Simon Calls for End to TV Violence

Violence on television is harming children, and the industry should work with American families to reduce the tensions it produces, Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) said today.

“Today’s ratings formula, with its emphasis on violence, is harming our children and our society, and the television sets in our homes have become part and parcel of the violence that has spilled into our streets, even into our schoolyards,” Simon said in releasing a study on children’s television programs.

“It’s time for the television industry to forge a partnership with America’s families to help reduce the atmosphere of violence,” he said.

Children’s television programs in the United States are more violent than those intended for adults, the study said.

The study, conducted by George Gerbner of the University of Pennsylvania and Nancy Signorielli of the University of Delaware, is the latest in a series of audits of television violence that began in 1967.

According to the report, which covers television programming from 1986 through 1989, seven out of 10 prime time network dramatic offerings and nine out of 10 weekend children’s programs--primarily cartoons--used violence.

The study also found that over the last three years, children were entertained with more than 25 acts of “humorous” violence per hour.

“Children’s weekend daytime programming remains saturated with violence,” the study said.

“Television did not invent violence. It just put it on the assembly line and into every home,” the report said.

“Violence essentially demonstrates who can dominate or terrorize whom, and humor is the sugar coating on the pill,” said Gerbner, adding that it is “cheaper” for networks to produce violent shows than other programming.

“Our studies have shown that television’s mean and dangerous world tends to cultivate a sense of relative danger, mistrust, dependence and--despite its supposedly ‘entertaining’ nature--alienation and gloom,” Gerbner and Signorielli said.

Simon is the author of the Television Violence Act, which would grant the networks and others in the television industry limited immunity from antitrust laws for three years to allow them to voluntarily impose guidelines on violence in entertainment programs.

The bill was passed by both the House and Senate last year. It must go to a joint conference committee to resolve a difference over a Senate amendment by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) that would include sexual activity in the program guidelines.