Children In The Media

– A Look At The History And Future Of Televised Violence Essay, Research Paper

Children and the Media

A look at the history and future of televised violence

For some children, under some conditions, some television is harmful. For other children under the same conditions, or for the same children under other conditions, it may be beneficial. For most children, under most conditions, most television is probably neither particularly harmful nor particularly beneficial.

W. Schramm, J. Lyle, and E.B. Parker.

Television in the lives of our children

Stanford: Stanford University press, 1969

(Schneider 66)

In the early years of television broadcasting nobody was aware of the risk of violence on television instilling aggressive behavior in children. It was not until 1961 and 1964 that studies were conducted by the Senate subcommittee on juvenile delinquency. After surveying the content of many television programs, the committee found merely that the extent to which violence and related activities are depicted on television . . . remains greater than it was a decade ago. The committee also stated that such television content produced antisocial behavior in juveniles and confirmed what psychologist Frederic S. Werthman stated in his book Seduction of the Innocent that television was becoming a school for violence (Carter 11). In 1968 President Lyndon Johnson appointed a national commission on the causes and prevention of violence due to many riots and assassinations of the middle 1960’s (Carter 12). These early studies were the beginning of a future of censorship on television, however, no surmountable action was taken until the Surgeon General issued a report in 1972 fueled by a letter from Senator John Pastore (Carter 2)

Pastore sent a letter to the Secretary of Health and Welfare in 1969 that stated the he was exceedingly troubled by the lack of any definitive information which would help resolve the question of whether there is a casual connection between televised crime and violence and antisocial behavior by individuals, especially children (Carter 2). That same month, President Richard Nixon sent a letter to Senator Pastore expressing his approval.

Dear Senator:

I want you to know that I join you in supporting the proposed one-year study of the possible relationship between scenes of sex and violence on television and antisocial behavior among young people.

Your forthright stand is one that reflects the views of very many Americans who are deeply concerned with the ethical as well as the artistic level of many television programs and commercials.

The medium of television reaches the widest possible audience in the most intensely personal manner of any mass media. I share your deep concern and strongly applaud your vigorous criticism of what you regard as a misuse of this great medium.

As chairman of the Communications Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, you have indeed served the public interest well by bringing greater public attention to this problem.

Sincerely,

/s/ Richard Nixon

(Carter 19-20)

Three years and $1.8 Million later the Surgeon Generals committee released their report. Television and Growing Up: The Impact of Televised Violence, stated that the committee unanimously found preliminary and tentative indications of a causal relation between viewing televised violence and aggressive behavior. However it gave no solution or number of people affected and it was written in a social-sciencese that was incomprehensible to the layperson. The report angered many critics and even some of the social-scientist that helped on the project, but in the spring of 1974 networks began to move away from violence-prone shows and more towards family situations (Carter 2).

Many experiments and studies have been done since this group in the early years of television. The one major discovery that every study brings out is that children are incredibly difficult to study and anticipate. Simply making programs can be the most difficult but the simplest at the same time. Children s enormous curiosity makes programming easy because they are easily entertained but they are also the most diverse age in that the development levels vary greatly (Gary 1). For programming and study purposes child viewing populations are divided into four groups. Preschool (up to 6), Juvenile (6-9), Pre-adolescent (9-12), and Adolescent (13+) (Gary 150). Studies do show that children do not watch television passively as would appear, rather, they are very active in the actions on screen (Gary 33, Schneider 81), which is part of the danger of too much violence. By the time a child graduates High School, he or she will have spent more time in front of a television (17,000 hrs) than in an organized classroom (11,000hrs) (Schneider 4). So it would appear that children are gathering more information from their television sets than they are from their teachers and probably parents also. An exert from Plato s, The Republic is symbolic of this figure

Don t you understand . . . that we begin by telling children stories, which taken as a whole, are fiction, though they contain some truth. Such story telling begins at an earlier age than physical training: that is why I said we should start with the mind. And the beginning, as you know, is

Внимание, отключите Adblock

Вы посетили наш сайт со включенным блокировщиком рекламы!
Ссылка для скачивания станет доступной сразу после отключения Adblock!

Скачать