[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 82 (Thursday, June 12, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1195]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

[[Page E1195]]

    EXPRESSING THE SENSE OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES CONCERNING 
                         VIOLENCE ON TELEVISION

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. MICHAEL N. CASTLE

                              of delaware

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 12, 1997

  Mr. CASTLE. Mr. Speaker, on any given night, you can turn on your 
television during primetime and watch someone commit assault, murder, 
or any other act of violence. While you and I know that the violent 
world depicted nightly on our television screen does not reflect life 
accurately, all too often our children take what they see as truth.
  Children are particularly sensitive to the world around them, as they 
notice and absorb everything they see and experience. Study after study 
for decade after decade has confirmed the commonsense intuition that 
when children view violence their behavior becomes increasingly 
violent. The American Psychological Association estimates that a 
typical child will watch 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence 
before finishing elementary school.
  However, the harm caused by viewing violence is broader than the 
encouraging of violent behavior. Studies have found that viewing 
violence increases mistrust of others and fear of being a victim of 
violence, and desensitizes viewers to violence resulting in calloused 
attitudes and apathetic behavior toward violence.
  Over the years, Congress and broadcasters have sporadically tackled 
this issue. For example, in 1990, Congress passed the Children's 
Television Act to increase the amount of quality educational 
programming for children. The recent rewrite of the telecommunications 
bill included a requirement that television sets be manufactured with a 
computer chip that would allow parents to screen out programs, rated by 
the broadcast industry, that are inappropriate for their children. And 
more recently, the broadcasters have agreed to work out an industrywide 
compromise on generating a content based rating system. I support these 
efforts.
  Yet I believe more needs to be done. It is useful to put up signs 
warning others if a river is polluted, but it is even more useful to 
clean up the river. That is why I am introducing a resolution, with 11 
other Members of Congress, expressing the sense of the House that 
broadcasters should not air excessively violent programming between the 
hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.
  Cleaning up television will not resolve all of the Nation's ills. But 
as former Education Secretary William J. Bennett points out, in recent 
years we have seen an explosion in moral pathologies: Abused and 
abandoned children, out-of-wedlock births, drug use, violent crime, and 
just plain trashy behavior, as well as the vanishing of the unwritten 
rules of decency and civility, social strictures, and basic good 
manners. He attributes this to the fact that the good requires constant 
reinforcement, and the bad needs only permission.
  Turning the tide, reinforcing the good will ultimately take a massive 
collective effort, one that engages our families, our civic leaders, 
our religious leaders, our teachers, our community leaders, all levels 
of government, neighbors--everyone in society. But the media, too, with 
its enormous role in the socialization process, must join us in this 
effort.

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