To Establish Justice, To Insure Domestic Tranquility

6. ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA AND VIOLENCE¹

When the Violence Commission made its recommendations, we knew much less than now about what works, so communicating it better had not yet evolved as an issue. But the Commission was able to point to research at the time on violence in television entertainment.

The Commission believed it reasonable to conclude that "a constant diet of violent behavior on televison has an adverse effect on human character and attitudes." The Commission did "not suggest that television is a principle cause of violence in society. We do suggest that it is a contributing factor."

The Violence Commission urged parents to carefully supervise their children's televison viewing. It recommended that the President provide more adequate financing to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting "so that it may develop the kind of educational, cultural, and dramatic programming not presently provided in sufficient measure by commercial broadcasting."² To the television industry, the Commission recommended that:³

• The broadcasting of children's cartoons containing serious, non-comic violence should be abandoned.

• The amount of time devoted to the broadcast of crime, western and action-adventure programs containing violent episodes should be reduced.

• More effective efforts should be made to alter the basic context in which violence is presented in television dramas.

• The industry should be more responsive to the best evidence provided by social scientists, psychologists, and communications researchers.

These recommendations have been ignored at the same time that we have experienced the wave of media consolidation, concentration and conglomeration discussed in Chapter 5.

By 1998 Americans were consuming, on average, 11 hours and 40 minutes of media every day. Nowhere has the increase been more dramatic than with children. By the late 1990s, the average 7 year old was watching 1,400 hours of television and 20,000 television commercials per year. Children were becoming a formidable market in their own right. Children aged 4-12 spent $24 billion in 1997, 3 times the figure a decade earlier. Accordingly, commercial television aimed at children was arguably the fastest growing segment of the industry in the 1990s. Today each of the 4 largest media companies owns a film studio, a network and 1 of the 24 hour per day commercial cable television channels aimed at children. When one combines this media experience with the growing commercialization of education, it becomes clear that America's youth are being subjected to a commercial barrage that radically transcends anything any earlier generation has experienced. Nobody can foresee exactly what the implications of the commercial indoctrination will be. The range of predictions is from mildly harmful to disastrous. The only certain thing is that the firms that profit from these developments rarely factor any such concerns into their planning.

The preference for violent fare in children's television programming has not abated. If anything, research shows that it has even increased in the 1990s. By 1997, the use of violence in television ads aimed at children had increased, as well. The same pattern is true for prime time fare. A 1998 study by scholars at the University of California at Santa Barbara concluded that violence was common to 60 percent of television programs, and that the amount had increased each year over the 3 year course of the research.

There is no mystery surrounding these developments. Although the same companies own more and more of our media, there are vastly more channels competing for attention. In this environment, broadcasters and advertisers are desperate to grab viewers' attention, and they know they only have a very short hold on a prospective viewer before a flick of the remote. There is little time to develop new genres, complex characters or plot lines. There is tremendous pressure to imitate what was successful in the recent past. When in doubt, there are 2 sure-fire attention getting devices: violence and sex. Not surprisingly, in addition to the rise in violence, there has been a huge climb in the amount of sexual innuendo in prime time television fare.

Broadcasters defend this programming by claiming that they are "giving the people what they want," but this is disingenuous. In fact, broadcasters give Americans what we want, as long as profits can be maximized. First and foremost, broadcasters have focused on giving advertisers what they want. In our television as in politics, we have one-dollar, one-vote. Entertainment programming is bathed in commercial imperatives that stridently shape the nature of the content. Yet many, perhaps most, surveys of television viewers reveal a deep and profound dissatisfaction with the quality of television programming.

Since the Violence Commission in 1969, there have been dozens of studies on the effects of violent television programming upon people, especially children. The evidence directly connects the amount of violent programming consumed with violent behavior. "The evidence is overwhelming," an official of the American Psychological Association stated in 1999. "To argue against it is like arguing against gravity." Some scholars say that, while there is a clear link, there is still not sufficient evidence to conclude that violent programming causes violent behavior. But many reputable scholars argue exactly that point. In the 1990s separate studies of television violence were conducted by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Psychological Association. Each of them concluded that "television violence contributes to real-world violence," in the words of Dale Kunkel of UCLA.

As L. Rowell Huesmann of the University of Michigan, one of the most respected researchers on the subject, informed a Senate hearing in 1999: "Not every child who watches a lot of violence or plays a lot of violent games will grow up to be violent. Other forces must converge, as they did recently in Colorado. But just as every cigarette increases the chance that someday you will get lung cancer, every exposure to violence increases the chances that some day a child will behave more violently than they would otherwise."

We believe that Professor Huesmann's point is well taken. Television entertainment and commercial violence is not solely responsible for violent behavior, as the Violence Commission concluded. Commercial television's defenders are absolutely correct on that point. And they are correct to state that this means we should move toward the kind of human investment policy articulated in Chapter 4. But commercial television's defenders are wrong to say that television is just an innocent bystander. Television does indeed accentuate some trends and downplay others within the broader culture. In this case it is accentuating some very negative trends.

It is fully within the public's province to address media and, especially, television reform. Television is conducted by private firms that pay not 1 cent to the government for monopoly rights to channels on the scarce, highly lucrative, and publicly owned electromagnetic spectrum. This gift of spectrum is one of the nation's best examples of corporate welfare. It has generated scores of massive private fortunes. In theory, commercial broadcasters have been required to undertake some broadcasting in the "public interest" to justify their receiving a broadcast license. "Public interest" was and is supposed to mean that broadcasters pursue some programming that they would not pursue if their purpose was simply to maximize profits. The track record for U.S. commercial broadcasters shows, however, that they have easily avoided anything more than token public interest programming. By 1999 the very notion that commercial broadcasters undertake anything that is not about maximizing shareholder return is unrealistic.

This lack of public interest programming is due mostly to the immense power of the broadcasting lobby in Washington, D.C. The National Association of Broadcasters has its way with regulators and politicians. The broadcasters not only have lots of money, but they also control valuable airtime. That makes them very uncomfortable enemies for any politician seeking re-election. Debate over broadcasting and media is effectively handcuffed by corporate lobbying power. Hence, reform of the media is connected to campaign finance reform.

It has been that way for some 60 plus years. Not surprisingly, the Violence Commission's call for industry self-regulation was the equivalent of the "Hail Mary" pass, and it has enjoyed no success whatsoever. Given the commercial pressures on broadcasters to generate violent entertainment fare, it is naive to expect them to act otherwise in our economic system. The rewards are too great, the punishments too severe.

Our conclusion, therefore, is that the broadcast system must be restructured so that it is rational not to produce violent fare -- and rational to produce quality fare. Because the explanation for the rampant amount of violent fare on television is that it is very profitable, the solution is to lessen the importance of commercial factors in television.

How do we do that? Our recommendations are to:

• Frame media entertainment reform, "leads/bleeds" television news reform, handgun control and campaign finance reform as part of the same issue -- how monied interests and the economic system control our political system, children and family lives.

• Elect leaders who will use the bully pulpit. "Not long ago, the tobacco companies seemed invincible. But then the American people elected a president who was willing to take them on, especially on the issue of marketing to kids, and eventually the industry was forced to reform. The same could happen in the entertainment world."⁴

• Make critical media literacy a core component of the education curriculum in K-12 schooling. Young people should be educated on how and why the system works the way it does. The Surgeon General should make media literacy a public health priority and wage a campaign against media violence comparable to the campaign against smoking.

• Recharge public television. Finance the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) with a per capita budget comparable to the best systems in the world. Mandate PBS to serve the entire population, not just that part of the population that can give money at pledge time and hassle politicians to keep the PBS budget intact. Eliminate corporate underwriting and "enhanced underwriting." Foster community web sites. Establish non-commercial community and low-power television and radio stations in local communities to complement the national system.

• Make it a condition of a broadcast license that there be no advertising targeted to children under 12. This is the practice in Sweden and may possibly become the practice across the European Union in the next 5 years. It will be a major political issue in Europe for the next decade. Instead, each station should be required to devote 10-20 hours per week to children's programming, under the guidance of educators and artists, with a budget automatically fixed as a percentage of the station's revenue.

• Secure private funding for new campaigns by national nonprofit organizations to accelerate educating the public on media reform in America, including the potential breakup of big media companies. Build on the lessons of new media reform movements in Canada, Sweden, France, Australia, New Zealand and India.⁴ Through the Internet and town hall meetings, begin public dialogue on whether big media should pay for the current free use of the air electromagnetic spectrum, which amounts to billions of dollars in yearly taxpayer subsidies -- almost enough to fully fund Head Start. (See Chapter 5.)

Such reform will come slowly. But it should be pursued within the same long run, grassroots advocacy and democratizing framework as campaign finance reform, communicating what works and, as we shall next see, firearms control.

Notes

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