Essay, Research Paper: TV Violence

Violence on television is an issue that has been around for a long time. Numerous shows contain violent material such as murders or rapes that many people consider inappropriate for adolescents. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), the average child watches over 27 hours of television a week and in the inner city some children watch 11 hours per day. With the amount of violent acts committed on television shows, the APA also estimates that a typical child will see 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence on television before finishing elementary school. In 1992, there were over 1,800 acts of violence shown on television each day and over 360 of those acts involved gunplay.
These figures bring up a big question: should we ban violence from television shows or not? Most people believe that it should be banned from stations the children watch to prevent them from exposure. Others believe violence makes television interesting and discourage its removal.
This violence issue relates to the First Amendment of the Constitution. The Amendment states that everyone has freedom of speech, freedom of religious worship, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble, and the right to voice complaints to the government. This means that television networks have the right to broadcast whatever material they want including violent material. Television viewers argue that if networks were forced to remove violence from their shows, then they would be denied their First Amendment rights.
Television violence is receiving so much criticism because many children are confusing program content with reality. When children see a great deal of violence, they begin to think that it is all right to kill or hurt someone, which is not the message parents want their children to be receiving at such a young age. An example of this is a thirteen-year-old boy who murdered his friend's father and then poured salt on his wounds. When he was asked why he did this, he responded "I saw someone do it on TV". Since children watch so much TV on a regular basis, they become used to the violence they see and think that it is a normal part of everyday life. "They also begin to get the impression that the world is a jungle fraught with dangerous threats, and the only way to survive is to be on the attack".
The opposing sides of this issue are the parents whose children are viewing the violent material and the television stations that broadcast the shows. Television stations have received many complaints from the public regarding the content of violence in their shows. A Times Mirror poll in March, 1993 showed that 72 percent of Americans believe that TV entertainment shows contain too much violence. Major networks like NBC and CBS have received a great deal of criticism because their networks are viewed the most. However the major networks have said that most of the violence is shown on cable networks and not on their networks.
Some networks are also claiming that violence is not the worst thing on television. They say that sex, drug use, and alcohol abuse on television affect children more than violence. As a result, the networks do not think that limiting violence on programs is as big a priority as limiting sexual content and drug and alcohol use.
Congress has the right to force major television stations to edit the amount of violence in a particular movie or show that they are broadcasting. However, they do not have the right to force a network to entirely cancel the broadcast of a movie or show because that would be a violation of its First Amendment rights. Since major television networks had to limit the amount of violent material, three major networks came up with a plan in 1992. They proposed editing up to 40 percent of the original submissions of an R-rated movie advertisement. They also announced they would reject a movie advertisement all together if the film was too violent to advertise. Realistic weaponry and gratuitous interpersonal violence in cartoons would also be kept off the air.
In my opinion, I think that there is definitely too much violence shown on television and I am not surprised that so many children are being influenced by it. I believe, however, that the networks are entitled to their First Amendment rights. I think that it is up to parents to police what their children watch on television. To help parents control what their children view; I have come up with an idea that will prevent children from viewing this material. My idea involves a password system for programs that contain violence. This system would require a person to enter a password in order to view a program that is over a certain violence level. This system would prevent anyone who does not know the correct password from watching violent programs.