TV That’s Bad for Your Health : Televised violence can have violent consequences; does anyone care?

A growing congressional backlash against violent television programming has caught the attention of TV executives. Influential voices in Congress are warning that if the industry doesn’t cut back on murder and mayhem in its entertainment shows, legislative remedies are likely.

Industry officials say they agree TV violence needs to be controlled but argue that it should be left to the industry to police itself. Certainly it’s never a good idea for government to try to act as the arbiter of content, for while today’s target might be excessive TV violence, tomorrow’s could be unorthodox political thought. But can TV executives, eager to attract ratings and the advertising dollars they produce, be trusted to curb the gratuitous violence that now fills so many television hours? “I don’t see the industry regulating itself,” says Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

The American Psychological Assn. has calculated that the average American child, by the seventh grade, has watched 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence on television. Ken Auletta, writing in the New Yorker, quotes from an association report describing the consequences: “Accumulated research clearly demonstrates a correlation between viewing violence and aggressive behavior--that is, heavy viewers behave more aggressively than light viewers. Children and adults who watch a large number of aggressive programs also tend to hold attitudes and values that favor the use of aggression to solve conflicts.”

Sen. Byron L. Dorgon (D-N.D.) has introduced legislation to require the Federal Communications Commission to monitor violent programming on television and issue a quarterly tally. That would be a welcome start toward systematically measuring the extent of the problem; up to now such monitoring has been done only unofficially and sporadically. Most parents still probably don’t grasp how intense an exposure to violence a few hours a day of TV watching can produce.

Some observers defend the prevalence of violence on TV with the claim that it only reflects social reality. Of course it would be absurd to suggest that all aggressive behavior is inspired by television programs. It’s no less absurd to ignore the literally thousands of studies--yet another was presented to the American Psychiatric Assn. meeting in San Francisco last week--that correlate violent behavior with what people, especially children, see on TV. Violence on the tube is unarguably unhealthy for young people and for society. It’s time to begin arresting it.