It is well established by a compell

It is well established by a compelling body of scientific evidence that television violence poses a risk of harmful effects for child-viewers. While exposure to media violence is not necessarily the most potent factor contributing to real world violence and aggression in the United States today, it is certainly the most pervasive. Millions of children spend an average of 20 or more hours per week watching television, and this cumulative exposure to violent images can shape young minds in unhealthy ways.
Given the free-speech guarantees of the First Amendment, the courts have ruled that there must be evidence of a “compelling governmental interest” in order for Congress to take action that would regulate television content in any way, such as the indecency regulations enforced by the FCC. In my view, the empirical evidence documenting the risk of harmful effects from children’s exposure to televised violence clearly meets this threshold, and I should note that former Attorney General Janet Reno offered an identical opinion to this Committee when she testified before it on this same issue in the 1990s.
There has been a lot of talk in recent weeks about the U.S. Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit) ruling regarding “fleeting expletives” that were cited as indecent by the FCC (Fox et al. v. FCC, June 4, 2007). Some have suggested this ruling threatens the future of any content-based television regulation. While
I am not a legal expert, let me draw several important distinctions between this indecency case and the situation policy-makers face with the issue of television violence. First, there is no clear foundation of empirical evidence to document the effects of children’s exposure to indecent material in any quantity, much less modest and fleeting examples of it. In contrast, there is an elaborate, solid foundation of evidence regarding the cumulative effects of televised violence on children. While “fleeting expletives” occur occasionally on television, they are generally quite rare. In contrast, violent portrayals are not only common, they are pervasive across the television landscape, and are found in a majority of programs.
Indeed, it is the cumulative nature of children’s exposure to thousands and thousands of violent images over time that constitutes the risk of harmful effects. Just as medical researchers cannot quantify the effect of smoking one cigarette, media violence researchers cannot specify the effect of watching just a single violent program. But as exposure accrues over time, year in and year out, a child who is a heavy viewer of media violence is significantly more likely to behave aggressively. This relationship is the same as that faced by the smoker who lights up hour after hour, day after day, over a number of years, increasing their risk of cancer with every puff.
The scientific evidence about the effects of televised violence on children cannot clarify which path is the best for policy-makers to pursue to address the problems that research in this area has identified. That decision rests more in value judgments, based upon the relative importance that each of you place on protecting children’s health as contrasted with the other competing interests involved, such as freedom of speech concerns. But when you make that judgment – as each Member of this committee will eventually be called upon to do – it is critical that you understand that television violence harms large numbers of children in this country, and significantly increases violence in our society.
To conclude, the research evidence in this area establishes clearly that the level of violence on television poses substantial cause for concern. Content analysis studies demonstrate that violence is a central aspect of television programming that enjoys remarkable consistency and stability over time. And effects research, including corelational, experimental, and longitudinal designs, converge to document the risk of harmful psychological effects on child-viewers. Collectively, these findings from the scientific community make clear that television violence is a troubling problem for our society. I applaud this Committee for considering the topic, and exploring potential policy options that may reduce or otherwise ameliorate the harmful effects of children’s exposure to television violence.