Lawmakers, Parent Groups Laud Media Violence Findings

A report released Wednesday by Surgeon General David Satcher showing a scientific link between graphically violent television programming and increased aggression in children provoked applause from parent groups and lawmakers seeking to curb the use of violence in entertainment.

The new report is “a wake-up call to the [entertainment] industry that they really aren’t living up to their responsibility to America’s children,” said Patti Miller, director of the media unit at Children Now, an Oakland-based advocacy group. “I think that the industry needs to be very cognizant that children are in their audience” and needs to find ways to tell adventure stories “without gratuitous violence.”

Satcher’s final report said “a substantial body of research now indicates that exposure to media violence increases children’s physically and verbally aggressive behavior in the short term,” and notes that a smaller body of studies has shown a “small but statistically significant impact on aggression over many years.”

In an interview, Satcher noted that though media exposure appeared to have only a “low-level” long-term effect on youth violence compared with kids’ access to guns and other factors, “it’s still enough that it ought to alert us that we need to be concerned about this.”

“The science shows that media violence, and this is primarily TV, can in fact in the short term increase aggressive behavior,” said Satcher. “I don’t think that’s a desirable thing.”

Many Hollywood executives declined to comment on the politically sensitive report. However, some producers dismissed the findings, noting that they watched violent shows as children without becoming violent themselves.

“Television was much more violent when I grew up, and I’m a complete pacifist coward,” said John McNamara, executive producer of CBS’ current prime-time series version of “The Fugitive.”

“I know it sounds glib, but if a James Bond movie has the effect of making one more violent, why doesn’t a ‘Seinfeld’ episode make one funnier?”

The study follows a Federal Trade Commission report last fall that found Hollywood had been marketing violent movies to children. The FTC report prompted a series of Capitol Hill hearings that criticized Hollywood’s marketing practices.

Though the FTC later said constitutional obstacles probably would prevent it from prosecuting entertainment companies that peddle violence to kids, some lawmakers said the surgeon general’s findings could bolster regulators’ legal standing.

The surgeon general’s report is a synthesis of existing research on youth violence compiled over the last year. The report was ordered by the White House and lawmakers in the wake of the suicide massacre by two teens at Columbine High School in 1999.

The report cites a list of risk factors contributing to youth violence, including gang membership and drug use. Juvenile arrest rates for homicide and robbery plummeted in the 1990s, largely because of a decline in juvenile use of firearms. But the report notes that the proportion of youths admitting to involvement in violent acts is holding steady.

Satcher said he would push for more federal research on all aspects of youth violence, including the connection between children’s media exposure and violent behavior. He plans to “educate the American people about all of these risk factors.”

Armed with the report, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., a vocal critic of Hollywood’s marketing of explicit content to children, is considering taking things a step further. Lieberman may introduce legislation to broaden regulators’ authority over studio advertising practices.

“The underlying cause for concern is the strong body of evidence that shows [media violence] can have harmful health effects on kids,” said Dan Gerstein, a spokesman for Lieberman.

“That should leave no question about the need to reduce kids’ exposure to media messages that celebrate violence and don’t portray the consequences. The report states very clearly it can lead to heightened aggression. That’s real harm.”

Despite the strength of the evidence in the report on the connection between violent entertainment and aggression in children, the connection between entertainment and violent acts such as rape and homicide remains inconsistent, the document said. Research to date suggests that media exposure has a relatively small effect on such extreme violence.

But researchers who contributed to the report said the massive audiences drawn to television, films and video games mean that even a small effect could result in higher levels of violence.

“If you consider the country as a whole, you’re going to have more violence than would otherwise have occurred,” said Leonard Berkowitz, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin and one of the chief authors of the report’s media section. “It’s a question of what kind of society we want to live in, and I think that these movies and this television programming just make society a little nastier.”

Social scientists have long maintained that it would be unethical to conduct experiments that would prove a direct link to real violence, such as a study in which they expose children to explicit entertainment and wait for them to commit a crime.

Miller of Children Now said, “We don’t want our kids to be overly aggressive or violent. We don’t want to use an excuse that, if the media [industry] is only causing aggression, that’s OK.”

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Times staff writer Brian Lowry contributed to this report.