Mad TV: The Impact of Televised Violence on America

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Recommended: Watching television has an adverse effect on children

Mad TV: The Impact of Televised Violence on America

Everyone’s seen the classic cartoons. Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner around a bend, only the Roadrunner turns, but our comedic--and usually stupid--villain doesn’t. So, he falls from a height of what looks like about 500,000 feet, only to become a small puff of smoke at the bottom of the canyon. After all, if what happens to you when you fall from that height were to have happened to Mr. Coyote, that would have been a very short lived cartoon series. Maybe this example is an exaggeration, but the idea is the same: violence comes streaming into our homes every single day through our TVs not to be viewed, but to be devoured. It’s been proven that sex and violence sell. For those of us who can tell the difference between reality and fantasy, the effect of TV violence is miniscule. But for our children--who think when the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers come to the local shopping mall, that it’s the biggest event since Bert told Ernie he snores too loud--the violence seen on TV seems like a logical reaction to life’s problems. And that’s a problem within itself. The impact of televised violence on children is only a slice of the pie that is the problem with the endless stream of violent acts on TV.

The controversy over whether or not violence portrayed on television actually affects children or not has been playing itself out for nearly three decades. When some of the first results came out in the 60s and 70s that made the first connections between aggressive behavior and viewing televised violence, the TV and movie industries denied that there was a connection. When studies found the same thing in the 80s, the FCC opposed any regulation (Hepburn). A writer for Direct Ma...

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.... Ed. William Dudley. San Diego: Greenhaven, 1999.

Hepburn, Mary A. "TV Violence! A Medium’s Effects Under Scrutiny." Social Education. Sept 1997: pp244-249. SIRS Researcher. Available <http://researcher.sirs.com/>

Leo, John. "The Amount of Violence on Television Has Been Exaggerated." Media Violence: Opposing Viewpoints. Ed. William Dudley. San Diego: Greenhaven, 1999.

Levy, Steven. "Loitering on the Dark Side." Newsweek. 3 May 1999: p39

McLeod, Michael. Does TV Kill?. Production of Oregon Public Broadcasting for "Frontline". Videorecording. PBS Video, 1997.

Posch, Robert. "What You do Emerges From Who You Are". Direct Marketing. July 1993: p43. EBSCO Host. Available <http://www.epnet.com/ehost/login.html>

Schroeder, Ken. "TV Teaches Violence". Education Digest. Sept 1998: p74. EBSCO Host. Available <http://www.epnet.com/ehost/login.html>

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