‘THIS IS SEMANTICS’ : SENATORS MULL TELEVISION VIOLENCE

Senate supporters of a bill designed to curb television violence met industry resistance Thursday to their concerns that television programs contain too much violence.

Bruce McGorrill, a vice president of Maine Broadcasting Co. and a member of the NBC-TV affiliate board, told senators the legislation is not needed because the three major networks already have an effective review system.

“I do not feel on network television there is excessive or gratuitous violence. There is action, but it’s not excessive or gratuitous violence,” McGorrill told members of the Senate Judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee.

Pressed by subcommittee members, McGorrill said, “admittedly, this is semantics,” but he said an obstacle in any discussion of TV violence is the lack of a definition for what constitutes objectionable violence.

But Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) said, “I don’t have to tell you what violence is. You have eyes . . . There’s violence on my TV and I don’t like it.”

McGorrill said in retort: “Not on my station.”

The panel is considering a bill that would give the TV industry immunity from antitrust laws for three years to allow its members to adopt standards on TV violence. A similar bill failed to pass the House last year.

Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), sponsor of the measure, said the issue is best addressed by the industry itself rather than by government regulators, but he warned McGorrill and the industry not to “hide behind this phony shield of definition.”

Many studies showing a link between TV violence and aggressive behavior, especially in children, are evidence that “some voluntary restriction on the part of your industry is in order,” Simon said.

Panel members were dissatisfied with McGorrill’s description of the network review process as “a system of institutional safeguards and marketplace checks and balances.”

“The reality is the market pays off for violence,” Simon said.

But McGorrill insisted the system has worked well. Otherwise, he said, network affiliates would be hearing complaints from viewers and rejecting their network’s programming.

During 15 years as an official at Maine Broadcasting Co. with authority over programming, he acted against only one NBC series. The company’s two NBC affiliates ran the series, “The Masters,” once but declined to rerun it between seasons because “it had more action than we cared to run,” he said.

Rep. Gordon Humphrey (R-N.H.) said the review process must be flawed because violent programs are still getting on the air.

“Somehow, we have got to turn off the torrent of rubbish pouring out of television sets into the living rooms of homes all across our nation,” he said.

Barry Lynn of the American Civil Liberties Union, however, warned that legislation designed to regulate the content of TV broadcasting would have serious First Amendment problems.

The subcommittee also heard from several experts who cited research showing that televised violence contributes to aggressive behavior in children and adults.

Aletha C. Huston, co-director of the Center for Research on the Influence of Television on Children at the University of Kansas, testified that the evidence from independent researchers is overwhelming.

“Heavy viewers of television violence approve of violent solutions to problems; they believe that aggression is the appropriate and successful way to resolve conflict and frustrations,” the researcher said in testimony submitted to the panel.