Television in Society by Arthur Asa Berger

Author:Arthur Asa Berger [Berger, Arthur Asa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Media Studies
ISBN: 9781351486644
Google: rGVQDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-09-29T04:37:14+00:00

13

Smoking Out the Critics

Alan Wurtzel and Guy Lometti

Our review of the NIMH Advisory Panel’s critique of our preceding statement indicates that its conclusion is without merit. Not only is it unsuccessful in challenging our fundamental criticisms regarding the NIMH report, but it fails to address many of the most salient issues included in our statement regarding the research on television and its relationship to subsequent violent behavior.

Critiques have tried to compare our critique of the scientific research on television violence and its impact to the reaction of the tobacco industry, which attempted to refute the scientific evidence regarding the hazards of smoking. Such an analogy is completely without merit. In 1964 there were 6,000 studies regarding smoking and its impact; by 1979 there were a total of 30,000 studies in the literature. A comparison of these figures with the 100 or so studies dealing specifically with the impact of television violence on subsequent behavior, or the 14 studies specifically cited by the NIMH in support of their cause-effect contention, will place the smoking research vs. television research argument into perspective.

In the smoking research, the independent variable was the number of cigarettes smoked—a clearly defined and quantifiable measure. In the case of television, it is the ill-defined menu of violent programs an individual views, using a criterion that changes from one study to the next. Consider the dependent measure of the effect we wish to study. In the case of smoking, it is the incidence of cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and death. When it comes to television, researchers never measure violent or criminal behavior but substitutes for these behaviors (using paper and pencil tests, for example, or observations of children making faces), many of which are not validated and are clearly unrelated to our real-world concern over actual violence. There are no statistics regarding the impact of television violence similar to those concerning the impact of smoking, and no single responsible researcher has ever claimed such an impact.

The ABC statement was not prepared as a response to the entire NIMH report. Its stated intention was to address the issue of television and violence since this had received the greatest amount of press coverage and comment. We addressed not only the NIMH report regarding its evaluation of the research on violence, but a substantial amount of material regarding the research techniques that have been used to study the question of television violence and its possible impact on behavior and attitudes. This material was ignored by the NIMH critique.

The reference by the critique to a “slick brief’ is inappropriate. Our document was designed to address a number of significant social science issues from a research perspective. While the ABC statement was written to be understood by the general public, it deals with the issues on a strictly social research basis. Most of the salient points in the original text are referenced to a scholarly article that has appeared within the scientific literature. The statement is a social science evaluation of the issues regarding television and violent behavior.

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