Television Violence and the Young

Abstract

The Committee was less happy about the content as distinct from the quantity of the imported material. For this was one of the factors which it felt had contributed to public ‘disquiet’. Whereas ‘dissatisfaction’ about itv was attached by the Committee to the companies’ alleged failure to anticipate (and provide for) a wider range of potential interest and enjoyment in their audience, ‘disquiet’ was attached to the more debatable hypothesis of the television medium’s power to influence the minds and behaviour of its viewers. For many of those giving evidence, the objection to the screening of film series from the United States was not simply that they were non-British, but that they seemed to be predominantly either Westerns or crime series. They portrayed acts and scenes of violence; and a lot of this violence was being shown in early evening hours when many children were still viewing. Not all the evidence to the Committee expressed the same level of concern about this problem. The bma, for example, expressed the belief that the effect on children of tv violence was probably not as great as had been feared; and the nut also thought some of the fears had been exaggerated, repeating the by-now hackneyed argument that violence portrayed in costume (or in otherwise conventionalised form) was relatively harmless. Yet then, as now, and quite irrespective of the Committee’s deliberations, the issue of televised violence and especially its effects on the young, was very much a matter of continuing live public concern.