Rockefeller Works To Limit TV Violence (AP)

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Rockefeller Works To Limit TV Violence
Senator Plans Push For Government Regulation
To Curb Violence In TV Programs

WASHINGTON, Jun. 26, 2007

(AP) Big media companies that include graphic violence in
their programs are more concerned about short-term profits
than the long-term health of children, and government
should intervene, a senator said Tuesday.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said he will push legislation
in the coming weeks to limit violent content in the media.

"I fear that graphic violent programming has become so
pervasive and has been shown to be so harmful, we are
left with no choice but to have the government step in,"
Rockefeller said at a meeting of the Senate Commerce,
Science and Transportation Committee.

-snip-

Others on the panel, including ranking minority member
Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, were unenthusiastic.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/26/ap/politics/main2982131.shtml

[realbluesky]

1. Oh, what pap

With all that's wrong in this country, my senator wants to regulate violence on TV.
Too bad he chose to support the violence in Iraq.

[Me.]

2. He's Concerned About TV Violence?

What about the violence in Iraq? Why doesn't he concern himself with that and the faked intelligence reports that were ginned up to get us there?

[Bucky]

3. I like this issue. I think he's right.

You have to be careful, of course. You don't want to engage in censorship. But I don't support the "with all the other problems in the world" argument for doing nothing about the way our culture glorifies violence.

There are knock on effects of ignoring the pro-violence messages in the dominent media. The support for torture in the voting public, altho still a minority, is disturbingly large. This is due a great deal to the fact that people's understanding of how torture works is shaped by the cop shows they watch. They think it's tough when truth is that it's counter productive.

A CIA interrogation trainer I read about in an article recently was complaining than too many of the young soldiers he'd been assigned to teach in prisoner interrogations had these distorted Jack Bauer fantasies and so didn't really have a good grip on the realities and limitations of what they could achieve in questioning captured insurgents.

An even bigger problem is that the voting public is still liable to buy arguments about the necessity of going to war because they have unrealistic frames of understanding what we can and cannot achieve with force. Don't ever forget that Bush had a working majority of popular support when he went to war with Iraq. Don't ever forget that the public once fell for the "better to fight them over there" argument because they understood violence--as it's shown in movies, TV, and video games--to be a controllable and finite thing.