Like an old re-run, Congress is once again rumbling about legislating against television violence.
Good luck!
"How are you even going to define violence?" asks
T. Barton Carter, who teaches communications law at Boston U. "It comes in so many flavors."
Consider the permutations: cartoon violence, dramatic violence, violent humor, violence in news -- all before one even gets into sports.
"Wouldn't you have to get rid of boxing altogether?" asks Carter.
Even evaluating violence in context -- as the FCC does with allegedly indecent material -- wouldn't help any law stand up to court scrutiny. As former FCC chairman
Richard Wiley once observed, "Short of an absolute ban on all forms of violence -- including even slapstick comedy -- the question of what is appropriate for family viewing is entirely subjective."
Indeed, noted First Amendment attorney
Robert Corn-Revere appends the following quote to his email correspondence:
"Transported to a surreal landscape, a young woman kills the first woman she meets and then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again."
That's from a 2001 newspaper TV listing for "The Wizard of Oz."
What about all those much-ballyhooed "reliable studies" showing "causal links" between TV violence and human behavior?
Not so reliable,
Jonathan Freedman discovered. The U. of Toronto social psychologist examined them five years ago and found their evidence weak. Almost three dozen other scholars concluded the same in separate reviews.
Freedman says no studies since have fared any better in establishing any causal link.
Former MPAA topper
Jack Valenti, is leading an industry effort to show parents that existing technology can block unwanted shows, and believes some pols, such as
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), are sincerely concerned about violent content's effects on kids.
The question is whether legislation of any kind can be an answer, given the constitutional issues involved.
"On a simple level, TV violence is a serious issue," says Carter. "But legislation is a blunt instrument that will probably do more harm than good."
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