Surgeon General Report Cites Danger of TV Violence
A 300-page report by the U.S. Surgeon General, issued on this day, reached the “tentative and limited” conclusion about “a causal relation between viewing violence on television and aggressive behavior.”
Sen. John O. Pastore (D–Rhode Island) announced that he planned to hold hearings on the report.
The report raised two civil liberties issues. One was the potential for government censorship of television programming. The second was the fact that seven experts being considered for the Surgeon General’s advisory committee were rejected at the request of the television industry, raising questions about the independence and scientific integrity of the report.
Efforts to censor various media because they undermined morality and contributed to anti-social behavior have a long history in the U.S. One of the most important efforts involved the Hollywood Production Code, established on June 13, 1934, which imposed strict censorship on American movies for thirty years. In the 1950s there was a panic over comic books, which many people believed were responsible for juvenile delinquency. The result was the creation of the Comic Book Code, adopted on October 26, 1954, which resembled the restrictive Hollywood Code of 1934.
Learn more; the American Psychological Association on violence in the media: http://www.apa.org/research/action/protect.aspx
Read about “pre-Code” Hollywood films: Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934 (1999)
Learn more about the national panic over comic books: David Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America (2008)