Murders again tied to TV violence

by Frederick Case, [Seattle] Times staff reporter [May 28, 1990]

Additional disturbing evidence has been produced by a University of Washington behavioral scientist and medical doctor who said last year
that TV is responsible for half of North America’s murders and rapes.

If Dr. Brandon Centerwall’s conclusion is correct, TV also has more than doubled homicide rates in South Africa, adding to its other
problems.

Centerwall says that new figures he has just received from South Africa strengthen previous conclusions garnered from his seven years of
statistical analysis comparing white homicides in the United States, Canada and South Africa between 1945 and 1975. (To avoid using figures
distorted by racial conflict, he compared only white homicide rates. Most victims of racial violence were black.)

The doctor reported the new figures this month in an address to the annual conference of the American Psychiatric Association. Network
executives at the conference emphatically disputed the validity of his study. But it was funded by the UW, and other academics speak
respectfully about Centerwall’s methodology.

“His work is good,” says George Bridges, on of the two UW sociology professors who did a study of TV and violence for the National Institute
of Mental Health. “We also found a stong relationship between violence and watching TV. But we don’t really know which is cause and which is effect. Do violent and aggressive people watch more violent TV, which in turn reinforces their violence? Or does the observation of violence itself trigger more violence?”

Actually, dozens of studies by organizations ranging from the American Psychological Association to the National Institute of Mental Health,have said there’s an unquestionable link between violent TV and violent personal behavior. They conclude that watching hours of televised brutality anesthetizes viewers to human suffering.

That’s way a recent “violence profile” of the networks’ “mean and dangerous world,” by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenburg School
of Communications, was particularly disturbing when it notes a dramatic increase in violence on children’s TV. The Pennsylvania researchers
attributed this to the government’s move in the early 1980s to deregulate broadcasting, and on the networks’ penchant for action- oriented programming. “Violence sells,” Centerwall says.

The significance of South Africa in Centerwall’s study is that prohibition by the Afrikaner government prevented introduction of the
tube there until 1974. Before that, the South African homicide rate actually had declined even when U.S. and Canadian rates were escalating
through the 1960s and 1970s.

But by 1983, South Africa’s murder rate had soared by 56 percent, and now that the figures have been updated to cover the period 1975-1987,
they show the rate actually has increased by 130 percent.

“Just as I forecast,” Centerwall says, “the white homicide rate there has approximately doubled due to people watching TV.”

Centerwall, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, believes these new figures are additional corroboration of his
contention that TV dramatically boosts a country’s murder rate. He says the rise is preceded by a 10- ot 15-year lag time for the first generation of children weaned on television to reach adulthood and move into their most crime-prone years.

Television was widely introduced in the United States and Canada around 1950. Soon the annual incidence of homicide among whites increased by
93 percent, from three homicides per 100,000 population in 1945 to 5.8 homicides per 100,000 in 1974. In South Africa, where television was
banned, the incidence of homicide deaths decreased by 7 percent, from 2.7 homicides per 100,00 population in 1943 to 2.5 homicides per 100,00 population in 1974.

“People have a gut feeling that America is more violent than it used to be,” Centerwall says. “Well, they’re absolutely right. As a simple matter of uncontrovertible statistical fact, the incidence of all forms of violence have doubled here since the 1950s. So our intuitive sense that something has radically changed is correct.”

The professor says he has accumulated a lot of additional research, but the bottom line is that about 10,000 of America’s annual 20,000 murders
are because of people watching TV. He says TV has also doubled rates of rape, assault, child abuse and other forms of violence.

“A particular murder is always due to many things,” he says. “TV is just another factor among many, including poverty, drugs and mental
disturbance. But if TV had never existed, the U.S. would have 10,000 fewer murders each year. The same conclusion apply to rape and assault.
Half the rapes and assaults in the U.S. are attributable to TV.”

Has Centerwall produced the smoking statistical gun the definitely links TV to murder and other violence? Should TV programs bear health
warnings similar to those on tobacco and alcohol?

“I’m a scientists, and it’s not my role to set guidelines,” he says. “My role is just to lay out the facts. The public is intelligent and
resourceful, and I leave it to them to ponder this information and decide what they want to do about it individually or as groups.

“But I do believe that parents must set limits on how much TV their children watch, in the same way they set boundaries for other behavior.”

Centerwall holds a master’s degree in public health from Tulane University and received his medical degree from the University of
California-San Diego. He graduated cum laude from Yale in 1975.

U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, D-Ill., has been trying since 1984 to secure passage of a Television Violence Act, a bill that would encourage the
three networks to set common standards on the level of violence in their programming. Although both House and Senate passed the bill
overwhelmingly, it’s stalled in committee by those who want the bill amended to also address the issue of sex on TV. “Covering both issues
in one bill gets complicated,” Centerwall says.

Stricter licensing standards could require TV stations owners to provide more intellectually stimulating and less violent fare on the public
airwaves.

“When TV was introduced, most people expected it would just be radio with visuals,” Centerwall says. “They didn’t anticipate that the effect
would be revolutionary.”