Prevalence of TV, Film Violence Is Studied : Media: On average last year, one act of serious brutality was found for every four minutes of entertainment. CBS is called the most violent network.

Television and movie audiences who watched 1998’s top-grossing entertainment were confronted with one act of serious violence every four minutes on average, according to a media study released Wednesday.

In an exhaustive accounting of every violent act in last year’s most popular movies, television series and music videos, the study dubbed “Saving Private Ryan” the year’s most violent film, with 262 brutal scenes.

The CBS series “Walker, Texas Ranger” was named the most violent show on television, averaging 82 acts of serious violence for each hourlong episode.

CBS was branded the most violent network, averaging 10 depictions of serious violence for each episode studied. The USA Network was second with eight, researchers reported.

“This trend held across most [television] outlets, making it nearly impossible for channel surfers to avoid the worst kinds of violence,” concluded the study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a nonpartisan research and education group that examines the news and entertainment media.

The group touted the study as the most extensive ever conducted of violent content in entertainment. But its findings were immediately challenged by one of the networks singled out.

“It’s ridiculous to label CBS, the home of ‘Touched by an Angel,’ ‘Cosby’ and ‘Kids Say the Darndest Things,’ as the most violent network,” said a CBS spokesman. “It is a question of context. ‘Walker, Texas Ranger’ is an action-oriented show about the good guys getting the bad guys and the bad guys always lose. It never has violence for violence’s sake. It shows the consequences of violence.”

The study’s researchers, however, contended that in most of the films, shows and videos they examined, violence was often portrayed as harmless or without consequence. “It was used by heroes nearly as often as villains,” the report said. “It rarely caused either physical or emotional harm, and it was even more rarely condemned by the script.”

The researchers said that the redeeming social value of “Saving Private Ryan,” a film about the horrors and heroics of World War II, was the exception rather than the rule. They called the other high-violence films “standard issue shoot-’em-ups, like ‘Lethal Weapon 4,’ ” which finished second on the violence scale.

The Motion Picture Assn. of America, the film industry’s main lobbying group in Washington, declined to comment on the findings.

The study’s unusually methodical assessment of on-screen brutality was quickly embraced by Hollywood’s most forceful political critics at a time when the entertainment industry is under heavy fire in Washington. The Federal Trade Commission is investigating the industry’s marketing of violence to children, while Congress is considering a bill that could broaden that inquiry.

“The . . . analysis confirms statistically what most of us know intuitively: The culture of violence is alive and killing in America today,” said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), who has led the charge to rein in gratuitous media violence.

“It leaves little doubt that, despite all the concerns parents and their advocates have raised over the last several years, despite all the evidence we have presented to demonstrate this substantial threat posed to children and despite the outpouring of outrage over the recent string of horrific school shootings, Hollywood is still going great guns to mass market mass murder.”

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Times staff writer Betsy Sharkey in Los Angeles contributed to this story.