Clinton Presses Youth Violence Issue

As administration officials rushed to fill out Monday’s high-profile White House conference on youth violence, President Clinton announced Friday that he will launch a new national organization to seek solutions to the problem.

“I believe, more than anything else, we need a grass-roots effort which involves every single American [and] draws out everyone’s commitment, all our resources, and depends upon everyone taking responsibility,” Clinton said.

The new group, dubbed the National Campaign to Reduce Youth Violence, represents an effort to institutionalize Monday’s unusual gathering, which will bring together about 50 parents, teachers, religious leaders, law enforcement officials and representatives of the entertainment and gun industries for about three hours of closed-door talks with the president, Vice President Al Gore and other senior officials.

For Clinton, Monday’s meeting--prompted by the high school shootings in Littleton, Colo.--offers an opportunity to highlight themes he has stressed as president, such as his support for gun control. But it will also force into the spotlight his complex relationship with the entertainment industry, whose most violent output has become a prime political target since the Colorado killings.

Throughout his presidency, Clinton has drawn enormous political and financial support from Hollywood and other branches of the entertainment world. But he has also criticized the industry on several occasions for producing material that can be harmful to children.

In the crucible of Littleton, that balancing act may be more difficult to sustain. While Clinton has drawn criticism from some social conservatives for not “shaming” Hollywood more forthrightly, Monday’s conference is stirring fears in some parts of the entertainment industry that he might turn against it.

“There’s a feeling he’s going to do what he did on gays in the military: The gay rights movement supported him so completely during his [1992] campaign, and when it got tough, he bailed on them,” one industry source said. “And these are the people who stood by him during a year of impeachment.”

Some sources said the administration is having more trouble recruiting entertainment leaders to Monday’s gathering than any other group.

Although the top lobbying officials for all elements of the entertainment industry had confirmed their attendance at the conference by Friday night--as had singer Gloria Estefan, actor Andrew Shue and senior officials from CBS and ABC--the White House was unable to release the names of any studio executives or movie makers who had agreed to participate.

That reticence among industry leaders, though, appears to be only part of the story. Shaken by the Littleton shootings, and the public reaction to them, many political activists within Hollywood are looking for ways to work with the White House on the issue.

“The shock of something like Littleton can’t help but seep into the most deadened of minds and hearts--both here and in Washington,” said producer Mike Farrell, former co-star of television’s “M*A*S*H.” “There is a growing, reluctant as it may be, awareness of the fact that this is . . . a real social problem that needs an answer.”

Hollywood and other entertainment industries have become an indispensable source of campaign cash for the Democratic Party. In 1996, the industry provided almost $4.8 million in soft money donations to the Democratic National Committee, according to Common Cause, a citizen lobby group.

That has led conservatives, such as GOP presidential hopeful Gary Bauer, to accuse Clinton of reducing “the pressure on Hollywood to stop the sex and violence.” Yet, if not in language as pointed as Bauer’s, both Clinton and Gore repeatedly have criticized Hollywood since last month’s shootings. Gore, in particular, has been almost as sharp on Hollywood and computer game designers as he has on gun manufacturers, a more familiar Democratic target.

Yet so far, neither Clinton nor Gore has called for direct government action against entertainment companies. But others in Washington are broaching that prospect.

At a hearing earlier this week, several senators--including Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), usually a close Clinton ally--raised the possibility of a federal investigation into whether the entertainment industry deliberately marketed ultra-violent products to children.

“None of us is looking to have government get involved here, but if the entertainment industry doesn’t begin to self-control and eliminate some of the ultra-violent [material] . . . believe me there will be attempts by government to do it,” Lieberman said in an interview.

The national youth violence organization Clinton plans to form would be a nonprofit, privately funded group modeled on similar efforts he launched to combat teen pregnancy and encourage employers to hire former welfare recipients.

Bruce Reed, Clinton’s top domestic policy advisor, said Friday that the organization would research successful initiatives to reduce youth violence; encourage their spread to other communities; and work with entertainment companies, among others, to formulate other responses to the problem.

So far, the administration’s principal policy initiative on media violence came in 1996, when it brokered a deal to require a new rating system for television and the installation in new televisions of a “V-chip” that parents could program to block out programs they consider inappropriate.

But David Blankenhorn, president of the centrist Institute for American Values, says the focus on giving parents more ability to block offensive material diverted attention from the larger need to pressure the entertainment industry to produce less offensive material in the first place.

“It’s a little like saying you can always buy an individual gas mask,” Blankenhorn says. “Yes, some parents say, ‘No TV in the house,’ and some people get these [V-chip] gadgets. But the point is, the air is dirty, and you can’t really insulate yourself from the air.”