D O E S TELEVISION K I L L ? (PBS, 1995)

Does T.V. Kill? Transcript

Original Air Date: January 10, 1995 Produced and Directed by Michael McLeod Correspondent Al Austin ===================================================================== ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE: By the time a child leaves elementary school, she's witnessed 8,000 murders.

1st TELEVISION PROGRAM: I'll give you something to screech about!

2nd TELEVISION PROGRAM: Don't shoot me!

3rd TELEVISION PROGRAM: He shot my dad!

4th TELEVISION PROGRAM: Stay there or I'll shoot.

5th TELEVISION PROGRAM: I don't think so.

4th TELEVISION PROGRAM: Think again.

6th TELEVISION PROGRAM: Killers on the loose in Alaska-- when we come back.

ANNOUNCER: What are we doing to our children? Tonight on FRONTLINE, "Does T.V. Kill?" BILL MOYERS: Good evening. I'm Bill Moyers. This week public television is tackling the challenge of youth violence in American life. We're exploring the causes and searching for solutions to this frightening epidemic. Tonight FRONTLINE focuses on a question crucial to the issue: What role do the violent images on our television screens play in causing real violence on our streets?

FRONTLINE correspondent Al Austin will take us on a skeptical and surprising journey, first through the dense jungle of scientific studies that link television and violence and then into the living rooms in one American town to watch the way we really watch television.

And then I'll return for a discussion with three opinionated students of this issue who offer some practical advice about what we can do about television.

Tonight's program was produced by Michael McLeod and Oregon Public Broadcasting. It asks the question, "Does T.V. Kill?" AL AUSTIN: This is where the headless horseman rode and Rip Van Winkle slept-- Columbia County in the Catskills, Hudson, New York, an old town with deep wrinkles, uncomfortable with the changes it sees all around.

FRONTLINE came to Hudson because this is where television was born and it was among the people here, more than anywhere else in the world, that experts have worked to learn what television does to us and here that they first found a connection between television and violence.

©1995-2007 WGBH educational foundation

1 We rented a house on the bank of the Hudson and spent several months trying to see for ourselves what television does. It's discouraging to those of us who make a living in television to hear what people think it's doing. Whatever's wrong in America, someone -- lots of someones -- will say television caused it, or at least helped. One man even told a jury he killed two people because T.V. made him do it. The jury found him guilty anyway, but some people think he had a point.

To hear some experts talk, you'd think an appliance from hell had somehow gotten into everyone's home and every day, every night was feeding us another dose of something evil, feeding us seeds of violence.

One researcher calculated that before the average American child leaves elementary school, he or she will have witnessed more than 8,000 murders on television and some social scientists argue that this steady diet of imaginary violence has helped America become the world leader in real crime and violence and they say they can prove it.

Do they really have proof of that? Is television really killing people? Is it corrupting the world or only reflecting it, entertaining it? Maybe it's only doing what story tellers have done through the ages, telling our children scary stories as a means of helping them explore the darkness.

But there is something different about television. More than three decades ago, a study in Hudson had produced the first statistics, the first apparent proof that if a child sees enough violence on television, it may show up in his behavior and stay with him the rest of his life. The scientist who conducted that pioneering study was Leonard Eron. He came to this Hudson school, Edwards Elementary, and to every other elementary school in the county, looking for the causes of aggression. Columbia County offered him a representative slice of America. In 1960 he studied all 875 3rd grade students in the county. At first he had no interest in television.

LEONARD ERON: We were going to see how extensive aggressive behavior was among these kids in school and then relate that to the kinds of child-rearing practices the parents used and what the conditions were like in the home.

AL AUSTIN: Eron watched the kids at play and asked them questions about each other and found out who were the kickers, hitters, bullies and trouble makers. Then he asked their parents a lot of questions. Sprinkled through the lists of questions were several intended only as friendly ice breakers, such as "How much television does the child watch?" "Which are his favorite programs?"

LEONARD ERON: And much to our surprise, we found that the more violent the programs that kids watched at home, the more aggressive they were in school.

AL AUSTIN: Eron found that the televised violence was most likely to have an adverse effect on those children who believed that what they saw was real. Although his discovery was a surprise in 1960, the teachers at Edwards Elementary School are now well aware that television is a problem.

When FRONTLINE arrived in Hudson, 3rd grade teacher Donna Acuosti was near the end of a yearlong campaign to rescue the written word from Beavis and Butthead. One way to convince her pupils that they should read more and watch television less was to show them a video about it. The whole school was caught up in the reading crusade. Principal David Burnham had promised that if the students will read half a million pages before the end of the school year, he will kiss a pig.

DAVID BURNHAM: Yeah, the violence on T.V.-- we tell them to pick up a book instead of watching as much T.V. and we really try to push that with--

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2 AL AUSTIN: Burnham is afraid that television is not only undermining the students' reading, but getting them into other trouble, too.

DAVID BURNHAM: For instance, the Ninja Turtle thing-- I'm always getting kids in my office that are doing the karate kicks and stuff like that and we have to go over and tell them that that's all play, that, you know, the people on T.V., they don't get hurt, but we can hurt each other here.

AL AUSTIN: Scientist Leonard Eron had chosen 8-year-olds, 3rd graders, to study because they are old enough to read and write and to distinguish between fantasy and reality.

Edgar Acevedo's 3rd grade students seem to understand which of their favorites on T.V. are real and which are fantasy, but sometimes it's a fine line.

EDGAR ACEVEDO: Yeah, but is this reality or is this fantasy?

CHILD: Fantasy.

EDGAR ACEVEDO: Reality or fantasy?

CHILD: Reality?

EDGAR ACEVEDO: Oh, why? Why do you say it's reality?

CHILD: Because-AL AUSTIN: During the following three months, FRONTLINE would spend a lot of time with three of the 3rd graders of Edwards Elementary School. There was nothing scientific about our choices. All three seemed interesting. All three lived with single parents who agreed to let us invade the family's privacy.

Jonathon Surita, an extremely bright boy, so full of energy that his teachers and his mother agree he is a handful. Isiah Heard, good at spelling, not so good at reading. He likes to read about wrestling, but most books bore him. And we got to know Paul Martin, famous in his school for his ability to imitate television characters.

Like several other parents, Paul Martin's mother waits at the school each day to walk her son home. It's only a few blocks, but she thinks it's a dangerous walk. Paul wants to be either a baseball player or a cop -- a baseball player because he might win a trophy, a cop so he can stop crooks. Television and toy guns play a big part in Paul's life and the life of his little brother, Danny. His mother sees television as something of a necessity.

MS. MARTIN: Paul's not allowed to roam the city. The kids outside that are around the neighborhood are really rough and-PAUL MARTIN: One of them hit me in the back with a wooden gun.

MS. MARTIN: --very, very dirty mouths.

AL AUSTIN: It's tough raising kids in this area?

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3 MS. MARTIN: Yeah, it is. There's not many children that they can play with and the ones that are their age you don't want them playing with.

AL AUSTIN: The Martins allowed us to install cameras in Paul's bedroom, timed to go on and off automatically, one camera trained on him, the other on his television set. In the weeks to follow, the automatic cameras would record an interesting relationship.

Isiah Heard's mother distrusts the streets of Hudson, too, and she has a full-time job. She can't walk Isiah home. It isn't so much the strangers in Hudson that worry Isiah's mother, it's his friends. "They seem to have a stronger hold on him than I do," she says, so she's grateful for television, wants him to watch it and doesn't have to encourage him very much.

But there is a problem. What Isiah wants to watch and what his mother, Gail, thinks he should watch often don't agree. He'd watch television all day, she says, if she'd let him -- movies, wrestling, cartoons. It's a bargain, of sorts. In return for serving as surrogate parent, a friend that won't get Isiah into trouble, the television set expects his full attention.

Every night, Gail Heard says, she prays for Isiah.

TELEVISION PROGRAM: Shut up! Say your prayers, Winslow! You're history!

AL AUSTIN: Jonathon Surita is one of four children. His mother, Sandra, was a single parent when we first met the family. They were all rehearsing for Sandra's wedding in the fall.

SANDRA SURITA: Pay attention. Your left foot-- okay, your left-- together. Right, together. Left, together.

AL AUSTIN: No one could say that, at the moment, Jonathon Surita's family was being corrupted by television. A burglar had stolen their set. Midway through our filming, a new T.V. set arrived.

SANDRA SURITA: You have three boys, like I said, and being a single parent, it gets hard to try to teach them. I don't want to teach them femininity, you know? And try not to be too rugged, either. And then the only other teacher that they really have is the television, too, besides, you know, me showing them what to do. What am I going to do, show them how to shave their legs? You know? It gets kind of hard.

I, as a parent, have the right to choose what I can let my kids watch. If I have to unplug the television, trust me, I will.

AL AUSTIN: In Jonathon's house, much of the time, FRONTLINE's automatic cameras grind away on an empty room with the new T.V. set turned off. The family is often outside. Jonathon and the other kids have turned part of their yard into a clubhouse, the sort of place boys go to think about things and get away from adults and girls. This one is a little different.

MELODY SURITA: I'm the president.

AL AUSTIN: The family sometimes appears to be a study in perpetual motion. But part of each day they all gather around the television. Sometimes they're having too much fun to pay much attention to it and, anyway, Mom won't let the kids see the shows they really like. Sometimes, though, she isn't watching. FRONTLINE's cameras would disclose that the kids look for opportunities to watch their forbidden favorites, like this one, a violent martial arts movie.

©1995-2007 WGBH educational foundation

4 American television was born just 40 miles from Hudson in 1928, in Schenectady. A play in which the actors were not allowed to move was transmitted to a radio set with a three-inch television screen. Newspaper editors recognized a crackpot idea when they saw one and gave the event no publicity. But a British scientist was impressed. "Gentlemen," he said, "you have just invented the greatest time waster of all times."

For the next 20 years, the only concern anyone seemed to have about television was eye strain. But by the '50s, kids were giving up "kick the can" to watch Superman and adults began to worry about the consequences.

RESEARCHER: Here you notice the animal wandering toward the pedal.

AL AUSTIN: At about that same time, social scientists were getting results with new methods of discovering why people behaved the way they do. This device, for instance, proved that rats quickly learned to keep pressing a pedal that sent pleasant electrical impulses into their brains.

RESEARCHER: You can see the lights go on.

AL AUSTIN: They became addicted. What if television was doing something like that to the human brain?

RESEARCHER: From here on, we have captured his interest.

AL AUSTIN: In the mid-'50s, at Stanford University, a scientist named Albert Bandura showed a number of children some scenes on a screen of a person beating a plastic doll. The children were then simply left alone in a room with the same kind of doll. Bandura wondered what effect watching films had on the susceptible minds of children. It's still hotly argued what, if anything, these Bobo doll experiments proved. Bandura believes they demonstrated that violent images may induce real violence.

Then actor Kirk Douglas got into the act -- indirectly. In a complicated set of experiments, scientist Leonard Berkowitz of the University of Wisconsin showed groups of men scenes from the movie The Champion, in which Douglas is beaten to a pulp in the ring. Half the subjects were told Douglas was the villain and deserved the beating. Later, those men were more eager to administer punishment themselves. Evidently, watching images of justified violence encouraged the men to vent their own anger.

Confusing as these experiments of the 1950s may seem, they are still widely regarded among social scientists as solid evidence that projected images can have a powerful effect on a viewer's behavior. But these were laboratory experiments, artificial conditions. That's what made Leonard Eron's work in 1960 in Hudson, New York, different.

Even though it wasn't exactly what he'd set out to do, he was the first to measure the effects of television in the midst of ordinary life. He found that those 3rd grade kids who watched a lot of television were most likely to be the meanest ones, but that wasn't the end of Eron's research. In 1971, when those kids were 19, he and his team returned to Hudson to see how they were doing. He discovered that the boys who'd watched a lot of violent T.V. as little children were most likely to have gotten into trouble when they got older.

A decade after that, Eron returned to Hudson again.

©1995-2007 WGBH educational foundation

5 LEONARD ERON: When our subjects were 30, we saw them again and again we found that the more aggressive they were at age 8, the more aggressive they were at age 30, the more criminal convictions they had, the more serious were their convictions, the more traffic violations, the more arrests for drunken driving, the more aggressive they were at home, as told to us by their spouses, the more aggressive children they had.

AL AUSTIN: The 3rd graders Eron studied are 42 years old now.

[interviewing] You are where?

PAUL ABITABILE: I am right there, Mr. Suspenders.

AL AUSTIN: Paul Abitabile was one of those kids, not one of the aggressive ones, even though he remembers he watched a lot of T.V.

PAUL ABITABILE: Oh, yeah. No, I was a big T.V. fan. I just-- off the top of my head, I can't remember the names of the shows, but no, I was-- I was always a big T.V. fan.

AL AUSTIN: That was the year, 1960, when television truly discovered that violence sells. Most people had been watching CBS or NBC, but upstart ABC was gaining fast with action-packed programs like The Rifleman and The Untouchables. The other two networks soon joined the barrage. A network memo described one script this way: "Opens right up on a lot of action -- three killed, six injured, many exciting scenes."

Paul Abitabile concedes that's the sort of thing he was watching, but despite Leonard Eron's study, Abitabile doesn't think it hurt him.

PAUL ABITABILE: I have never been aggressive in my life and I've watched some of the most violent television movies you can imagine. So I don't-- I don't know. In my own-- for my own way, in my own mind-- I-- I understand he's probably got the figures to back it up, but-- I don't know. I'm-- why am I not in prison?

AL AUSTIN: The Abitabiles seem to be a typical two-parent family. Pat is a teacher and, unlike her husband, Paul, has a distrust of television. Their son, Ryan, is a happy-go-lucky 12. Robin is 4 and shy.

The Abitabile home looked like another good place to learn more about people and television. They also let us install automatic cameras in their living room. As with the other Hudson homes, it would result in some surprises. From the beginning, it was obvious that the eavesdropping cameras would not inhibit their viewing. Even while we were installing the cameras, we could tell that here was a family plugged into T.V.

The Abitabiles' television set stayed on most of the time, like a fireplace in a winter cabin. The family seldom settled down together to watch it, but took turns warming themselves, reading while it provided background noise, snacking by its light, channel surfing, wondering if anything's on, watching a while, going on to something else.

TELEVISION COMMERCIAL: Only NordicTrack has a patented flywheel and one-way clutch mechanism that simulates cross-country skiing. The world's--

MIKE SACCO: They don't work. None of that shit works.

©1995-2007 WGBH educational foundation

6 AL AUSTIN: Mike Sacco was also a member of the 3rd grade class of 1960 in Hudson. Sacco remembers nothing about Leonard Eron or his study, but he has fond memories of his childhood and the television he watched.

MIKE SACCO: I had a T.V. I watched Zorro and Rin Tin Tin, Lassie, you know, The Rifleman. I wanted to be a cowboy when I grew up and all that, go on rodeo tours and that. F.B.I.-- I watched that with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.-- lot of gangster stories. I wanted to be a gangster at one time, be like Al Capone, have a big corporation, all money, buy the lawyers, the judges, have a lot of girls around me, and guys, party all 24 hours of the day. It never came true. I bought a suit. That's all that came true.

I had a nervous breakdown in 1974 from drugs. I took speed and that-- snorted it. I should have never did that. I was married. I lost-- I lost my wife, my kids.

AL AUSTIN: Did The Rifleman or Bugs Bunny put Mike Sacco here, or something else? Maybe he would have been in the same fix without television. So here were two men, Mike Sacco and Paul Abitabile, both part of Eron's study. Both watched a lot of violent television, but they had led very different lives.

There was another problem with Eron's study and other studies that would follow. There was no way to compare the people who watched television with those who didn't. Everybody had television. Well, almost everybody.

It was 1973. A town of 700 people in British Columbia, Canada, shielded by the Rocky Mountains, was the only community in North America that did not have T.V. But someone had figured out how to bring it in, so television was coming. A psychologist at the University of British Columbia, Tannis MacBeth Williams, heard what was going on and realized that that isolated town, which she called "Notel," might be the last opportunity to learn whether television changes people.

TANNIS MacBETH WILLIAMS: We studied the people in that community just before they had T.V. reception and then again, two years later. We studied children in-- throughout the elementary school grades, from kindergarten on up, and then high school students. And we also studied adults through-through the adult age range.

We observed the children in free play on the school playgrounds before school, at recess, at lunchtime and after school, and two women observed them. They had a checklist of 14 physically aggressive behaviors, such as kicks, hits, slaps, punches, and nine verbally aggressive behaviors, involving verbal threats and that sort of thing.

BOB BALCEAN: When television came, it just came like a crunch. It--

AL AUSTIN: Appliance store owner Bob Balcean's business tripled that year. Only one channel came in, but all anyone wanted to do was watch it.

BOB BALCEAN: I've seen people at 2:00 o'clock in the morning, watching that test pattern. That's how anxious they were -- just sitting there, watching the test pattern.

AL AUSTIN: Two years after the coming of television, social scientist Williams and her team returned to "Notel."

[interviewing] What did you find?

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7 TANNIS MacBETH WILLIAMS: We found that there was a significant and fairly dramatic increase in both physical aggression and verbal aggression for the elementary school children and that that was true for both girls and boys, on average. Participation in community activities decreased. Aggression increased. Creativity decreased. I believe other people have sometimes reported our findings by saying that the level of verbal aggression and the level of physical aggression more than doubled.

AL AUSTIN: The study of television's impact on "Notel" is still considered rock solid, but it, too, left some questions unanswered. A new highway link had ended the town's isolation just as television came. What part had it played? And besides, the changes in "Notel" in no way amounted to a crime wave. But even the man whose company operates the television transmitter in "Notel," Oli Schiefelbein, concedes that television's coming was a mixed blessing.

OLI SCHIEFELBEIN: Oh, you're always going to have the odd individual and you hear the odd comment, "Yes," you know, "television has changed our life. The violence is common. Now we're aware of it. The real world is really impacting on us" and they don't like it, so-- on the other side of the coin, it is a real world and, I mean, we have to kind of face it and see what's out there.

AL AUSTIN: In Hudson, New York, Paul Martin has developed a routine. FRONTLINE's automatic cameras watched at various times on several days when he was not in school. As soon as he crawled out of bed in the morning, on came his T.V. Power Rangers was first, one of his favorites. After a nineminute break for breakfast he's back to watch cartoons. At mid-day, he is still in his room, watching game shows.

PAUL MARTIN: I was right! I was right!

AL AUSTIN: The soaps come on after that and he grows restless. Sometimes he switches to a video game and plays that for a few minutes. Then back to regular programming.

1st ACTOR: [''Gilligan's Island "] [reading] "Help. We are marooned on a desert island." They spelled "marooned" wrong.

2nd ACTOR: Let me see that! Gilligan, this is the note that you wrote!

1st ACTOR: Oh yeah, I don't know how to spell "marooned."

2nd ACTOR: Give me that bottle!

AL AUSTIN: So goes Paul Martin's day. At about 5:00 o'clock, he is dragged down to dinner.

MS. MARTIN: Paul!

PAUL MARTIN: Coming!

1st ACTOR: Get rid of them.

2nd ACTOR: But you said-AL AUSTIN: Before long, he is back for Batman and the early-evening sitcoms, including some adult shows like Married With Children.

ACTOR: Well, hello.

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8 ACTRESS: Are you going to make me beg?

ACTOR: Oh, you will do things, but begging will not be one of them.

ACTRESS: Who's this, Alvie? Well?

ACTOR: Well, obviously, I'm having a hell of a dream!

AL AUSTIN: Finally, it's bedtime.

ACTOR: Rather-- rather than take time and explain it all, why don't you two just fight over me right here on the-LEONARD ERON: They come home. They're afraid to go out because the neighborhood is so dangerous. So what do they do? They watch what? Television. What do they see on television? Violence, more violence.

NEWS ANCHOR: Tonight, witness accounts of real-life exorcisms more terrifying than-AL AUSTIN: The violence on television is different now than when Leonard Eron began to study the class of 3rd graders in Hudson 34 years ago. The rules have changed. The violence has broken out of its prime-time entertainment kennels and is everywhere -- in cable movies and rented videos and electronic games. It's in the news and in entertainment pretending to be news-TALK SHOW AUDIENCE MEMBER: Why did your father kill your friend Susan? What's the reason-AL AUSTIN: --in talk shows-PHIL DONAHUE: What would be the motive for the killing?

TALK SHOW GUEST: He raped her and-AL AUSTIN: --in the commercials and teasers that interrupt the news and the talk shows and the comedies to promote movies and quasi-news. The lines between entertainment and news, between conversation and comedy and conflict, between fantasy and reality have been all but erased.

A scientist at the University of California in San Diego dug back into the records and uncovered more evidence that the media's message can be deadly.

DAVID PHILLIPS: Always I've been interested in whether people are more likely to exhibit deviant behavior if they saw it, essentially, advertised on television or in the newspaper and I've been-MIKE SACCO: David Phillips discovered that right after Marilyn Monroe's death, the nation's suicide rate increased 12 percent. Other heavily publicized suicides had similar results. He wondered if something like that may be producing murders, as well.

DAVID PHILLIPS: So I thought for a long time about this and I thought, "Well, you know, a prize fight"AL AUSTIN: Not just any prize fight, but heavily publicized fights -- the heavyweights.

©1995-2007 WGBH educational foundation 9 MUHAMMAD ALI: I wrote a short poem. It says it'll be a killer and a thriller and a chiller when I get the gorilla in Manila!

AL AUSTIN: This one would be Phillips's prime evidence, Ali versus Frazier, the "Thrilla From Manila," not the fight itself, but what happened afterwards.

MUHAMMAD ALI: Come on, gorilla! We in Manila!

DAVID PHILLIPS: It's presented as real, exciting, rewarded, justified, so I thought that would be a good thing to look at in the real world. I looked to see whether daily U.S. homicides increased just after heavyweight championship prize fights and that turns out to be the case. Once again, on the third day, the increase is largest. It also seems to be the case that the kind of person killed just after the prize fight is similar to the kind of person beaten in the prize fight. And I also found, as with the other studies, that the more publicity given to the prize fight, the greater the increase just afterwards.

AL AUSTIN: Other studies would confirm that highly publicized violence can trigger copycat violence - not just television publicity, but all media. Still, the question of whether violence on television could have a cumulative effect on viewers' personalities was much harder to prove. But the evidence kept mounting. By one count, there are now 3,000 studies, many done in foreign countries, that have found a connection between television's violence and real violence.

The U.S. surgeon general, in 1972, declared a causal relationship between television violence and antisocial behavior. A scientist named Dr. Brandon Centerwall went so far as to calculate that there would be 10,000 fewer homicides per year without television. And an FCC commissioner accused the television industry of "molesting the minds of our children."

Through it all, the television industry has disputed the studies, claiming they are unscientific and fail to account for other factors. Network executives defended their broadcasts at a Senate hearing in 1993. Senator Paul Simon questioned CBS president Howard Stringer.

Sen. PAUL SIMON (D), Illinois: Are we going to get a repeat of May, in the future, as "murder month" or is-- is that now going to be history, that type of programming?

HOWARD STRINGER: Violence is never going to go entirely away. I mean--

Sen. PAUL SIMON: No, and we're not suggesting that, as you know.

HOWARD STRINGER: I mean, all tragedy ends in death. I mean, Lord Byron said that.

AL AUSTIN: For four decades, the television industry had denied their programs were harmful. This time they pointed to a greater villain.

HOWARD STRINGER: If indeed, 10,000 movies-- murders have been caused by television, I should also point out that-- that I come from a country-- was born and raised in a country that puts a lot of American movies on and has more graphic violence within its live drama on the BBC than anywhere else and they're are-- a lot less violence in the-- in the United Kingdom than there is here. There are 200 million [people] in America and 66 million handguns in America and that has a lot to do with violence. We are-- we are helping to-- to-- we're not helping violence. We're encouraging, maybe stimulating it, maybe shaping it, but we are not the sole cause of violence and if the--

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10 AL AUSTIN: But since that hearing, the television industry has not had much to say on the subject at all. Of the four major commercial television networks, only Fox accepted FRONTLINE's request for an interview.

Fox's executive vice president is George Vradenberg.

GEORGE VRADENBERG: Well, I tend to think that the studies have received really too much attention and really have been quite to one side of what's going on in television today when, in fact, the T.V. industry has very much moved beyond sort of the studies of causation and a debate about that and much more into the issue of how to address the issue of violence in society and violence on television.

AL AUSTIN: You say they've moved on, meaning they have accepted some--

GEORGE VRADENBERG: No, on the contrary, I think most in the television business do not accept the view that what we put on television, what is on over the air, is contributing to, in any significant measure, to violence in society. Today, unfortunately, I think the problem is, is that the kids who used to have their fists as their ultimate weapon today have knives and guns.

AL AUSTIN: It isn't just the television brass pleading innocent. Some of the people in the trenches say almost the same things. We went to the Universal lot in Hollywood to see the writers of the series Law and Order. The show's creator has said he wouldn't let his own children watch some of the shows he's written, yet the series is famous for avoiding on-screen violence and the writers contend that even in other series they've worked on, there's been no pressure to inject violence, but rather to find a way around it. They resent the accusation that their work contributes to the nation's violence.

1st SCREEN WRITER: And we're an easy target. We're, you know, overpaid, self-important pinheads. Who wouldn't like to, you know, throw mud at us?

2nd SCREEN WRITER: The film industry is just the whipping boy, the scapegoat for an increased amount of violence in our society.

3rd SCREEN WRITER: The problem is the availability of guns. It's not television. Television doesn't put the guns in their hands.

4th SCREEN WRITER: But parents and educators-- I know they want to point the finger at television and I think, in a lot of ways, television has to point the finger right back at them.

1st SCREEN WRITER: The basic problem-- what are these kids doing watching eight hours of television a day? Why are there latchkey kids? Why are there so many single-parent families?

GEORGE VRADENBERG: If you take the average television diet for any particular kid, it is, by and large, going to be sitcoms. It is, by and large, going to be a family-oriented show or situation where, in fact, there are a lot of very positive values being expressed.

ANNOUNCER: Jane's new boyfriend is making his move--

ACTOR: Are you decent under that dress?

ANNOUNCER: --on her sister.

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11 AL AUSTIN: But Fox produces and broadcasts many of the shows that critics of television complain about most. Some of their programs, like the children's hit, Power Rangers, have been banned in other countries, including Canada. Fox is accused of doing the same thing ABC did 30 years earlier: using violence to become a contender in the ratings.

GEORGE VRADENBERG: It just isn't true. And I will tell you that Cops and America's Most Wanted which some people point to as violent programmings-- programs, have been the most praised programs on network T.V. from law enforcement officials. I submit to you that entertainment is not a social bad. I think entertaining people and making them laugh is a social good.

NEWTON MINNOW: It's a brutally competitive world that they're in and they think that the more viewers they can get with slicing off somebody's head, the better off it is. It's an attitude. That's what I'm saying. People in television tend to underestimate the importance of their work.

AL AUSTIN: Newton Minnow made headlines and enemies throughout the television industry in 1961 with his speech calling T.V. "a vast wasteland."

[interviewing] Would you say that same thing now?

NEWTON MINNOW: In spades. I would say it's much worse now. I would say that what I was talking about was tame compared to what goes on now.

AL AUSTIN: In Hudson, Jonathon Surita's 13-year-old sister, Melody, home alone with her cat after school, has found a serene moment on television. It will be a fleeting moment.

TELEVISION COMMERCIAL: Gymnast Barbie Doll does not move by herself, but you can move her in lots of fun new ways!

ANNOUNCER: Meet the cops of Green Dolphin Beat.

1st ACTOR: Freeze! Police!

ANNOUNCER: They're investigating a string of brutal murders.

2nd ACTOR: How do you know the killer's a guy?

ACTRESS: A woman wouldn't use an ice pick.

ANNOUNCER: And the killer is the last person you'd suspect!

ACTRESS: You're getting into this way over your head.

ANNOUNCER: Green Dolphin Beat-- world premier tonight at 8:00, 7:00 Central.

TELEVISION COMMERCIAL: Looking to get the most out of summer? You can always depend on Toyota!

AL AUSTIN: Isiah Heard's mother uses television to keep Isiah off the streets and safe during the hours she's at work and can't keep an eye on him. But it hasn't worked.

GAIL HEARD: Where was Melvin at in the store?

©1995-2007 WGBH educational foundation 12 ISIAH HEARD: I think he was getting-AL AUSTIN: Isiah has gotten into trouble and now Gail Heard has grounded him.

GAIL HEARD: You said you didn't do anything, but then I had to go find out the truth. You sure you and Sam didn't talk and say, "Let's not say anything to our mothers"?

ISIAH HEARD: No, when-AL AUSTIN: There had been a small fire and a shop-lifting incident. It wasn't his fault, Isiah says.

GAIL HEARD: Even though you didn't strike the match that set the fire, but you was there, so-ISIAH HEARD: I wasn't there, Mom.

GAIL HEARD: So you were just curious about the magazine, what was inside the magazine. Was it a wrestling magazine?

ISIAH HEARD: Uh-huh.

GAIL HEARD: Why didn't you come home and tell your mommy?

ISIAH HEARD: I don't know.

GAIL HEARD: You don't know why?

ISIAH HEARD: It wasn't my fault.

GAIL HEARD: Okay.

AL AUSTIN: It wasn't television that got Isiah into trouble, Gail Heard believes. It was his friends. GAIL HEARD: And that's guilty by what?

ISIAH HEARD: Association?

GAIL HEARD: By association. If you're with those kind of friends and you're doing stuff, then you're what? You're guilty, right?

ISIAH HEARD: How?

GAIL HEARD: You're guilty by association, right?

ISIAH HEARD: I didn't do nothing.

GAIL HEARD: I know, but you're there. You're there with them. That makes you guilty. They're going to call your-AL AUSTIN: It is after school and Paul Martin is home, but he's not watching television. He is writing. His mother believes he is studying. Not exactly.

©1995-2007 WGBH educational foundation 13 PAUL MARTIN: I'm doing a punishment because I got in a fight in the hall.

AL AUSTIN: Why'd you get in a fight?

PAUL MARTIN: Because Larry hit me and then I went for him, and then Mr. [unintelligible] caught me doing that, but he didn't catch Larry-- Larry hitting me.

AL AUSTIN: So it wasn't your fault.

PAUL MARTIN: No.

AL AUSTIN: So what do you have to do?

PAUL MARTIN: A hundred times "I won't fight in the hall." Last year, I got a referral for fighting.

AL AUSTIN: Why?

PAUL MARTIN: Because a kid got in front of me.

AL AUSTIN: Yeah?

PAUL MARTIN: I said "he got in front of me", then he shoved me. I shoved him back. He punched me in my chin. I socked him one in the stomach.

AL AUSTIN: Kind of hard to keep your temper under control sometimes, isn't it, when people are hitting you.

PAUL MARTIN: A lot. I got a short fuse.

AL AUSTIN: Paul Martin's life seems immersed in television, all kinds of television, a seemingly incomprehensible stew of cartoons, sitcoms, game shows and reality programs. But which programs gave him a short fuse and which are responsible for his general good nature?

Mike Sacco watched The F.B.I. as a kid and wanted to become a gangster, but he didn't. Did T.V. make him want to become a gangster or stop him from becoming one?

Paul Abitabile watched a lot of violent television as a child and it seems to have had no effect on him. NEWS ANCHOR: They're bracing for the worst in southern Georgia and-AL AUSTIN: There didn't seem to be an answer to the question: Does television make people violent or anti-social? In Hudson, at most, there was a different answer for every person. Even the mountain of studies showing a correlation is inconclusive. No one has been able to prove why or how television affects some people and not others.

STUDENT RESEARCHER: This was justified violence. The first one wasn't justified.

AL AUSTIN: Here at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the Annenberg School for Communications has undertaken the most ambitious effort of all to prove what television is doing to ©1995-2007 WGBH educational foundation

14 us. Students and researchers here spend their days watching television closely and counting the violent scenes. This student is training a new squad of researchers to recognize and rate the violence.

STUDENT RESEARCHER: This is just to exhibit the happy part of violence.

Prof. GEORGE GERBNER: Most of the violence is what I call "happy violence." It's cool. It's swift. It's effective. Sometimes it's even funny, as in cartoons, and always leads to a happy ending because--

AL AUSTIN: Professor George Gerbner originated this massive study more than a quarter century ago and during all that time, he says, the amount of violence one sees in an hour of television has remained constant. Only the form it takes and the number of channels to find it on change.

Prof. GEORGE GERBNER: Five times per hour in prime time. Three entertaining murders a night is the nightly diet of our children, 25 acts of violence in Saturday morning children's programming.

STUDENT RESEARCHER: Right here. That's when you'd start timing the violence. That's-- the duration starts there.

AL AUSTIN: Gerbner's team is looking for something beyond more data to help prove whether television causes some of us to become criminals. In fact, he argues that that question underestimates the problem. After thousands of interviews with people who watched this televised violence, Gerbner and his colleagues believe it is having a more profound effect on all of us, adults as well as children.

STUDENT RESEARCHER: This is also an example of fatal consequences.

Prof. GEORGE GERBNER: What television violence seems to cultivate is a sense of meanness, what we call the "mean world syndrome." The mean world syndrome means that if you're growing up in a heavy-viewing home, for all practical purposes, you live in a meaner world, and you act like it, than your next-door neighbor who lives in the same world but watches less television. The major, most pervasive message of violence is that of insecurity and vulnerability and fear. It's obvious that we are gripped by a sense of fear, a sense of vulnerability, such as we have never known. We're afraid to go out on the street.

AL AUSTIN: The world does seem meaner than it used to be. Even Hudson, New York -- Sleepy Hollow -- seems to have a mean streak. Fantasy or reality? Statistics show that violent crime, here as well as nationwide, more than doubled over the last 30 years. An American is six times more likely to be the victim of assault with a weapon now than in 1960.

Enterprising television producers have turned that increase in actual danger into a hit concept, with shows like Cops. Paul Martin's mother fears possible violence on Hudson streets far more than the violence or anything else her son might see on television, and so she keeps Paul in and believes shows such as this are even good for him.

[interviewing] You think Cops is okay, then?

MS. MARTIN: Yeah, I do, because you're going to get caught if you're doing something wrong. They're going to get you. You know, that's-- and I don't want him to be afraid of the cops. I don't want him to be afraid of the officers here in Hudson and--

AL AUSTIN: You have a police radio?

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15 MS. MARTIN: Yeah.

AL AUSTIN: The statistics are slippery and the real crime problem hard to measure.

POLICE CHIEF: Well, since 1992, the crime rate, like I said, fortunately, has gone down about 42 percent.

AL AUSTIN: Hudson's police chief proudly points to a decline in crime since he arrived two years ago. The nation's crime rate has leveled off, too, in the past few years. Whatever figures one uses, Professor Gerbner would seem to be right. The amount of violence on the street in Hudson or anywhere else is nowhere near what it is on the television screen. Even as television denies nurturing real violence, it magnifies that violence and exploits the belief in a mean world.

Paul Abitabile remains convinced that his world is dangerous and getting more so, but he also wishes now and then that T.V. would shut up about it.

PAUL ABITABILE: You're bombarded, though. I mean, it's every news channel, every tabloid show always starts off with the worst possible thing to show you -- a riot, a murder, something bad, a bridge collapse.

1st NEWS ANCHOR: News at 11:00 -- something wild has trashed Sale's back yard and it's still there.

2nd NEWS ANCHOR: A desperate young girl just says "No" and turns her parents--

AL AUSTIN: Abitabile and most other Hudson families get their news from Schenectady's channel 6. It happens to be the same station that broadcast America's first television show 66 years ago.

2nd NEWS ANCHOR: --and barricaded himself inside the house next door.

NEIL GOLDSTEIN: I understand we-- we are as guilty as anybody when it comes to portraying crime, maybe, in a larger percentage than it exists in the community at certain times.

AL AUSTIN: News director Neil Goldstein says the station is now trying to make the news more human.

NEIL GOLDSTEIN: And I'd have to say that, yeah, for a long time we have been guilty of going after "If it bleeds, it leads," and I'm sure you've heard that many times from many people you've spoken with. But the time has come, and we realize it, as family people and as broadcasters, to start to turn that around. In fact, in the last rating book, we-- in-- a couple of months ago, we did a 20-part series trying to put not a positive light on crime, but at least some positive information in people's pockets. We called it "How to outsmart the bad guys" and it was a widely accepted series. We did extremely well in the ratings.

NEWS ANCHOR: Car theft is on the rise in communities just like this one.

AL AUSTIN: So the same station that has scared the daylights out of Hudson for several years with stories of crime and violence out of proportion to the actual amount of crime and violence now teaches it how to fight back against that violence. And it all does extremely well in the ratings.

REPORTER: This Ford Bronco with Al Cowlings and--

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16 AL AUSTIN: As though to parody how inescapable our electronic connection with violence and with a mean world has become, the O.J. Simpson case broke as we filmed in Hudson.

REPORTER: Look at the people on that overpass.

AL AUSTIN: For a time, nowhere, it seemed, could a person go and not see or hear about Simpson and the murders.

Paul Abitabile grumbles at finding nothing but O.J. on the air, but he keeps on watching. It's as though the appliance had drawn the whole country into this story against its will.

NEWTON MINNOW: I think, as a society, I would say that perhaps, on a par with the atomic bomb, television is the most important invention of our century.

AL AUSTIN: But Minnow says that when he called T.V. a "vast wasteland" as FCC commission chairman, he was on the wrong track. Instead of worrying about television boring adults, he should have seen its powerful influence on children.

NEWTON MINNOW: And small children, in particular, who can't distinguish between reality and fantasy, can't distinguish between "let's pretend" and what's really happening, very often fall prey to that.

LEONARD ERON: Aggression is a behavior that's learned very early in life and it's learned very well. AL AUSTIN: Leonard Eron had chosen 3rd graders to study because they were old enough to understand his questions and figure out the answers. But he believes it was the television they'd seen when they were even younger that was most likely to have hurt them.

Paul Martin, by now, may have developed some immunity against his heavy exposure to television, but his younger brother, Danny, is watching, too. The experts agree a child his age is far more vulnerable. FRONTLINE's automatic cameras catch Jonathon Surita, his sister, his two younger brothers and their little cousin up early while the adults are still asleep. They have found a forbidden video. It's Friday the 13th, Part 7 -- common home entertainment today, unimaginable a generation ago.

Jonathon and Melody know those are actors pretending to be killed. It's anyone's guess what's going on in the minds of the three younger boys.

BARRY SANDERS: We may be inadvertently, through television, be creating a new kind of human being, a new sort of human being.

AL AUSTIN: Barry Sanders teaches the history of ideas at Claremont College in Pasadena. He has traced human progress from grunts to written words to books and now, he believes, to something new.

BARRY SANDERS: We are producing generations of kids without imagination, with the inability to conjure their own images.

AL AUSTIN: Because television does it for them.

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17 BARRY SANDERS: Because television does it for them. And that's-- that's real-- that's amazingly important if we ever care about anything like hope. I mean, a young person-- the best counter that a person has to images, let's say, of violence or notions of violence out in the world or of disease or of despair out in the world is being able to conjure the image of another world, of a different world, of a world that's filled with hope.

AL AUSTIN: That's what Edwards Elementary School had been trying all year to do, kindle the kids' imagination and hope by provoking them to read. Now it's the last day of school and the kids have come through. They've read way more than a half million pages. It's time for their principal to pay the price.

Paul Martin and Jonathon Surita have each won prizes for reading a lot.

DAVID BURNHAM: Now, that's the fun part. The most important part today is the importance of you reading. And again, I want to see when you come back in September, I'd like to see you come up to me and say, "Mr. Burnham, I read a lot more pages over the summer." That's the important thing and that's why we did this, but I'd like to see all of you reading a lot more, but you guys are the leaders today, okay? Thank you for coming out here.

AL AUSTIN: Paul Martin spends a few days of his summer at a camp near Hudson. Otherwise, he sticks close to home, plays with the dog, quarrels with his brother, Danny, and watches television. Despite his reading prize, FRONTLINE's cameras failed to spot him with a book.

BARRY SANDERS: Life, for that kid, is not going on inside the child, but it's out there someplace in that little box. The television is acting as an electronic eraser. Young people are-- grow up now with the idea that there has to be sound, at least sound, all the time, and better yet if it's accompanied by pictures. The notion of down time, I think, has been erased, has been eliminated.

AL AUSTIN: So what?

BARRY SANDERS: Well, I think that the "so what" is that you don't get to meet yourself. And the fact that you don't get to meet yourself and be introduced to yourself and your own images of yourself is very, very important, that you don't get to narrate to yourself very often in quiet moments about what you've done in the past and what you want to do that's different from that in the future. Television, especially now, creates a kind of-- remotest kind of behavior where if I don't like you, I can click you off.

AL AUSTIN: It was as though Paul Martin was trying to demonstrate Barry Sanders's theories, clicking his remote control, changing programs, changing moods. The revelation in the weeks we spent in Hudson watching people watch television had nothing to do with any new proof that certain programs produce violence in certain people. Rather, it was the stupefying amount of it that people watched and the power of the hold the appliance has on its owners.

It's Friday night at the Abitabiles'. They've just returned from dinner out. As usual, the T.V. clicks on. It's Mrs. Abitabile. She dislikes television. She's a teacher and hates the way her students imitate the karate chops they've seen on the Ninja Turtles.

T.V. doesn't cause violence, one psychologist told us, but sometimes it may be a trigger. It's difficult to imagine T.V. triggering anything in the Abitabile household. But something has caused Pat Abitabile to turn on the set and to look for something. The appliance continues its work with no one in the room. Someone is sure to come in before long.

©1995-2007 WGBH educational foundation

18 Ryan and his 4-year-old sister, Robin, have found something interesting.

1st ACTOR: How do you plead?

2nd ACTOR: On my hands and knees. Care to join me?

ANNOUNCER: Oh, the humidity is rising and I'm not talking about the weather!

2nd ACTOR: Court's adjourned.

ANNOUNCER: If you know what I mean. I'm talking about sex! Hot Pursuits-PAT ABITABILE: What are you watching?

RYAN: Something on MTV.

PAT ABITABILE: Well, turn it.

RYAN: Okay.

AL AUSTIN: The kids go to bed and it's the adults' turn to be entertained.

PAT ABITABILE: Oh, man! Is this O.J. Simpson? I'm so sick to death of-BARRY SANDERS: What are we producing? What are we unknowingly, unwittingly producing through this electronic appliance in the house?

PAT ABITABILE: I'm sick of all the wonderful coverage he's getting.

BARRY SANDERS: It's not just this benign neighbor who's come in and sat down with us and who watches us during the day and during the night, but we ought to know who we've invited into our house, at least. I'm not saying that people should stop watching television. I want to argue that we ought to know the risks.

AL AUSTIN: Suppose someone offered you $1 million, saying you can never watch the television screen again.

RYAN: I wouldn't do it.

PAT ABITABILE: Not for a million dollars?

RYAN: Not even for a million.

AL AUSTIN: Why?

RYAN: What would you do?

AL AUSTIN: We spent the summer here looking for violence and found a lot of nice people instead. The word "addiction" kept coming up as we talked to experts about what we'd seen in Hudson and what they'd found in their studies. They all nodded at the word, but shied away from it, being scientists ©1995-2007 WGBH educational foundation 19 and lacking proof. Unlike ordinary drugs, television's product goes directly to a child's mind, into the uncharted galaxies there, where no one can trace it.

The appliance sits there in the Hudson homes, willing to be baby-sitter, window on the world, teacher, parent, pusher, asking only that its owners turn it on. They all did. We all do.

What Should We Do About T.V.? With Bill Moyers

ELIZABETH THOMAN, Executive Director, Center for Media Literacy: On television, we learn if we-if you disagree with them, you just blow them away. You don't figure out ways to kind of work through the disagreement. The issue is not so much violence as conflict.

BILL MOYERS: Elizabeth Thoman, your Center for Media Literacy is trying to teach parents and children how to use this medium positively. What's your answer to FRONTLINE's question, "Does T.V. Kill?"

ELIZABETH THOMAN: I don't think television, per se, kills. What it does do, however, is, as the-- as the show so eloquently showed us, creates a kind of mean world around-- which we then have to cope with and adapt to. And so we can learn skills for dealing with that mean world and for changing the way television and those images come to us.

BILL MOYERS: Douglas Rushkoff, it wasn't until I read your book, Media Virus, that I realized just how contaminated I am by this universal plague. And you dedicate the book to, "Mom and Dad, for letting me watch all the television I wanted to watch." Obviously, you wouldn't be celebrating this medium if you felt it had negative results.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF, "Media Virus": Oh, right. No, I think-- I don't think that the documentary even makes the point that television makes this-- makes our world meaner or makes us more violent. I think any of the social scientists in there that seem to say that there's a cause-and-effect relationship between violence on television and violence in the real world are saying something almost akin to, you know, "Eating fried chicken will make you black" or "Eating Chinese food will make you Jewish." You know, even if there's some correlation between maybe violent kids like to watch violent television, I didn't see any cause-and-effect relationship in there at all. I don't think television affects our social subconscious or our social psyche. I think television is our social subconscious. It is our-- our psychic darkness. And as I just saw-- they said on Star Trek last night-- they quoted Carl Jung and he said, you know, "We have to learn to-- learn to embrace the darkness, embrace the psychic darkness".

BILL MOYERS: Milton Chen, I just gave your book, The Smart Parent's Guide to Kids' T. V., to the very smart mother of my two grandsons.

MILTON CHEN, Ph.D., "The Smart Parent's Guide to Kids' T.V.": Great.

BILL MOYERS: And I've read it with delight. What's your answer to the question about whether television adversely affects children's behavior?

MILTON CHEN: I think television is a very powerful medium. It sells product. It elects political candidates and it does communicate that violence is an effective way of solving problems, that it's

©1995-2007 WGBH educational foundation

20 attractive. I think television's very powerful, still, with children, even with the new technologies, even with CD and computers and the Internet.

BILL MOYERS: Does it cause them to kill?

MILTON CHEN: I think it does create an environment and a message that violence is attractive and an effective way of solving problems.

BILL MOYERS: So Paul sitting at home, watching all the television we saw him watching, is going to think of the world as meaner than the kid next door, who gets out and goes out and does something with other people?

ELIZABETH THOMAN: Well, I believe so because I believe that the only way you learn kind of character-building and morality and all the fundamental essence of being a human being on earth is by interacting with human persons and being challenged by them. And that's why family is so important. That's why children are placed in families for the first years of their lives, so they can gain the social skills to live in the world. And if those social skills are obviated by a passive relationship or a mediated relationship for hours and hours and hours-- I'm not saying you shouldn't watch any of it, but it's a question of management. It's a question of balance. And we need to help-- help our young people learn that balance and be able to get out in the world and interact with their peers and--

BILL MOYERS: Paul's mother kept him in because she thought her neighborhood was meaner than the television set.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: That's true. Definitely. Which is why we can't fight real world violence by fighting fictional violence. I mean, a world that isn't safe enough for a kid to have a toy gun is not unsafe because of toy guns. It's unsafe because the adults have lost the ability to distinguish between real guns and toy guns. That's because we've got too many real guns. I played with toy guns. I was never in danger of the Larchmont community police shooting me for having it. The toy gun didn't create the problem.

BILL MOYERS: And not many other-- I mean-- and you weren't in danger of other-- your peers, other kids shooting you.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Right.

MILTON CHEN: We're all responsible.

BILL MOYERS: I mean, I got in three fights when I was growing up in Marshall, Texas, with Billy Bob Carswell, Joe Golden and Ralph Hotfelder and I never suspected either of them-- any of them would pick up a gun and shoot me with it.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Right. And it's not their G.I. Joes that-- that led to the fact that we've got kids with real guns today. It's real-world violence that we've got to deal with and I think the way we deal with it is by creating communities of like-minded individuals and unlike-minded individuals to have true interpersonal connectivity. And the media is the only way to do that and the only way the media is going to do that is if we leave it alone and let it grow and let it connect people up naturally. If we manage it, we're going to kill it.

BILL MOYERS: Leaving it alone? You look horrified.

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21 MILTON CHEN: No, I think we've got a long way to get to the kind of community building that Douglas is talking about, using the new technologies. Television networks and television broadcasting and television programming still have an enormous hold on the minds and the time of American children. You know, television is Paul Martin's life, when you look at it. It broke my heart to see Paul sitting there hour after hour, that entire day, interrupted only by just a few meals. And he would go back to his bed, isolated from the rest of the world. Where were his parents?

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Right.

MILTON CHEN: Where was his family, his friends?

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: But how is that T.V.'s fault at all? How is that the media's fault at all?

MILTON CHEN: Yes, we're all--

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: The media's going to--

MILTON CHEN: We are all--

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: The T.V.'s not going to--

MILTON CHEN: --implicated in this--

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: You know?

MILTON CHEN: --parents, families, the community, the government, the broadcasters. We are all responsible for Paul Martin sitting there hour after hour, watching television.

BILL MOYERS: No, I-- now, well, you've got to explain that because it was-- he was allowed to do that not by me, not by you, not by the government, not by--

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Not by the Power Rangers.

BILL MOYERS: No, it was Mrs. Martin and--

MILTON CHEN: Producers could be providing better programming. We could be providing better quality child care and other options in Paul's community, places for him to go and get involved in other activities. We saw so many single parents in this documentary. Single parents have the toughest responsibility of all, to try to hold down a job, pay the bills, parent their kids. They need help and we're not providing the kind of support that they need to do their job.

ELIZABETH THOMAN: He could also be learning skills of media literacy through his school, so that when he is at home and away from the school situation or-- by himself, he could have more empowering participation with the media he is exposed to. In the project that we've done, which we-we were talking here a little bit about blaming each other-- we called it "Beyond Blame: Challenging Violence in the Media" because we want to break this cycle of blame that we've had for 40 years, in which we're all pointing fingers and saying-- you know, parents are saying the writers are responsible and the writers say the producers and the producers say the network executives and the network executives--

MILTON CHEN: We're all responsible.

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22 ELIZABETH THOMAN: --say the advertisers. The advertisers--

MILTON CHEN: We have not accepted the responsibility.

ELIZABETH THOMAN: --blame the watch-- blame the viewers for watching. We have to break that and say-- not that we're waiting for somebody else, but I have to do what I have to do in my world and parents have to do what they have to do. Broadcasters have to do it. Advertisers will have to accept responsibility. We all have to accept responsibility not just for what's on television, but for the culture of violence, which is-- which television is a part of.

BILL MOYERS: Let me come back to the documentary itself, though, and its chief concern, which Barry Sanders articulates quite well, I think, there, in which he says that we are creating a new kind of human being, television, that-- that we're creating a consciousness that is totally new and different and beyond the reach of usual traditional influences. And I've heard people say that that new creature is becoming someone who's lost faith in the goodness of life. Now, I-- I'd like to know what each of you think about that question. Does television-- is television producing a new human being?

ELIZABETH THOMAN: Yes, I would say so, and-- and new challenges for society to help that human being become the best human being it can be.

BILL MOYERS: Well, what is that human-- how do you see that human being? Is that a good human being, bad human being?

ELIZABETH THOMAN: We don't know yet. I don't think we know yet. We still-- we as a society-- for 500 years, we have said that to become a human being, active in the community, you have to learn how to read squibbles [sic] on a piece of paper-- that's all it was, which was ink on a piece of paper. Now in order to be an active citizen, a productive member of society, an adult who can raise future children, you're going to have to know how to navigate in a sea of media images.

BILL MOYERS: Well, I'd like to introduce you, Ms. Thoman, to the new human being. Here he is.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Well, there definitely-- there's a--

ELIZABETH THOMAN: Well, interestingly enough--

BILL MOYERS: He-- he had--

ELIZABETH THOMAN: --he wrote a wonderful book.

BILL MOYERS: But he grew up on T.V. images, not Wheaties.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Yeah, and-- and I definitely believe that-- Barry Sanders is right, in a sense. There's a new human being, but it's not a human being who's lost the ability to conjure. It's-- it's a new human being that's-- that's evolved, I think, to the next level and I think it's-- I think it's fascinating and wonderful to watch. We've gotten new human beings, new kids who, with a Nintendo joystick, are learning to navigate their way through-- admittedly, through Seaga--

ELIZABETH THOMAN: Well, see, this is--

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23 DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: cartridges and now, ultimately, through-- through on-line services. You know, the parents are watching, God bless them, you know, Mobil-sponsored PBS programs up in the living room or--

BILL MOYERS: Or Bill Moyers and FRONTLINE.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: --Bill Moyers, FRONTLINE-- wonderful stuff, or watching something on people starving in Rwanda and feeling good that they can relate to those images while their kids are downstairs playing Nintendo. Parents think they're just masturbating their way into oblivion, but for my money, the kid with the Nintendo stick is experiencing at least the beginnings of interactivity and is having a much more active experience. When that kid goes upstairs and sees Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings on the evening news, he's not going to experience it as the gospel truth being piped into his home, as we did. You know, Walter Cronkite used to say, "And that's the way it is." Kids won't see it like that. They'll see it as just another middle-aged man playing with his joystick. That's the new human. That's someone who-- who has I believe, an active, participatory, wary attitude towards media. [crosstalk]

BILL MOYERS: Each of you give me two or three things-- give me two or three things that you-- we can do to change viewing at home, from your own perspective.

MILTON CHEN: I try to tell parents to look at their children's television viewing as a family T.V. diet because I think that's the metaphor that parents understand. When we send our kids off to school, we don't give them a lunch full of chips and candy and a can of soda. We think about creating a diet that has some nutrition at its core. And I think, for parents, we need to bring total consumption of television under control, cut it in half to maybe an hour or two a day, and think about the core of that diet being something that has some educational value--

ELIZABETH THOMAN: But do you know--

MILTON CHEN: --something that parents can talk with their kids about.

BILL MOYERS: What are two or three things that you think could be done to change--

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Well, one thing, I think, is that rather than the-- rather than the parents guiding the children, I think it's the children who have to guide the parents. I mean, if you were going to put a rating system on--

MILTON CHEN: How about both together.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: If you were going to put a rating--

MILTON CHEN: How about both together?

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Both together is fine. But if you were going to put a rating system on television programs, you could put "PG" on, but that doesn't mean "parental guidance." It means "parents shouldn't watch this without a child guardian explaining to them what's going on." If you look at the stuff that kids are interested in now -- Beavis and Butthead, Mystery Science Theater, Power Rangers -- these are shows where the context is as important as the content. These are shows about technology. These are shows about keeping a distance from the medium, keeping what really is a Brechtian alienation from the content and looking at it as ideas and not being hypnotized by it.

©1995-2007 WGBH educational foundation

24 BILL MOYERS: You know, your material is "Challenging Violence in the Media." That's the title of it. What do you want us-- quickly, what do you want us to do about it?

ELIZABETH THOMAN: We have the tools--

BILL MOYERS: You want us to talk about television?

ELIZABETH THOMAN: Yeah, talk about television, learn to analyze it, learn to talk back to it, be able to de-- use the phrase "decode and deconstruct," to be academic, to be-- in other words, to take it apart and put it back together again in our own fashion.

BILL MOYERS: Unfortunately, we can't talk about it any longer right now because we have run out of time, but I want to thank you. Even though we haven't reached a consensus, we have at least started a conversation. Thank you Douglas. Thank you Milton and Elizabeth. And thank you for joining FRONTLINE. I'm Bill Moyers.

1st VIEWER: Dear FRONTLINE: I am so grateful for FRONTLINE--

ANNOUNCER: And now it's time for your letters. Our recent program, "The Diamond Empire," which examined the Oppenheimer-De Beers worldwide monopoly on diamonds, brought in many letters from shocked consumers.

LYNNE MARTIN: Dear FRONTLINE: The diamond commercials have always bothered me and now I know why. Thank goodness this is one area of manipulation from which I am now free. Sincerely, Lynne Martin, Littleton, Colorado.

LOVELYN LEE: Dear FRONTLINE: I have a big, good-looking diamond sitting on my finger that I once admired with pride. To know that I was sucked into the commercial brain-washing of De Beers, to know that perhaps many black South African men and their families had to suffer harsh conditions for such-like stones all to make a greedy white empire more rich? Suddenly, this diamond doesn't look so good anymore. Sincerely, Lovelyn Lee, Washington, D.C.

ANNOUNCER: We also received several angry letters from jewelers, such as this one from Underwood's president, C. Clayton Bromberg. "All I can say is that your program was an attempt at damaging De Beers, the Oppenheimer family, the world diamond business and the thousands of people that work directly and indirectly in it. More important, you have attempted to destroy the confidence the consuming public has in diamonds. This has been attempted through irresponsible reporting. If this is where public television is headed, then somebody needs to tell the National Enquirer and Weekly World News to get out of the way of a new kid on the block."

You can interact with FRONTLINE by sending your comments by fax to (617) 254-0243, by letter or home video to this address: [Dear FRONTLINE, 125 Western Avenue, Boston, MA 02134]

VOICE: Von Bulow--

ANNOUNCER: Not guilty.

VOICE: --Bobbitt--

ANNOUNCER: Not guilty.

©1995-2007 WGBH educational foundation

25 VOICE: --the Menendez brothers-ANNOUNCER: Hung jury.

VOICE: --and O.J. Simpson.

ANNOUNCER: What really happens when a jury goes behind closed doors? Watch as FRONTLINE for the first time goes "Inside the Jury Room."

FURTHER INFORMATION: For more information about resource materials for schools, religious and community organizations, call The Center for Media Literacy 1-(800)-226-9494

PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY MICHAEL MCLEOD

CORRESPONDENT ALAN AUSTIN

OREGON PUBLIC BROADCASTING EXECUTIVE PRODUCER JOHN LINDSAY

PHOTOGRAPHED AND EDITED BY MILT RITTER

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER JULIE WARRICK

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TRANSCRIPTIONS JOANNE YEAROUT

FIELD AUDIO GEEN KOON, DAVE RODY, BILL WARD

ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY GREG BOND, FRANK SWANSON, LANCE WHEELER

FIELD ENGINEERS PAUL MARTIN, JONATHON SURITA, RYAN ABITABILE

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SOUND MIX LANCE LIMBOCHER

PRODUCTION FUNDING HAS BEEN PROVIDED IN PART BY THE JOHN D. AND CATHERINE T. MACARTHUR FOUNDATION AND THE J.RODERICK MACARTHUR FOUNDATION

ARCHIVAL MATERIALS PROFESSOR ALBERT BANDURA "THE RIFLEMAN" COURTESY OF LEVY-GARDNER-LAVEN PRODUCTIONS, INC SCENES FROM "THE UNTOUCHABLES" COURTESY OF PARAMOUNT PICTURES MARIANNE OLDS SHERMAN GRINBERG FILM LIBRARIES, INC MACDONALD & ASSOCIATES WRGB-TV

SPECIAL THANKS

©1995-2007 WGBH educational foundation

26 ANNENBERG SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA AUBERY WATZEK LIBRARY, LEWIS & CLARK COLLEGE COLUMBIA COUNTY/HUDSON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE CENTENNIAL ELEMENTARY, BRITISH COLUMBIA EDWARDS ELEMENTARY, HUDSON, NEW YORK HUDSON CITY LIBRARY PAUL & PAT ABITABILE, TERI COZZA, KEN CRANNA, GAYLE HEARD, LEE & BETTY ANN FALKNER, SUE MARTIN AND SANDRA VALENTINE THE HUNTINGTON LIBRARY THE MUSEUM OF TELEVISION & RADIO WRGB-TV THE SCHENECTADY MUSEUM & PLANETARIUM DR. BRANDON CENETERWALL

IN MEMORY OF PAUL ABITABILE SR. 1917--1994

WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT TV?

HOST BILL MOYERS

PRODUCER/DIRECTOR MICHAEL KIRK

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER MARINA KALB

CAMERA ROB RAINEY, BILL MCMILLIN, TONY PAGANO

AUDIO DON HOOPER, TOM LEVY, RICHARD JULIANO

EDITOR FRANK CAPRIA

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MAKEUP SHER WILLIAMS

SENIOR PRODUCER MICHAEL SULLIVAN

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER DAVID FANNING

A PRODUCTION OF OREGON PUBLIC BROADCASTING FOR FRONTLINE

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