"Violence and the media" -- Congressional Digest

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A detailed article focusing mostly on statistical evidence of the rise in aggression of American youth. The author expresses deep concern in the role of today’s “ubiquitous” media: television, movies, music, and video games. The article pointed out many facts relating to the history of the influence of television programming.

“With television, analysis of programming for 20 years (1973 to 1993) found that over the years, the level of violence in prime-time programming remained at about five violent acts per hour. An August 1994 report by the Center for Media and Public Affairs reported that in one 18-hour day in 1992, observing 10 channels of all major kinds of programs, 1,846 different scenes of violence were noted, which translated to more than 10 violent scenes per hour, per channel, all day. A follow-up study conducted in 1994, found a 41 percent increase in violent scenes to 2,605, which translated to almost 15 scenes of violence per hour.”

The author concludes with a strong solution with “Steps for National Reform”.
If we take steps at both the national level –by dealing with the marketing of, and access to, violent media –and at the most local of levels –by empowering parents to exercise greater control over the material their children access – we can significantly reduce the impact of violent media on our young people.

Seeing as this article is heavy with statistics and not moral code, it will be good to use the facts as a core, which I can then build my paper around. I found it interesting that in a poll the youth itself targeted the media as an influential key in violence like the Littleton, CO shootings. “ATime/CNN poll found that 75 percent of teens 13 to 17 years of age believe the Internet is partly responsible for crimes like the Littleton shootings, 66 percent blame violence in movies, television, and music, and 56 percent blame video game violence.” If the youth, that is supposedly being negatively influenced by the media, recognizes the detrimental side effects as well, it changes the argument from an adult looking in and analyzing, to a person on the inside looking out saying “there is a problem here!”.