popular in Britain to believe that ``Child's Play 3'', a 
     violent video that was found in one of the boys' homes, did 
     play a role in the tragedy. Thus one more exhibit in the case 
     being built up for tightening the rules about film and TV 
     violence.
       In fact, it is almost impossible to establish that a 
     particular TV show or video has ever led to a particular 
     crime. ``What has never been demonstrated'', says James 
     Ferman of the British Board of Film Classification, ``is that 
     media violence is either a necessary or a sufficient cause of 
     violence in real life.'' The film and TV business uses this 
     argument to fend off further restraints on what it produces, 
     particularly in America. Television shows and films reflect 
     society, the industry asserts, rather than influencing it--an 
     argument that they do not, one suspects, make to advertisers. 
     But the commonsense view remains that a boy who watches 
     chainsaw massacres all day is going to be a rougher character 
     than one who favours romantic comedies.
       Researchers have been trying to work out the truth for more 
     than 30 years, producing over a thousand studies in America 
     and dozens in Europe. Does screen violence stimulate 
     aggressive behaviour, particularly in children? If so, to 
     what extent? Consensus is elusive in the murky world of the 
     social sciences; but the broad answers seem respectively to 
     be yes, and not a lot.
       The best-known study tracked the viewing habits and 
     behaviour of a group of American schoolchildren, starting in 
     1960 when they were eight years old. Further interviews 
     followed in 1971 and 1982. The researchers found that there 
     was a correlation between the amount of TV violence watched 
     and aggression among the eight-year-olds. There was also a 
     correlation between watching violence at eight and 
     aggressiveness at 19. By the time the guinea-pigs had reached 
     30, those who had watched most TV violence as children tended 
     to have more criminal convictions, to be more likely to 
     batter their spouses and, in their turn, to have more 
     aggressive children.
       Similar studies by the same researchers, Rowell Huesmann 
     and Leonard Eron, in Israel, Poland and Australia have found 
     the same pattern. As Mr. Huesmann sums it up, ``early 
     aggression predicts later aggression; and exposure to media 
     violence correlates with early aggression.'' Mr. Eron 
     concludes that ``youngsters, by consistent viewing of 
     violence got more and more aggressive.''
       In 1972, when concern about rising violence in America was 
     simmering, the surgeon-general's advisory committee on 
     television and social behaviour decided to look further. 
     Researchers assembled a group of four-year-olds. Some were 
     shown violent cartoons, others neutral or positive films. 
     When the two groups were put together, the children who had 
     seen the violent cartoons were more likely to call other 
     children names, hit them or take things from them.
       Britain designed a more rigorous project in 1978, 
     interviewing 1,500 12-17-year-old boys about their viewing 
     habits, backgrounds, school and police records. The report 
     concluded that ``high exposure to television violence 
     increases the degree to which boys engage in serious 
     violence.''
       Suggestive evidence also came from a Canadian town to which 
     television was introduced in 1974. Researchers studied the 
     town's children and judged that two years after TV's arrival 
     they were more aggressive than before. Similar before-and-
     after studies of murder rates in the United States and South 
     Africa have come to the same conclusion. Of course, this 
     suggests only that TV, not necessarily violent TV, has an 
     effect; but the result remains intriguing.
       An analysis of 217 studies done between 1957 and 1990 has 
     found that they showed ``positive and significant correlation 
     between television violence and aggressive behaviour.'' The 
     American Psychological Association's commission on violence 
     and youth concluded last year that ``there is absolutely no 
     doubt that higher levels of viewing violence on television 
     are correlated with increased acceptance of aggressive 
     attitudes and increased aggressive behaviour.''


                   chicken and egg or stork and baby

       It sounds pretty conclusive--and a good case for censorship 
     for children. Yet the evidence is not in fact clear-cut, and 
     even if it were, correlation is not the same as causality. 
     Consider the counter-evidence first. An American attempt in 
     1982 to repeat the Huesmann/Eron work, and a more recent 
     study in Holland, both found little link between watching and 
     committing violence. Japan is famous for its nasty 
     pornographic comics and gory cartoons, yet it suffers less 
     than other rich countries from violence.
       In April the Policy Studies Institute in London published 
     the results of a study in which the authors had interviewed 
     juvenile offenders about their viewing habits, comparing 
     their responses with those of a group of schoolchildren with 
     no criminal records. They found much more overlap than 
     difference between the two groups. The striking thing about 
     the offenders was how little they had in common with each 
     other. None had seen any of the ``video nasties'' that have 
     recently been provoking public concern. (Three-quarters, 
     though, read one of the tabloid newspapers regularly.) ``The 
     most noticeable thing was the chaos and change they were 
     living in,'' says Ann Hagell, one of the authors. ``TV and 
     movies played a relatively small part in their lives.''
       As for causality, Jonathan Freedman of the University of 
     Toronto, perhaps the best-known sceptic about the effects of 
     TV violence, says that even research showing that a link 
     exists may not support many researchers' claims. Kids who 
     like to play football will watch more football than those who 
     don't; in the same way, aggressive kids are more likely to 
     watch shoot-'em-ups. That says nothing about cause and 
     effect.
       Here is the nub of the debate. Even sceptics agree that 
     most of the studies of the subject show some correlation 
     between violence on TV and the real thing: those who watch 
     violent shows tend to be more violent. What they question 
     is whether the watching causes the doing. There is a 
     correlation in Germany between the decline of the stork 
     population and the falling human birth rate. That does not 
     prove that storks bring babies.
       Those who believe that there is a link between media and 
     real-life violence say that it is not necessary to prove 
     strict causality, because there are so many influences on 
     human behaviour. An analogy is drawn with smoking. To a 
     purist, it cannot be conclusively proved that smoking causes 
     lung cancer: not everyone who smokes will get it, and some 
     who do not smoke will. But the correlation between smoking 
     and lung cancer is so strong that it is usually accepted as a 
     causal factor. The same is true for violence, say Mr. 
     Huesmann and most others who have looked into the subject. 
     Not so, say Mr. Freedman and his (fewer) allies.
       There is, however, a degree of common ground around the 
     idea of ``vulnerable minorities--that some media violence can 
     affect some children some of the time. Most children can 
     watch a violent film, or even lots of them, and not go out 
     and fight afterwards. They may feel more aggressive, the same 
     way they may feel like singing after watching ``The Sound of 
     Music'', but not act on it. But for a few children, often 
     those not bright enough to see clearly the difference between 
     reality and fiction, or without the moral capacity to know 
     right from wrong, watching may indeed be a prelude to acting.
       Ron Slaby of Harvard University identifies four ways in 
     which media violence can play itself out in a child's 
     personality: the aggressor effect, an increase in meanness; 
     the victim effect, an increase in fearfulness and mistrust; 
     the bystander effect, an increase in callousness; and the 
     appetite effect, an increase in the desire to see or commit 
     violence. Simple imitation may also play a part. A 1988 study 
     found that the number of railway suicides among West German 
     boys aged 15-19 rose sharply following a TV programme that 
     showed a teenager jumping under a train. Similarly, there was 
     a rise in deaths from Russian roulette after the release of 
     the film ``The Deer Hunter''.
       It is hard to put a figure on the extent to which such an 
     influence is felt, though some brave researchers have tried. 
     Aletha Huston, who works at a research centre on the 
     influence of television on children, estimates that 4-6% of 
     violence can be accounted for by media influence. Such a 
     number may seem significant; but it is worth remembering that 
     violence finds its way on to TV in different guises, not all 
     of them easy to avoid--news, sports and documentary 
     programmes can all show strong stuff, as well as the films 
     and drama that usually draw campaigners' fire.
       The impetus to curb media violence is not, however, that it 
     is conclusively linked to real violence; or that reducing 
     screen violence will make much difference. It is that it is 
     easier to regulate what goes out on the tube, or to stop 
     youngsters renting certain videos, than to deal with the more 
     significant social forces for producing rotten kids. Sadly, 
     nobody has yet worked out how to prevent people from being 
     bad parents.

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