The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; TV Violence

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. A new campaign was launched today to reduce the amount of murder, mayhem and other violence in children's television. The National Coalition on TV Violence is the effort's sponsor, and its major targets are the five major commercial sponsors of children's cartoon programs. The coalition claims there is clear evidence violence on television begats violence in real life, particularly among children, and it wants parents to mount an educational boycott of those companies which sponsor the most violence-prone programs. The coalition's action is the latest development in the long-running debate over how television influences the behavior of the people who watch it, one that began shortly after the first shot was fired, the first fist was thrown on a TV program. It's heated up in recent months with new studies confirming the connection and new responses knocking down the studies. Tonight, we mount the latest round in the debate. Robert MacNeil is off; Charlayne Hunter-Gault is in New York. Charlayne?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Jim, as you indicated, the debate over violence on television is almost as old as television itself. But the studies keep being updated, and opponents of television violence keep finding new ways of using them. The first study of the issue was done by a congressional committee some 30 years ago. Then, in 1969, the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence reported that violence on TV increased the likelihood of violent behavior in the viewer. Three years later a report by the Surgeon General's advisory committee reached the same conclusion. Last year that study was updated by surveying some 2,500 studies that have dealt with the subject. The conclusion: violence on TV does lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch the programs. The so-called educational boycott announced today is aimed at five companies. They are McDonald's, General Mills, General Foods, Kellogg's and Mattel. Jim?

LEHRER: The National Coalition on TV Violence, which announced the boycott action today, is made up of various consumer, parent and education groups. It has been monitoring violence on television for three years. The chairman and one of its founders is Dr. Thomas Radecki, a psychiatrist who heads a mental health center in Champaign, Illinois, and teaches at the Southern Illinois University Medical School in Springfield. Doctor, what exactly do you mean by an educational boycott?

Dr. THOMAS RADECKI: What we're asking Americans that are concerned about this issue is the next time their children want to, say, buy a McDonald's hamburger or get a Mattel toy, that they take that opportunity to stop, to tell the children no, not this time, and to teach them once again the harmfulness of education -- entertainment violence, of cartoon violence, and the responsibility that the sponsors have for the programming that they're subsidizing to sell their products.

LEHRER: What impact do you think this will have on the sponsors?

Dr. RADECKI: Well, I think that it will have a significant impact. We feel that there is already some impact to our campaign. We've seen a 40% decrease from the record-high levels of violence. In the summer of 1982 we've seen a 40% decrease, with several new non-violent cartoon shows being introduced this fall. If we can repeat that progress several times over, Saturday morning will turn from being the most violent period of television to being a good time for children to watch.

LEHRER: What's the difference between what you're proposing and what is normally called an economic boycott?

Dr. RADECKI: Well, we're not asking people to stop buying McDonald's hamburgers for the whole year, or to stop --

LEHRER: I thought you just said you were.

Dr. RADECKI: No, the next time, on the next occasion, and maybe periodically during the year. No, we've seen some improvement by the --

LEHRER: I don't -- excuse me, I don't understand the difference. In other words, the next McDonald's hamburger they shouldn't buy, but the one after that is all right.

Dr. RADECKI: Well, yes. Periodically, yes. We're saying that the networks -- the advertisers are showing some responsiveness, and we need to write letters to them, we need to put pressure on them and get them to realize that if they don't continue to make the progress that they've started out with -- it takes time to develop these non-violent cartoon programs and to find out what combination works. But we are finding, for instance, the Gary Coleman show on Saturday morning -- very non-violent and very good Nielsen ratings.

LEHRER: What exactly do you want done? Do you want all violence off of children's cartoon programs, or do you want just some of it gone?

Dr. RADECKI: Our goal is a 75% decrease. We realize that that would still leave a large -- a 75% decrease from now. Actually, violence was about this level when we started and then it started climbing upward until we have seen this recent decrease. We realize that would still leave some harmful violence on television. Our goal is for television to be realistic, show the amount of violence that exists in real life and not exaggerate it.

LEHRER: What constitutes, in your group's opinion, harmful violence versus violence that is not harmful?

Dr. RADECKI: Basically when it's glorified; your superhero type of violence like Incredible Hulk, Flash Gordon, Spider-Man, where the good guy is using violence to solve their problem. Programs that have to use violence every episode -- the new one, Pandamonium, every episode they're dealing with some evil wizard or evil scientist. They just sort of dwell on violence and use it to entertain. Violence should never be used to entertain; it should be -- its place in entertainment is to educate people as to the problem of violence.

LEHRER: What is the evidence that this kind of violence begats violence in children?

Dr. RADECKI: Well, Jim, we've scoured the research and we found a total of 28 different studies. Out of those 28 studies, 27 find trends toward increased violence in children, significant increases in irritability, anger, aggression, violence on the playground, violence at home, in children viewers of violent cartoons and not in children viewers of non-violent cartoons. So 27 out of 28 studies from the United States and Canada is pretty convincing to us.

LEHRER: Thank you. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: A response now from a major television network executive who doesn't go along with Dr. Radecki's diagnoses or his remedies. Alan Wurtzel is director of news, developmental and social research for ABC-TV. His unit is responsible for monitoring social trends and studying the impact of TV and audience reaction. Dr. Wurtzel, what do you think of Dr. Radecki's educational boycott idea?

Dr. ALAN WURTZEL: Well, as a private citizen, Dr. Radecki has every right to exercise his point of view in any way he sees fit. However, it seems to me that a boycott -- and I don't really get the distinction between his educational and his economic boycott -- is both inappropriate and counterproductive. I think it's inappropriate, because I think the viewer has a much more direct way of influencing what's on television, and that's either to watch a program or to turn it off. And secondly, I think it's counterproductive because ABC has had a policy, an open-door policy of inviting responsible organizations in to talk to us, toshare views and to establish a dialogue, and out of those conversations I think some very productive changes and improvements in programming have been made. I think that's the way we ought to go.

HUNTER-GAULT: I know you don't speak for the other networks, but is that the general policy in the networks, the practice you've just described?

Dr. WURTZEL: I really can't -- I believe it is, but as I say, at ABC we have and continue to speak to as many groups as possible, as many special-interest groups come in. And these conversations I think are very useful, because there's an opportunity to discuss and to air both sides of the issue.

HUNTER-GAULT: And so basically you don't think that Dr. Radecki's boycott is going to accomplish much?

Dr. WURTZEL: No, I don't.

HUNTER-GAULT: What about his basic point, though, that violence on television causes children and teenagers to be violent?

Dr. WURTZEL: I don't understand how Dr. Radecki reaches those conclusions. The only way you can reach those conclusions, it seems to me, is to evaluate the research that exists. I've seen the list of 29 research studies that Dr. Radecki says conclusively proves his point, and I really can't understand how he arrived at those conclusions. First of all, a number of those studies, about 25% of them, have never been published in the academic or scientific literature, which means they've never even established the minimum level of acceptability as scientific investigations. Of the remanining, a number of them don't even deal with children and cartoons; they deal with college students and films. And of the remaining ones of those, about half of them don't even find any effect between viewing cartoons and subsequent violent behavior. The very few that do show an effect, frankly, are flawed in a number of very significant ways. And I think that this really reaches the heart of the issue, because when people hear that researchers investigate violence, I think they think about punching and kicking and bullying and shoplifting and any sort of anti-social behaviors that we would all be concerned about in terms of a detrimental impact. But that's not what researchers measure at all. Some researchers measure verbal measures of aggression. One of the studies asked a child if he would like to see a balloon popped or not, and if the child said yes, that's considered to be aggressive behavior. Other studies measure children's behavior in a playground, and if children shout or make faces or imitate superheroes, that's considered to be violent. In fact, Jerry and Dorothy Singer, whose studies are mentioned by Dr. Radecki, say that violent behavior is an inappropriate response to describe the behavior that they were actually measuring, because none of the children were actually violent. And I think that's a very crucial distinction we have to make.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right, we'll come back. Jim?

LEHRER: The most recent comprehensive look at TV violence was done last year by the National Institute of Mental Health. The project director was David Pearl, a clinical psychologist who is chief of the institute's behavioral science research branch. Dr. Pearl, now, your group looked, I assume, at the 29 studies that Dr. Radecki mentioned, plus another many, many thousand. In other words, you looked at 2,500 altogether, is that right, on the connection between behavior and television?

Dr. DAVID PEARL: We did look at a large number of studies. I don't know how many specifically related to violence. There are many which have at least tangential relationship to violent or aggressive behaviors.

LEHRER: You didn't launch any new or separate studies yourself, correct?

Dr. PEARL: No. There had been so much new in the literature since the Surgeon General's report in 1972 that we felt that we could make our best contribution by assessing what the new evidence had to say. The Surgeon General's report, as you indicated, did find or did conclude that there was at least significant evidence for a short-term effect, but less certain evidence for continuing long-range effects. And one of the problems that some people saw was that the Surgeon General's report depended considerably on experimental studies, which I think were excellent with respect to being able to derive causal relationships but were potentially criticizable on the basis that they may not have too much relevance to real-life viewing or real-life behavior. So what was needed were field studies in terms of the actual behaviors of children and adolescents and others in real life.And the last decade has provided many good instances of such kinds of studies.

LEHRER: What did it all add up to, in your judgment, Dr. Pearl?

Dr. PEARL: Generally speaking we concluded that the bulk of evidence -- and some of it quite rigorous evidence -- was to the effect that there were significant effects of television viewing on subsequent aggressive behaviors of many children and adolescents. Now, one point I think needs to be made here, because it's often set up as a kind of a straw man. By finding this kind of effect, that doesn't mean that if anyone watches television, automatically they're going to become an aggressive, violent actor, a criminal as such.

LEHRER: What does it mean then?

Dr. PEARL: It means that television viewing of violent or aggressive programs is one factor which, along with other factors which have to be considered, can make a difference, depending on the circumstances -- can make a difference as to the behaviors of some individuals.

LEHRER: You said there is rigorous evidence. Give me an example of the rigorous evidence.

Dr. PEARL: Well, for -- let me give you several different kinds of studies which were carried out. First of all in communities where there had been no television but television was introduced, and compared as to the effects following the introduction of television as compared to control communities in which television had already been or had not yet been introduced. In a number of such studies the introduction of television did have certain kinds of consequences, certain kinds of effects. That's one thing. Furthermore, we have longitudinal studies which followed the same children over a long period of time and in which the behavior of these children were assessed over those different points of time. And the findings were to the effect that, for example, violent or aggressive behaviors at an early age, or I should say that the watching of violent programs at an early age was a better predictor of aggressive or violent behaviors when these young children became adolescents than almost any other factor.

LEHRER: Did any of these 2,500-or-so studies speak to Dr. Radecki's specific point about cartoon violence?

Dr. PEARL: There were a number of such studies which indeed dealt with cartoon violence. There was some reference previously to the studies of the Singers, but the Singers conducted two longitudinal, short-term longitudinal studies with three-, four-and five-year-old children. One study dealt with those of the lower socioeconomic class; the other middle-class children. And theydid indeed find that cartoon violence did bring about an increase in aggressive behaviors in the playground. Now, it's true. These behaviors on the part of these pre-school children did not involve a violent assault of behaviors with deadly weapons, but they did involve such things as punching, kicking and other things which exceeded what had been seen before, and exceeded a control group. Now, it's true that one can say it's ridiculous to say that a bursting of a balloon or whatever could be generalized to the kinds of aggressive and violent behaviors, but there's much more solid evidence than that. And these are only indications which merge and fit in and coalesce with a large number of other kinds of findings which are mutually supportive.

LEHRER: Thank you. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: Many newspaper and magazine articles have been critical of TV violence, and many of them have carried headlines similar to the one in this month's Reader's Digest. But the violence debate also remains alive and well in the headlines. A headline in this month's Washington Journalism Review proclaims, "The TV Violence Theory Down the Tube: A Bum Rap for the Box." Its author is Eric Mink, the TV critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Mr. Mink, you think TV is getting a bum rap on violence?

ERIC MINK: Yes, I think it is, and I think it's -- television is a very convenient and sort of deserving target in many ways, because so much of television programming is mediocre. We know it, the networks know it, although they tend not to admit it, and the viewers know it, even though they watch it. But to then make the leap from programming that is substandard or poor artistic quality, bad writing, bad acting, bad directing, all of those kinds of things, to blaming it for the violence in society, I think is just beyond comprehension.

HUNTER-GAULT: Well, you just heard Dr. Pearl go over some of those research studies, and his conclusions as well as Dr. Radecki's, you disagree with that?

Mr. MINK: I disagree, because the studies that are set up cannot escape the fundamental laws of scientific inquiry in which you set up a control group and you try to measure -- you're looking for one variable, and so you set up a situation in which that's the only variable that's different. But these studies, because they're taking place in a free and open society, cannot control things like parental attitudes toward aggression and home behavior and peer-group attitudes toward aggression and what happens at school and what happens while they're playing outside. Those kinds of things really form the meat of what forms a child's attitudes towards things, what he's rewarded for and what he's punished for. And to hang this thing on television just because it happens that 98% of all the homes in the United States have television, I just think that's grossly unfair.

HUNTER-GAULT: You wouldn't concede even that television is a variable, a factor in that equation?

Mr. MINK: Well, the question is, are you talking long term or short term? There's no question that people imitate what they see -- kids will imitate what they see; we knew that centuries ago. We didn't need government studies or university-sponsored research to tell us that. But when they make the leap from seeing television as a child and then becoming a more aggressive adult -- some of the longitudinal studies they talked about measured children at 10-year intervals. I'd like to know what happened in the 10 years in between. Was it just television that they experienced during that 10-year period? What about their home life? Were their parents always around? Was there alcoholism? Was there drug abuse? I mean, there are any thousands of variables that can affect the way people respond to social pressures.

HUNTER-GAULT: Do I hear you saying that you don't think, then, that this connection can be established, the connection between violence and television? Are you saying that?

Mr. MINK: I'm saying that I don't see how, in a society such as the one we have, it is possible to conduct a certain study that will give you a conclusive result at the end of it.

HUNTER-GAULT: And you mentioned the mimicking. The reports that I've read and papers and magazine articles about children who have died supposedly because they mimicked some thing they saw on television, you don't buy that?

Mr. MINK: Well, I think you have to look at each one of those incidents individually and examine the circumstances surrounding them.There's certainly no question that millions of people saw those same things and did not do anything destructive to themselves or to anyone else. Now, maybe there are certain circumstances that we don't understand, that we're not aware of that may have come into play. When those things happen, they are tragedies. People are injured or in some cases lose their lives, and they are horrible tragedies for the people involved.

HUNTER-GAULT: So you don't buy the thing about cartoons either?

Mr. MINK: I'm very dubious about cartoons.In fact, there was a report, I think, two weeks ago in The New York Times about some research now going on at Harvard in which children are found to be able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality at a much younger age than we previously thought. It's difficult for adults looking back at children to say these kids really know what they're seeing; they know that that's a cartoon, that that's a dog who speaks, and our dogs don't speak, so that's fantasy. I think we don't give either children or adults much credit.

HUNTER-GAULT: Very quickly then, you don't buy Dr. Radecki's whole educational boycott idea?

Mr. MINK: Well, I -- it depends on what you mean by buying it. I don't have any objection to Radecki doing the kinds of activities that he wants to do. And in fact, because, as we saw a couple of years ago with the Coalition for Better Television's campaign against sex on television, advertisers are very weak-willed when it comes to pressure and controversial issues. And I think it's entirely possible, whether there's any merit to his position or not, that advertisers will start to look twice at what they're doing and maybe pull back from it.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Jim?

LEHRER: Dr. Radecki, Eric Mink says to hang it on television is grossly unfair.

Dr. RADECKI: Well, television is certainly not the only cause of violence in our society, or perhaps not even the cause of the majority of violence. Certainly I would agree with him -- alcohol, poor parenting, breakdown of school and court-system structures, things of that type all have to be counted in. But a study funded by CBS itself, Dr. Belson's study in London, England, looked at 227 possible causes of violence in society, and found out of those that television and movie violence was the number one cause. We estimate that a good 25%, perhaps even higher, of the violence in our society is coming from the direct or indirect effects of television violence, the culture of violence it establishes in our society.

LEHRER: Dr. Wurtzel, what do you make of that figure? Twenty-five percent of all the violence in our society emanates in some way from television.

Dr. WURTZEL: I've never seen any other data to support that conclusion, so it's just something that is an astounding figure. If you consider the fact that by eliminating television, if you would eliminate 25% of all the crime, that means that things like poverty and socioeconomic status and where someone lives and so forth don't matter very much -- I just think even from a logical standpoint I really can't understand how Dr. Radecki can make that claim. I also want to bring up something that I think is very important, because we've all sort of just assumed that when Dr. Radecki says that there is morning mayhem on Saturday morning that people assume that the violence that they're thinking of is real, sort of punching, kicking, hurtful, harmful, injury, violent behavior. I think most people watching the show probably haven't had an opportunity lately to see Saturday morning programming. But they ought to take a look at it and judge for themselves whether or not what Dr. Radecki is counting and what he considers to be violent -- shows like Pac-Man, Laverne and Shirley, Richie Rich, the Smurfs -- if these indeed are violent programs. I don't think that's the case at all, and I think that it leads to some very gross misconceptions.

LEHRER: Dr. Radecki?

Dr. RADECKI: Well, certainly in trying to capture Smurfs and boil them and eat them alive, that's -- I wouldn't want that to happen to me. Saturday morning is full of murders, attempted murders -- very few people die; they all spring back to life. They're always trying to blow up the Roadrunner, trying to murder Bugs Bunny. These superheroes, it's just one constant conflict between a very violent superhero good guy and a very violent evil force, and they're always attempting to destroy each other. I don't see how you cannot call that violent.

LEHRER: Dr. Pearl, what about Eric Mink's point from a research standpoint, that there are variables in all of these, that there's no way to really do a study that would actually prove the point that you and others are making?

Dr. PEARL: I disagree very strongly with him. He's entitled to his opinion, even if in my opinion he is very much wrong about this. For one thing, we do employ control groups in many -- all of these studies. There are assessments of events which transpire --

LEHRER: During the 10-year period as he said?

Dr. PEARL: There have been some. There was a volume which was published in 1977 by those investigated who carried out the study from 1960 to 1972 when it appeared in the Surgeon General's report. This is the Huesmann and Eron's study; 1977 they published an entire book which dealt with much more detail concerning some of these subjects. They have continued to follow up these subjects to determine what the longer-term consequences are. So there is indeed on many of these subjects more data. But even that point is -- I think has to be addressed. If you set up studies, field studies, you assume that many things can happen to individuals. But if you have the appropriate controls, subjects, you can make some kind of comparisons. And if indeed you're aware of the fact that the data perhaps is not as certain as you would like, you can make comparisons to other data which may be more certain and see whether or not it corroborates it.

LEHRER: Do you buy that, Eric Mink?

Mr. MINK: What you end up doing is then comparing studies that all have compromises built in to them and then you throw them into some magic hat and wave a wand over them and say that you have overwhelming evidence when you add up all of these flawed studies together. I think that really strains the credibility of people.

LEHRER: Let me ask you this, Dr. Wurtzel. The point that Eric Mink made a moment ago also, that whether or not Dr. Radecki is right or wrong, what he's doing is going to have an impact. The sponsors and the networks are going to run scared. Is that right?

Dr. WURTZEL: I don't believe that's the case. I think, as Eric mentioned just a minute ago, there was another boycott a year or so ago, supposedly regarding how one particular specialinterest group felt certain kinds of program themes should be treated, and that boycott had absolutely no impact at all. The problem with a boycott is that there are hundreds and hundreds of admittedly special-interest groups, each of which has, I think, you know, a real -- feels very strongly about an issue. And yet if any network or station which is licensed and which has to represent a very broad audience were to listen to any one particular viewpoint, it would be impossible to function. We have very elaborate standards. We have people who are broadcast-standards-and-practices editors who, in dealing with children's programming in particular, are especially trained. They are child psychologists; we use both people inside the company and outside consultants to ensure that the programming that we have and the content is both appropriate and responsible.

LEHRER: Dr. Radecki?

Dr. RADECKI: Well, there are specific research studies on many of the cartoon shows that are now being shown, showing that they do increase irritability, anger and violence in children viewers. Programs like your superhero programs have been researched and have been found harmful.

LEHRER: What about Dr. Wurtzel's early point that the boycott isn't a way to go; if you got a problem, why don't you come and talk to him about it?

Dr. RADECKI: Oh, I don't think there's any value in talking to the networks. They're interested in one thing and one thing only, and that's the almighty buck. I do think that the best way is to have counter-advertising on television. For every two commercials or three commercials promoting violent programs, for there to be a commercial produced by the public-interest community saying, "Hey, think twice before you tune in to see a violent show. There is evidence that it can have a harmful effect."

LEHRER: We have to leave it there. Gentlemen in New York, thank you very much; gentlemen here, thank you, and good night, Charlayne.

HUNTER-GAULT: Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: And we'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.