His Opinion Doesn’t Fit the Agenda

Someone at MSNBC (she sounded 12 but claimed to be a producer) called not long ago asking me to appear on the channel as a naysayer regarding the efficacy of the V-chip. She wasn’t looking for any TV “expert,” mind you, but one willing to espouse a specific viewpoint to balance out some talking-head panel.

The moral of the story? Only that you tend to be lonely in the media world if you won’t speak the lines expected of you. Just ask Stuart Fischoff.

After the school shootings at Columbine High, dissecting the media’s role in societal violence became the topic du jour. The American Psychological Assn. said: “To argue against it is like arguing against gravity.” Susan Linn, an official at the Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston, wrote, “ . . . as surely as cigarette smoking is linked to cancer, exposure to media violence is linked to aggressive behavior.”

Politicians--including President Clinton, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.)--all chant this mantra. Some have pushed for legislation.

Yet Fischoff, a professor of media psychology at Cal State Los Angeles, doesn’t share the APA’s view, something few media outlets wanted to hear in the “looking for answers” hysteria that followed Columbine.

While hardly an apologist for Hollywood (he calls certain violent films “pornographic in their explicitness”), Fischoff offers no simple solutions, contending that decades of research have not proven, and probably never can definitely prove that the media cause violent behavior in the real world.

Simply put, Fischoff maintains lab tests staged to chart “aggression” after exposure to violent images can’t predict behavior in real-life settings, and that the scientific leap from controlled environments to crime in the streets is “monumental.”

Moreover, numerous studies fail to support a causal media-violence relationship, Fischoff said, but the public hears virtually nothing about them, in part because the major medical lobbying groups “have produced such a wall of consensus that it’s very difficult to penetrate it.”

If the connection has been overstated, Fischoff blames desperation rather than disingenuousness. Scrambling to mollify the public by doing something in the wake of senseless tragedies like those in Littleton and Paducah, Ky., politicians zeroed in on the media as a fat, unsympathetic target.

At the same time, well-intentioned social scientists have enjoyed seeing their work pushed into the spotlight, providing them an incentive to come up with what Fischoff calls “voodoo statistics” allowing them to make proclamations on the order of the smoking-cancer bond.

“It’s a very bad idea to propagate false science,” Fischoff said. “There’s no problem in saying, ‘We believe this is the case.’ There is a problem in saying, ‘It is the case, and we’re going to try to pass legislation because of it.’ . . .

“The issue is that ideology drives science. People come to be true believers, and they will suspend otherwise very intact antenna about experimental design and external validity when it comes to this kind of issue because everybody believes it must be true. And if it must be true, soon enough it becomes ‘It is true.’ ”

Fischoff won’t say the link between the media and violent behavior doesn’t exist, only that there are too many variables to clearly prove it unless someone approves ghoulish experiments tied to future acts of real-world violence, which isn’t likely to happen for obvious reasons.

Right or wrong, it’s a point of view that’s been largely omitted from discussion of the issue; instead, the media repeatedly turns to the usual suspects, bringing in such media pundits as Dr. Carole Lieberman--who would express an opinion about a shopping mall opening--to trade ripostes with industry representatives such as Motion Picture Assn. of America chief Jack Valenti.

In that context, putting a tweedy PhD on the other side of the aisle, even if it would elevate the level of discourse, doesn’t fit the preordained script. Then again, television seldom tackles this topic at all with much depth or ambition, making “Virus of Violence”--a documentary airing tonight on the Court TV network--especially noteworthy and compelling.

Hosted by Martin Sheen, the program approaches the issue from the perspective of Lt. Col. David Grossman, a former military psychologist who argues that violent media and video games break down children’s inhibitions against killing, in much the same way the military trains recruits.

According to Grossman--whose campaign has also been profiled on “60 Minutes”--the television industry has arrogantly engaged in “the most profound disinformation campaign in modern history” to obscure the media contribution to societal violence, which he says is beyond question.

As for anecdotal evidence--those of us who watched scads of violent TV growing up without killing anyone--Grossman said, “Just because 99.9% of the time when you don’t wear a seat belt you’re OK doesn’t mean it’s an acceptable risk. . . . When you start laying the data out in a court of law, the industry goes down, and they go down hard.”

Grossman is persuasive, but in the special it’s mostly industry mouthpieces who offer the rebuttals, not neutral third parties.

So what would Fischoff say? “When you’re in the military, you’re in what is called a ‘total institution,’ where everything around you is supporting that ideology; when you’re a kid [playing video games] in the mall, you go home,” he noted. “There’s a whole complex thing called ‘society,’ and social forces, that intervene between the time you stop the game and get on with your life.”

Some studies also raise a chicken-and-egg question, indicating people predisposed to violence are more apt to seek out violent news and entertainment. In Fischoff’s eyes, the gist of the matter remains we just don’t know--which is fine so long as the conversation involves a couple of academics, not so fine when that debate occurs on Capitol Hill.

Fischoff’s take isn’t one you hear on TV often--not because like-minded scientists aren’t out there, but because it doesn’t follow the pattern 12-year-old producers are programmed to use: Outsiders attack the media while insiders defend it. Sadly, it’s a formula that doesn’t heighten the level of understanding, rather producing a lot of high-pitched babble, skewing public perceptions of what we really “know.”

These shortcomings don’t apply solely to coverage of media violence, of course, so perhaps what we need is legislation preventing MSNBC, Fox News and CNN from only putting people on the air willing to spout a certain opinion. Granted, there might not be proof they always operate that way, but let’s pass a law anyway. You know, just in case.

* “Virus of Violence” airs tonight at 10 on Court TV.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears on Tuesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.