Television Violence

Your editorial (“TV That’s Bad for Your Health,” May 30) targets an issue close to my heart. I was in the position of censoring television programs with one of the major networks for many years. During those years I often chafed at the bit as I had to enforce some rulings that I thought too conservative and/or stupid, but when it came to censoring violence I felt good about the job, hoping that in some small way I was helping to reduce the violence that was corrupting our children, our society. I also wept on occasion with the inadequacy of my role as we were forced to accept so much violence just to maintain viewers’ enthusiasm for the program so they wouldn’t switch channels.

Because of those years--that began more than 20 years ago with mountains of research and hours of meetings, with scales drawn up evaluating each and every act of violence, applying these scales to each action adventure program, then striving to convince the programming department and the producers of the need to reduce the violence with the overall concern of what it was doing to society--I am now of the belief that this can only be accomplished by a mandate from no other than a government agency.

Over the past years the competition to grab the viewer was too great to successfully reduce the violence.

The film industry must also address these concerns; the nearest video store has an endless supply of videos filled with violence and mayhem to feed the viewers if they can’t fill their appetites on TV. The monitoring and evaluations have been done but violence has gone unchecked and our society is suffering the consequences.

ROBERTA BLANK

Los Angeles

* I applaud your stance favoring governmental action regarding the level of violence on TV. In fact, you didn’t go far enough. They should also investigate and do something about violence in radio, books, movies, theater, paintings and newspapers--after all, the principle is the same.

And while we’re at it, the government should try to determine what speech in general is causing harm and act on it. I mean, who cares about a little freedom when we’ve got the common good to think of. It’s worth giving up a little speech--mostly unpopular to begin with--in favor of government regulation serving the public interest.

WILLIAM MESSINA

Los Angeles