The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington.

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After tonight's News Summary, we examine the culture of violence in the media and efforts to tone it down, and Charlayne Hunter-Gault has a conversation with the poet Charles Simic, about his war torn birthplace, the former Yugoslavia. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton responded today to the new personal conduct charges against him. He said he had done nothing wrong. Two Arkansas state troopers have accused Mr. Clinton of sexual improprieties during his term as governor of Arkansas and his transition to the presidency. They claim Mr. Clinton used state vehicles and personnel to facilitate his meetings with women. This morning, the President told reporters the stories were outrageous and he had not abused his position as a state or federal official. Later, during a news conference with reporters from Arkansas, Mr. Clinton talked about character.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think character is something that you have to demonstrate rather than try to define but, you know, I think what the American people have seen this year is that I love this country, and I believe in it, and I believe in its potential, and I am taking on a lot of tough issues that have been long ignored, and I'm working hard to -- very hard -- and I don't think, you know -- there has been no suggestion that anything about my presidency raises a character question. And I feel good about where we are and where we're going. But I don't think this is the sort thing where any person should be in a position of defending himself, not a President. I have to work at being President. I have to do my job for the American people and let them draw their own conclusion.

MR. LEHRER: The President also denied allegations he offered jobs to his former Arkansas security people to keep them from talking. Mr. Clinton said that absolutely did not happen. The two troopers told reporters today neither the President nor anyone from the White House had contacted them but they said they stand by their story. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: The Commerce Department today reported the economy grew at an annual rate of 2.9 percent in the third quarter. That was somewhat better than previously estimated and reflected strong consumer spending and home sales. The U.S. Postal Service is considering a rate hike for 1995. A postal spokesman said the increase would probably be under 14 percent. That would raise the cost of the first class stamp to about 33 cents. Postal rates were last increased in 1991.

MR. LEHRER: The Pentagon today released guidelines for its "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue" policy for gays in the military. It allows homosexuals to serve but forbids homosexual conduct. Sec. of Defense Aspin said he was confident the administration and the military had reached the right solution, but gay rights advocates disagreed. Both sides spoke at Washington news conferences.

TANYA DOMI, Gay Rights Advocate: Today's announcement does not change or alter our commitment towards achieving justice and dignity for gay and lesbian service members. We are not going away. This issue is not going away. As long as injustice exists for our community, we will continue to press our government for change, whether in the Congress, in the courts, or by exercising our First Amendment rights of peaceful assembly and free speech.

LES ASPIN, Secretary of Defense: We are going to be able under this new policy to argue in the courts that here is a policy that has been considered by the executive branch, has been considered by the military, has been considered by the Congress, and all of them, those entities have supported it.

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton today announced $411 million in grants to state and local authorities to aid the homeless. Local officials will be required to match the grants with support services such as job training.

MR. MacNeil: South Africa's parliament today overwhelmingly approved a new constitution giving blacks equal power for the first time. Nelson Mandela's African National Congress hailed the vote as another crucial step towards a multiracial democracy. The new interim constitution is opposed by a coalition of white and black conservatives, including Inkatha Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Nik Gowing of Independent Television News reports on today's developments.

MR. GOWING: In Parliament in Cape Town the "whites only" chamber has overseen South African politics since the declaration of independence in 1961. Today parliament gathered to formally surrender white power by approving an interim constitution, for President F.W. DeKlerk, the culmination of a risky political road which will lead to multiracial elections in April, and blacks in government for the first time, the end of three centuries of white power in South Africa.

PRES. F.W. DeKLERK: By accepting a new constitution we took South Africa over the threshold of history into a new era with all its dangers, opportunities, and challenges.

MR. GOWING: They voted to abolish the constitution that gave these white and colored politicians exclusive power. From the back benches shouts of anger from conservatives who'd seen their last minute efforts to water down the new constitution fail. They had wanted the power of the central government weakened in future and guarantees for a white homeland, the folkstat. The pro-apartheid conservatives sang the Afrikaner national anthem and labeled the interim constitution "a monster." They called for a new liberation struggle and predicted a violent backlash. The tensions to come were underlined in Begestal outside Johannesburg today. Eight thousand ANC supporters marching to protest that security forces are colluding with Inkatha who are opposed to the new constitution.

MR. MacNeil: British Prime Minister John Major today ruled out new talks with the Irish Republican Army and amnesty for IRA prisoners. Major made the announcement during a surprise visit to Belfast. The IRA's political wing, Sinn Fein, sought the new talks on a recent Anglo-Irish accord. It promises Sinn Fein a place in future negotiations if the IRA renounces violence in Northern Ireland.

MR. LEHRER: Russian President Boris Yeltsin said today economic reforms would continue despite the recent election gains by anti- reform nationalists. We have the report from Moscow by Adrian Britton of Independent Television News.

ADRIAN BRITTON, ITN: After 10 days of post election silence, this was Yeltsin's first public response to the humiliation suffered at the polls. Against the advice of some senior ministers, he refused to sack his radical reformers blamed for the election disaster. They would stay in office, he said, his reforms would continue. It was a side swipe at extreme nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky who gained a third of the army vote. Ominously, Yeltsin told the military he'll take action, and he's vowed to use his new constitutional powers to stop the rise of fascism. But some Yeltsin supporters watched in dismay as the President hinted at softening reforms once inflation is brought under control.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: [speaking through interpreter] Yeltsin did not go far enough. We need stronger leadership for the next four years.

MR. BRITTON: President Yeltsin's speech will do nothing to stop a showdown with nationalists or repair a split in his government between radical and moderate reformers.

MR. LEHRER: In Washington, President Clinton said he spoke with Yeltsin today and he described him as upbeat, despite the election results. He said they also talked about their upcoming summit during a one half hour telephone conversation. Mr. Clinton indicated he would not meet Vladimir Zhirinovsky when he travels to Moscow next month.

MR. MacNeil: Fidel Castro's daughter has fled Cuba and been granted asylum in the United States. A State Department official said today that Alina Fernandez Revuelta flew to Spain on Monday and arrived in Atlanta yesterday. The 37 year old former model has been a longtime critic of her father's revolution and has not spoken with him for years. That's it for the News Summary. Now it's on to an American scourge and a poetic sage. FOCUS - CULTURE OF VIOLENCE

MR. MacNeil: Does the entertainment industry contribute to the culture of violence in this country and what, if anything, can be done about it? That's our lead segment tonight. We'll hear six views on violent rap music, video games, as well as violent TV and films. We start with this backgrounder from Correspondent Jeffrey Kaye of public station KCET-Los Angeles.

MR. KAYE: The action was intense at this video arcade. Daniel Kulthavat and his friends were engaged in Mortal Combat, Mortal Combat II actually. That's the name of the game. And it's not for the squeamish.

MR. KAYE: What's the difference between this and the other games?

DANIEL KULTHAVAT: It's more, more graphical, more realistic.

MR. KAYE: And that's what you like?

DANIEL KULTHAVAT: Yeah.

MR. KAYE: Why?

DANIEL KULTHAVAT: Because it's more clearer and it's more fascinating than before.

MR. KAYE: But what about that blood spurting out, doesn't that get to you?

DANIEL KULTHAVAT: That's why I like to play it.

MR. KAYE: Kulthavat says that while he enjoys the realistic violence of the latest video games, he also knows the difference between make believe and real life.

DANIEL KULTHAVAT: I prefer this violence because it's fantasy, not reality.

MR. KAYE: You know the difference?

DANIEL KULTHAVAT: Yes.

MR. KAYE: But some U.S. Senators are skeptical.

SEN. HERB KOHL, [D] Wisconsin: There should be no dispute that the pervasive images of murder, mutilation, and mayhem encourages our kids to view violent activity as a normal part of life, and that interactive video violence de-sensitizes children to the real thing. Our nation's children should not be told that to be a winner you need to be a killer.

MR. KAYE: In addition to taking on deadly images from video games, lawmakers and others are criticizing the often homicidal messages of gangster rap. Some radio stations have banned violent lyrics. One of the hottest labels, Death Row/Interscope, is owned in part by Time-Warner. The label's best selling superstar, Snoop Doggy Dogg, is facing a murder charge in real life.

NEWS ANCHOR: The horrifying discovery of Cassidy Shutter's body leaves police fearing the worst.

MR. KAYE: It is difficult to escape images of violence as entertainment or as news. "If it bleeds, it leads" has long been the tacit motto of many local newscasts. Today news competes for attention with sensational magazine shows syndicated and network.

SPOKESMAN: Tonight, the manhunt is on to find a child killer.

MR. KAYE: Adding to the feeling of all too pervasive violence is another profitable genre, confessional television.

JANE WHITNEY: ["Jane Whitney Show"] They don't even know how many people they've killed. What they do know is that they're getting away with murder because they're both only 17 years old. Do you really mean that, Joshua?

JOSHUA: Yeah.

JANE WHITNEY: You get away with murder?

JOSHUA: Yeah.

MR. KAYE: So-called reality shows on TV get big ratings. "Cops" is among the biggest. Its gritty scenes are often indistinguishable from their make-believe counterparts. This is reality, and this is ABC's latest cop drama "NYPD Blue." The networks, in response to criticism, have said they'll tone down violence but it's not just the commercial stations that broadcast the stuff. PBS programmers prefer their perpetrators to have four legs or to dress in period costumes and speak with foreign accents. Violence as entertainment has also led to a long string of movie successes. Some of the goriest films are depicted in Hollywood's Wax Museum. They include "Terminator II," an Arnold Schwarzenegger epic that is among the top grossing American movies ever made. Film super heroes have their roots in comic books. At Golden Apple Comics in Hollywood, such characters as "The Punisher" are big sellers. But store owner Bill Liebowitz says popular culture has always incorporated violence as entertainment.

BILL LIEBOWITZ, Golden Apple Comics: The idea of, of art imitating life is not new. Comic books, television, movies, popular music, whatever tends to mirror what's going on in the real world. The history of comics or the representation of action in terms of words and pictures could probably be traced back to the cave paintings.

MR. KAYE: Besides cave paintings, violence as art and spectacle does have a long history. Only a few hundred years ago, public executions were considered entertainment. At Rome's Colosseum, gladiators fights to the death were eventually banned as too violent. To some, events such as boxing and Sunday night football are reminders of an ancient fascination with violence as sport.

ACTOR: ["Titus Andronicus] Witness my knife's sharp point.

MR. KAYE: In literature and drama, gore is far from a recent invention. Shakespeare had more than his fair share of murders and mutilations.

MR. KAYE: [reading to little girl] The fox gobbled him up, and that was the end of the gingerbread man.

MR. KAYE: Violence also has a long tradition in children's literature. Images range from babies who fall when boughs break to killer witches. For many kids these days, the violence of Saturday morning cartoons has replaced classical Grimm's Fairytales. As for movies, violence started with silent films, then found popularity in such genres as gangster stories.

ACTRESS: I didn't want to. He made me do it.

MR. KAYE: In the 60s, a gangster film called "The Killers," featuring Ronald Reagan, was kept off TV because of its violence. In 1961, "Westside Story" glamorized gang members 10 years before Snoop Doggy Dogg was born.

[WESTSIDE STORY SCENE]

MR. KAYE: In the 70's, another gangster movie, "A Clockwork Orange," touched off that era's round of debate over violence. Violent westerns have also continued as a Hollywood staple. These days, however, Indians are called native Americans, and they're the good guys. The one thing that has changed in movies is the technology. When the fly was first made in 1958, its death was comparatively tame. The 1986 remake was far more graphic. Such graphic reality in movies and in video games is fueling critics and the perception at least that there is more violence in the media. What is clear is violence as entertainment has always been with us. The big difference today in an increasingly violent society is that new technology brings the violence right into our homes.

MR. MacNeil: We're joined by six people with different views on how or whether entertainment contributes to the culture of violence. Jonathan Freedman is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. Leonard Eron is a psychology professor and research scientist at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and he joins us from Chicago. Rev. Calvin Butts is the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City. Errol Morris is the director of the "Thin Blue Line," a documentary film about the murder of a policeman in Texas. He's currently working on pilots for possible TV series. Jonathan Alter is a senior writer for Newsweek Magazine, and Mark Dennings is a student at Roosevelt High School in Washington, D.C. He's also an editor for "Children's Express," a national news service reported by children. It's distributed to 57 newspapers across the country. Prof. Eron, in Chicago, is violence in today's movies, television, other media making the society more violent or reflecting the violence in the society?

PROF. ERON: I think it does both but the most important aspect for us is that television violence, viewing of it continually by young children leads to their own aggressive behavior and future violent behavior. This has been demonstrated in many studies by now. It has been corroborated by five different independent commissions, noted scholars, researchers in the area from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Surgeon General's Office, the American Psychological Association, the National Research Council, all have come to the conclusion that the continual viewing of violence, especially by young people, leads to an increase in their aggressive behavior and in their future violent and criminal activity.

MR. MacNeil: Prof. Freedman, what's your view of that?

PROF. FREEDMAN: Well, I'm sorry to say that I don't agree at all with Leonard Eron. When I reviewed the research very carefully I was amazed, as were a bunch of graduate students and other faculty that reviewed it with me, how weak and inconsistent the evidence is. It is simply not the kind of evidence that anyone in a scientific background would accept if they didn't already -- weren't already fully committed to the belief.

PROF. ERON: Prof. Freedman's a lone voice.

PROF. FREEDMAN: Excuse me. Leonard Eron mentions these various committees but as he well knows, these committees are stacked with people who already believe in it, and those who don't already believe in the causal effects certainly have not spent the time to read the dozens and dozens of articles, themselves. They take Prof. Eron and other people's word for it. The research does not, simply does not support it.

MR. MacNeil: Prof. Eron.

PROF. ERON: That is absolutely untrue. Prof. Freedman wrote his review article over 10 years ago. That means he must have done the review and the research about a year before that. He failed in his own review to include many studies that were very essential and many other reviews of the literature at that time. Since then, I guess his article was published in 1984, there have been more and more articles, more and more reviews, Neta analyses. Prof. Freedman's review was very inadequate. He eliminated studies that didn't agree with him. He included studies that were very weak, and his review just can't be believed anymore in terms of the --

PROF. FREEDMAN: If I could just answer that.

MR. MacNeil: Let him answer, Prof. Eron.

PROF. ERON: Sure.

PROF. FREEDMAN: This review was published by the leading Journal of the American Psychological Association.

PROF. ERON: Ten years ago.

PROF. FREEDMAN: I did not -- since then -- since then there have been a relatively small number of studies and, in my opinion, although some of the studies had been very well done, results have been so disappointing that, if anything, they've weakened the case for the causal argument. I know Prof. Eron is extremely committed to this. His whole research career is based on it. And I'm a great admirer of the kind of research that he does. But I challenge anyone to start with an open mind and to read that research, and they will simply not be convinced. If they thought -- that they didn't know -- it could be either way -- if they read the research, they would be absolutely amazed at how weak the research is.

PROF. ERON: I certainly had an open mind when I started this. I never thought that there was a relation between television violence viewing and violent behavior on the part of the viewer.

MR. MacNeil: Well --

PROF. ERON: But it just hit us in the face. The results we got couldn't be explained any other way. It's like the relation -- it's the same strength as the relation between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Not everybody who smokes gets lung cancer. Not everybody who has lung cancer has smoked. But there is no rational person outside the tobacco industry who would deny that there is a causative link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. And it's the same thing with television violence viewing and subsequent behavior, especially in young children. I think adults can watch whatever they want.

MR. MacNeil: Well, we -- I think what we've demonstrated by this little mini debate is that the experts who study these things professionally disagree on it. Let's, let's let some people who are not psychologists and have their opinions. Rev. Butts, what is your opinion?

REV. BUTTS: My opinion is that the continual viewing of violence on television and in the movies, listening to it through CD's and audio tapes, does contribute an increase in the violence that we seen in our society. I say that not based on research of a sort, but this is empirical knowledge. I mean, I see it in the streets every day. I see the young people listening to it. I see how they behave. For instance, in watching Kung Fu movies, I see in the streets just their playfulness turned into violent confrontations because they're trying to kick each other in the head or kick each other in the shins or demonstrate some other form of kung fu art. Also, I hear more and more young people discussing the possession of guns, how they would hurt somebody, the kinds of things they see on television and in movies, they would do to each other. So, therefore, I am convinced, not based on any research, and because I live smack in the middle of an inner-city community, that it is, in fact, true. It may not be the root cause of violence but it certainly contributes to its pervasiveness and increase in our society.

MR. MacNeil: Let's talk to a young person. Mark Jennings, in, in Washington, in the beginning of that film we ran showing the boy playing Mortal Combat, did you see that when it was on?

MARK JENNINGS: Yes.

MR. MacNeil: After he'd played it, he said that violence doesn't bother him because it's fantasy, not reality. Now, I'm sure you play a lot of video games and you watch a lot of movies. Do you - - describe how you feel about the difference between fantasy or fictional violence and the real thing?

MARK JENNINGS: As far as violence and television and, you know, video games and everything, I think that everyone can tell the difference between fantasy and reality and, you know, I believe that maybe these, these television shows and rap songs, they do have a small influence on a small portion of people, but I -- for the majority of the people, I think that, you know, it doesn't affect them in any type of way at all.

REV. BUTTS: It's important because I think he is correct as far as it goes. It has an influence on what he might consider to be a small number of people, but it is, in fact, not a small number of people, and even if it were a small number of people, this small number of people are doing a lot of damage to people who are senior citizens, to home owners, to young people like himself, black men shooting black men. It's doing a lot of damage in our communities. Nobody says it's all over, but we do say it is significant enough for us to pay attention to it and to fight against it.

MR. MacNeil: Let me ask Mark --

PROF. ERON: Mark says that he can tell the difference between fantasy and reality but two and three and four and five and six year old children who keep watching this on television over and over again four hours on Saturday morning cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

PROF. FREEDMAN: There's actually very good evidence that they can tell the difference. And every time the research is done, the children are quite capable of knowing that this is the real thing and this isn't the real thing. I think the children who watch all this stuff, if they went out on the street, as they sometimes do, and watch real violence, they would know very well that this is totally different from what they've been watching.

PROF. ERON: A number of experiments have demonstrated that two and three and four year old children, it's obvious they do not. Just, just interview a three year old kid and ask him if what he sees on television is going on outside.

MR. MacNeil: Let's bring in, let's bring in Jonathan Alter here of Newsweek.

MR. ALTER: I was just going to say that whether they can tell the difference when asked in a survey doesn't address the question of a conditioning of violence, a desensitizing to violence, a general numbing to the consequences in violence. I happen to be strongly opposed to any government activity in this area.

MR. MacNeil: We'll come to what we might do about this in a minute, but just on the effect.

MR. ALTER: Look at the history of advertising in this country. Do we believe that billions and billions of dollars have been spent since the dawn of television without any connection and behavior, without any faith on the part of those advertisers that their ads might condition the behavior of the viewer? Of course not. Of course it conditions their behavior. That's why they spend billions of dollars. Of course, what people see on television conditions their behavior in some respect.

MR. MacNeil: What do you feel about this, Errol Morris, as a maker of television?

MR. MORRIS: Well, I get confused by these arguments quite often. If somebody asked me, is there a "monkey see, monkey do" principle at work in life in general, I would say, yes, people see things and act on the basis of what they see. But if the argument is that by watching a particularly violent television show that you go out and suddenly commit particular acts of violence, I just don't believe it.

MR. MacNeil: Are you worried in putting violence into a film you make about the impact it may have on people's behavior?

MR. MORRIS: I worry about whether or not the films that I make are good films, interesting films, and have some intellectual content. If violence is one way to tell a story and an important part of telling that story, I see no reason to omit it. I think this whole obsession with controlling television violence in part comes out of our feeling of futility or frustration about controlling real violence in society. We can't really do something --

PROF. FREEDMAN: Absolutely.

MR. MORRIS: We can't really do something --

MR. MacNeil: Let him finish his point.

MR. MORRIS: --- significant about that, why not try to really impose censorship or controls on the media?

MR. MacNeil: Who said absolutely?

PROF. FREEDMAN: I did in Toronto.

MR. MacNeil: Yeah. Prof. Freedman.

PROF. FREEDMAN: If -- television is an easy out. We can't control poverty, or we don't seem to be able to. We can't control the drug trade which the police say is responsible for a great deal of the violence. We can't control what goes on in families where people get angry at each other. We can't control racial conflict very well. All of these things are extremely difficult, and virtually everyone agrees are at the root of most of the violence in our society. So we turn --

PROF. ERON: Violence is caused by many things. Television violence is only one of the causes.

MR. MacNeil: One at a time. Prof. Eron.

PROF. ERON: Violence is an overdetermined behavior. Certainly poverty is one of the causes. The breakup of the family is another cause. Lack of opportunity, all of these are causes, but one cause which is independent of the others is the viewing of television violence and Neta analyses, sophisticated, statistical analysis of all of the results. It's gone many steps further than Prof. Freedman's have shown, that there is about a 10 percent effect, 10 percent of --

MR. MacNeil: Jonathan Alter.

MR. ALTER: I just want to say I'm very tired of the it's this but it's not that school of approach toward violence. The NRA says it's repeat offenders but it's not guns. The civil libertarians say it's guns, it's not repeat offenders. The Senators say it's violence on television but it's not guns. So we won't push that. Hollywood says it's not violence on television, it's guns. It's everything. I don't think that we can have a rational debate about violence unless we can accept all of these factors contribute to the culture of violence, and we must start to address each one of them.

PROF. FREEDMAN: Could I just add one thing?

MR. MacNeil: Yeah. Who's that?

PROF. FREEDMAN: Jonathan Freedman. In other cultures there is extremely violent television. For example, Japan, and the incidence of violent crime is extremely low. Canada has virtually the same television viewing as the United States, and the rate of violent crime in Canada is much, much lower than the United States. There is no good reason to believe that television violence plays a big role here.

MR. MacNeil: Let him finish his point. In other words, Prof. Freedman, you're saying Canadian kids have watched the same American programming because they live in a different culture, they aren't as violent?

PROF. FREEDMAN: Exactly. And the Japanese children even more so, and they have virtually no violence at all.

MR. MacNeil: Prof. Eron.

PROF. ERON: Certainly that is true. There are different conditions, however, that -- in these other countries. I mean, somebody always compares Windsor with Detroit, saying they get the same programs, and there's a much higher crime rate in Detroit than in Windsor. Of course there is because the social conditions are so much different in Detroit than they are in Windsor. Also, the Canadian Broadcasting System sponsors many, many pro social kinds of programs, many more than are viewed by kids in the United States.

MR. MacNeil: Rev. Butts.

REV. BUTTS: I agree with Prof. Eron and with Jonathan Alter. All of these things are important, but what we're discussing now is extremely important because it is a major contributor to the violence that we see. I don't live in Canada. I live in Harlem, and in that community, as well as others around the United States of America, I know there is an increasing rate of violence, and a lot of young people as well as older people are being killed. And I think that unless we address what we see as being a part of the problem and address it directly and call for -- I'm not for government censorship but I am for putting as much pressure on these media organs as possible to get them to change their behavior. Your news piece mentioned that certain radio stations have ceased to play certain kinds of gangster "rap," and I think that's important. And I think until we can continue to make these points, that even though we have these intellectual discussions, I still see blood in the street, so it is important for us to recognize that this violence that comes through our ears, this violence that we see on the screen, is a major contributors to the conditioning of young people and people who are not so young, and people who are not able to make rational decisions.

MR. MacNeil: Let me ask Mark Jennings, Mark Jennings in Washington, do you think that's a good idea to, to try and, what Rev. Butts is trying to do, to try and get the rap music video makers and the stores to cut down on the amount of violent talk in gangster rap?

MARK JENNINGS: Actually, I don't think that it's a good idea at all because to me, you know, all of this is our, all of this is entertainment, and, you know, the movie directors, they, they make their movies, and then, you know, this is art to them. And so the rappers, when they sing their songs, it's art, it's just like a poet. And, umm, and another thing that I would like to disagree with Rev. Butts on is that I don't think that it's a major problem at all, and I think the media is blowing it out of proportion. To me, I feel that it's a small problem, and, you know, we need to deal with the major problems of drugs which are, are the root causes of violence. I mean, this to me, we can deal with after we deal with after we deal with the other things. If you want to try to solve, or you know, even entertain the problem of violence, we need to solve it by, by hitting the real, the real roots of it, and television violence, you know, violence in the video games, this isn't it.

REV. BUTTS: He's an intelligent young man, but unfortunately, his perspective is not as broad as it ought to be. And the only thing I want to say to him is that this is a problem --

MR. MacNeil: You can say it to him directly. He's right here.

REV. BUTTS: This is a problem that exists in a major way, especially when we consider the numbers of young people who have been killed, the numbers of young people who are incarcerated. It is interrelated. It is not drugs and then violence. It is drugs and violence. It all goes together.

MR. MacNeil: That's true in your case, isn't it, Mark Jennings? You told us. You know people who are in jail, and you know people who have been killed?

MARK JENNINGS: Right. But, you know, to me, you know personally, and to some people who I have spoken to before I came on the program, I mean, the, the -- violence in these video games and the music and television is, is a small portion. You know, it's not the real problem. It's not the real thing that causes violence.

PROF. ERON: Here we have to emphasize --

MR. MacNeil: Excuse me. I'll come to you in a moment. Jonathan Alter.

MR. ALTER: I just want to take issue with you briefly. It's not art. It's commerce. We're talking here about money that record companies are making. Art is what Errol does with a thin blue line. If you want to, you have a right to stand out and use gangster rap lyrics on a street corner. You have that right in this country. Nobody has a right to a record contract, a right to be played on the radio. Those are commercial decisions, and once you enter the commercial realm, it's perfectly proper, indeed, commendable to use commercial pressure to keep those socially irredeemable things off the air.

MR. MORRIS: I think this, this line between art and commerce is not so easy to define. I also think that part of what we're reacting to, yes, there are all of these images on television and the movies, frankly, people enjoy them. I enjoy them. But what we become aware of through looking at news reports or reality-based television is how endemic violence is to our society at large. It throws violence in our face. How we react to that is another thing altogether.

MR. MacNeil: Are you saying depictions, graphic depictions of violence in all the electronic media are healthy because people enjoyed them?

MR. MORRIS: I don't know -- I mean there are all of these theories, the catharsis value of entertainment. You see violent acts, and you feel less violent as a result of watching them. I really don't know whether this is --

MR. MacNeil: Let's try that on our --

MR. MORRIS: -- true or false.

MR. MacNeil: -- psychologists. Prof. Freedman, is that true? Is there a cathartic effect of watching fictional violence?

PROF. FREEDMAN: I don't think that there's much of a cathartic effect. I mean, I think it is important that maybe gives some people some satisfaction and they enjoy it, and if they are feeling good, maybe they're less likely to be aggressive. But I don't think there's any good evidence that it's a cathartic effect, and I think Prof. Eron would agree with me on that. But, but the important point is whether there is the other side of the effect, and I'd just like to answer one question that was raised before, comparing this to the effects of advertising. In advertising, everyone is trying to sell their product. It's -- no one -- General Motors or whoever never says, listen, we don't have a good product, we don't want you to buy it. They always say we have a great product, and all of the automobile advertising is saying, go out, we have wonderful cars, buy them. And of course, people expect it to have an effect, but the depictions of violence on television and movies are very mixed. Sometimes the bad guys get punished for being violent. Sometimes the good guys don't resort to violence. When they do resort to violence, most of the time it is people who in our society are allowed to resort to violence, the police, the defectives, the CIA, whomever it is, the military, or people who are attacked and have to defend themselves. So it is very rare in our society in depictions on television that an average person walking down the street suddenly pulls a gun and shoots people, and everyone agrees it does happen occasionally, but there's a very mixed message, and it is just as likely that children learn it is not good to be violent, is that they do learn that it's good to be violent.

MR. MacNeil: What about that, Prof. Eron, that, that there's a moral content -- context to the violence?

PROF. ERON: I -- I haven't seen that. It's not a fight between good and bad at all. I want to get back to the question of catharsis. I agree with Prof. Freedman there. There's absolutely no research evidence that there is such a thing as catharsis. All that watching violence does to children is give them more and more practice in how to do it. They fantasize about it. They rehearse it. They develop scripts for behavior, and then when they are in an appropriate situation that they think is like the one they saw this originally, they will act violently.

MR. ALTER: I think there's a huge difference between good and bad. The violence that Errol shows in his movie, it doesn't glorify violence. His movie is about somebody wrongly convicted. Gangster rap advocates going out and killing people. I mean, that's where I draw the line. I like some of the violent programming myself.

PROF. ERON: I think that's a good distinction.

MR. ALTER: But that's where I draw the line between all sorts of other things and saying we will sanction, pay for, put out there for Time Inc., Time-Warner, you know, a record that urges people to commit murder.

MR. MacNeil: Okay. We have a few minutes left. Let's just use it to pick up on what should be done about it, if anything. Does anybody among the six of you think that there should be -- that the government should step in and try to control the content of these media? Does anybody agree with that?

REV. BUTTS: I don't agree with that totally. I do think that there was a time when there was some government censorship where government tried to keep down the levels of violence, profanity, and other things. That might not have been that bad. And while I'm not for total censorship, I am for some kind of honest look at what is being put out there and called "art" without any sense of responsibility.

MR. MacNeil: But although the, the Federal Communications Commission has long given up any control of content since the number of channels, and especially on television became so, so much wider, so if, if there would be a lot of opposition, and there would be, to more government regulation, and there isn't any political movement or very little political movement towards that now, what do you think of the campaign that the Rev. Butts is running of just bringing pressure on consumers through consumers to press producers and the distributors of, in his case, rap lyrics particularly?

MR. ALTER: I'm totally for it. I think it's in the grand tradition of free expression in this, in this country.

MR. MacNeil: And you think it could be effective.

MR. ALTER: It -- I think it can be very effective, and it is written off as censorship. That is not censorship. Deciding to not air certain songs or air certain movies is not censorship. Censorship is when government does it. I'm very much against that.

MR. MacNeil: What do you think about it, Errol Morris?

MR. MORRIS: I, I see nothing wrong with various groups trying to pressure people into either withholding or, or restricting the presentation of various kinds of materials. But the whole idea of the government becoming involved in deciding what is violent and what is not violent, what should be shown and what shouldn't be shown strikes me as appalling.

MR. MacNeil: And, Mark Jennings, you think as a consumer of this stuff, yourself, that it should just all hang out there and people will be able to discriminate themselves, do you?

MARK JENNINGS: Right. I do believe that, you know, we should have the choice to go out and buy whatever we want to buy, see whatever we want to see, but, you know, I do wish Rev. Butts luck in his campaign.

MR. MacNeil: Well --

REV. BUTTS: We've been successful, and I'm, I'm glad to see -- I wanted to say that be careful because some of the things that you advocate for could backfire. For instance, the characterization of certain people in certain ways over the media as free expression could be very infuriating and embarrassing and bring back times that many of us would wish to discard.

MR. MacNeil: Well, that is the end of our time now. So thank you all, gentlemen, very much. CONVERSATION

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, another view of violence and what provokes it. Charlayne Hunter-Gault talked about that with Charles Simic, the 1990 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Simichas lived in the United States for 40 years but his work reflects the dismay he feels over the civil war that is tearing apart Yugoslavia where he was born.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You've said that watching this war is to watch the madness of my country. Something is gnawing at you to speak to this issue.

CHARLES SIMIC, Poet: Well, you know, it was a place that, that functioned in some way. I mean, it was a place called Yugoslavia where, you know, people got around. People had Yugoslav passports. The borders were open for a good many years, and they could go abroad any time they wanted to, they could travel to the coast. There was a sense of one world, of multicultural interest in country. I translated writers from all parts of Yugoslavia. And I - - as I say my piece, I mean, I was always delighted by the fact that it was so different, and to see that world destroyed, physically destroyed, you know, was morally in every respect, I mean, divided, condemned to, to endless suffering, I mean, by, you know, economic suffering. I mean, it's going to take decades to, you know, for them to, you know, stand on their feet again.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You've said that watching Yugoslavia -- you still refer to the land and place Yugoslavia -- dismember itself is like watching a man mutilate himself in public. Where does that image come from?

CHARLES SIMIC: Well, you know, I was thinking of some kind of crazy, holy martyr, some medieval penitent who -- you know, they used to go around lashing themselves -- some monstrous act of abuse, self-mutilation, some religious, pathological driven violence which is at the end suicidal.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You say he's struggling to tear his heart out with his teeth.

CHARLES SIMIC: Yes.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is this what you see happening?

CHARLES SIMIC: I think, I think they're all losers. Everyone is going to lose out of this, from this war.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why do you say this? Why do you say that the people who are engaged in this are mad?

CHARLES SIMIC: I don't think they are -- I think the people -- I mean, one has to make distinctions here between the leaders, obviously, what is possible for this, the politicians. The ordinary people who were implicated in this, in these terrible acts, and, I mean, it is difficult to quite understand how and why at some point perfectly fine human beings begin to behave like beasts. I mean, why Lebanon? Why other places? I mean, how does this happen?

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And how in your view, I mean, does this distance give you some insight into how it could have happened in the former Yugoslavia?

CHARLES SIMIC: Well I think it --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Excuse me -- you say the tragedy was predictable.

CHARLES SIMIC: Yes. I think it was predictable in a sense. Before anything happened, you had this, this period of kind of conversion while the various Communist leaders were becoming ultra- nationalists. The papers were full three or four years before the war started of, of sort of nationalist propaganda. Instead of Communist propaganda, which of course was the major staple of all the media, and all the newspapers, the Communist lies were replaced by nationalist lies, and they started lying about each other. Before it used to be -- the enemy was outside with a capitalist, with the enemy, there were the internal enemies who were the servants of capitalism, and so forth, the class enemies, and so forth. That was replaced by, you know, other ethnic groups. And - -

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Starting to talk about --

CHARLES SIMIC: Talk about them, you know, and all the pastwrongs, all the, all the times. You know, one terrible thing about Yugoslavia is that all those people at one time were both victims and executioners, but they only remember being victims. So they brought back all this history of being victims.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Tell me your concern about the intellectuals and the role you see them playing.

CHARLES SIMIC: Well, not all intellectuals but a great many intellectuals have learned during the long years of Communism to be, to stay close to power, and so they too converted, they also are born again nationalists. They are the ones who provided the language of hate, all the hate mongering. After all, the politicians don't have time to, you know, to read history, and they are the ones who, you know, gave him the, the verbiage for this stuff.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Can you explain that?

CHARLES SIMIC: I think the explanation is that once Communism collapsed, they had to justify their betrayal of their own people. This was a way of sort of saying, well, I have always been a great Croat, a great Serb, a great this, a great that. You have to understand that all these people, all these sides, who are now Jeffersonian Democrats, some of them who are quite old used to be Stalinists at one time. They have houses. They have huge possessions, and they will never give all that up, you know. If Yugoslavia became a democratic country and they simply go and have to look for a job or God forbid, or I don't know what they would do, write their memoirs or whatever. No. You know, they wanted to keep it up, you know, keep all that power, you know, and this was the only way.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you see the kind of nationalism that has produced these negative results in the former Yugoslavia being broader than this? I mean, as you look at the rest of the world in this post Communist era, are there larger lessons here?

CHARLES SIMIC: SWell, just nationalism is --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Are larger warnings?

CHARLES SIMIC: That kind of nationalism that, you know, violence, extreme nationalism is one of the really dangerous forces in the world. It always leads to bloodshed because it, you know, it -- I mean, nationalism is a complicated issue in the sense of we are all sort of cultural nationalists in a sense. We all are part of some culture. We speak a certain language. We eat a certain kind of food. We like our mountains and our hills and our songs and this. That's fine, but it's not, you know, not -- very difficult to define what point where it becomes violent, when it turns inside, when it repels all the foreigners, everything that's out, doesn't belong, must kind of condense into, lock itself in a cage. Nationalism is kind of a self-constructed cage. You know, well all get in our tribe and we sort of bark at everybody outside. I mean, that's the sort of the ideal. You know, everybody in a cage, nobody can leave the cage. How does this happen? How can reasonable people, you know, embrace this and tell you -- I mean, I know people -- this is the only way, you know.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What can be done?

CHARLES SIMIC: I think people of goodwill, people with good understanding have to speak out. I mean, they have to remind, they have to be traitors. I mean, they have to remind their compatriots, their fellow citizens, you know, that their best interest lies not in, you know, closing in but opening up to the rest of the world, you know.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And yet, one of your friends, you confessed, told you that speaking of your countrymen in their hour of need you walked away from your own. For whom does poetry speak when you have no tribe anywhere to call your own? You said that.

CHARLES SIMIC: Sure.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You wrote that.

CHARLES SIMIC: Yes.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You confessed that.

CHARLES SIMIC: Well, yes. I mean, someone actually told me something like that.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What's, what's your response?

CHARLES SIMIC: My response is that I, you know, I, I believe in individuals. My poetry speaks for all the individuals in the world. I, I think the reason we can read ancient Chinese poets or, you know, Roman poets is not because they were ancient Chinese or Roman, but because they're individuals. I mean, there's an old Chinese poet who can's sleep. It's a night full of stars and it's cold and he says, oh, I wasted my life. Well, that reaches over the centuries. I mean, he is an individual speaking to us still. As far as the China that he lives in and what he was part of, well, what do we know about it, you know? That is sort of lost, so I really, I would say that my -- I have a deep belief, especially after these events in Yugoslavia, in a sort of sacredness of the individual. Any system in any society that forgets that, you know, just, you know, it's horrifying and doesn't interest me.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: For all your protestations to the country, you have returned and you've returned in the form of this poem you were sharing with me earlier. Would you share it with us now?

CHARLES SIMIC: Sure. It's called "The World." "You who torture me every day with your many cruel instruments, I am allowed to confess to a despair darker than all your darkest nights. The day you brought me a picture of a woman and a child fleeing on a road lined with trees and another of the same two now fallen is bloodied hence on that same winding road, with its cloudless sky of late summer and its trees shivering in the first cool breeze on days when we put all our trust in the world only to be deceived."

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Charles Simic, we continue to look for your vision. Thank you.

CHARLES SIMIC: Thank you. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, President Clinton responded to charges from two Arkansas state troopers about alleged sexual improprieties. He said he had done nothing wrong, and the Commerce Department reported the economy grew at an annual rate of 2.9 percent in the third quarter. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. Just before we go, a correction. On December 8th, I mistakenly listed a Charles Fried as one who favored legalizing drugs. Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, informs us he has not taken that position. So we're sorry for the mistake. That's the NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.