There was no proof that violence on television or videos caused acts of violence in the community, but community attitudes should determine the issue, according to the Australian Chief Censor, John Dickie.
This was the view of the National Committee of Violence and that of the Australian Institute of Criminology.
“”The cause of violence are complex,” Mr Dickie said. The included family factors, drug abuse, biological factors, mental illness and cultural matters. The media (including film) were at the bottom of the list. However, they could not be taken out of the picture.
It was too easy to blame violent television and videos. The Strathfield killer (subs he killed himself so we can say what we like) had a copy of American Psycho in his possession. But he also had a history of mental disease since he was 10 which was probably a more important factor.
On what children should see, Mr Dickie thought decisions and responsibility properly belonged more with parents.
The issue arose again last week (nov8-14) with the addressed to the National Family Summit by the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, and the Leader of the Opposition, John Hewson.
Mr Dickie, agreed that proving the link between film violence and actual violence was impossible. He thought, however, that community attitudes were the essential part of the debate. He agreed with Mr Keating that the M rating was too broad. It should be split. An ordinary mature-audience-only rating would allow 15-year-olds to see the movie on their own. Ordinary M movies like Crocodile Dundee would fall into this category. However, the upper end of the M rating would be converted to a new MA which would require the 15 year olds to be accompanied by an adult, presumably a parent.
“”Parents would drop their kids off to see Princess Bride and they would slip in and see Silence of the Lambs,” he said. “”With the new rating this would not be possible.
“”It would put the responsibility and decision making back where it belongs: with the parents.”
This was the line that the Film Censorship Board had been pursuing for several years. Movies had been classified but reasons had been put on the labels grading violence, sex and language into low, medium and high. This enabled people to make an informed choice about what they would watch.
“”There is a limit to what a government agency could do,” he said. “”They are your family values. It is your home. They are your kids. You have got to be involved. The majority are using that consumer advice to determine what the family and individuals should see.
The MA rating proposal has to go before the State Premiers at a meeting on December 7. It could then become law next year.
Mr Dickie agreed with the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal’s recommendation this year that television ratings be made the same as film ratings, after all, with videos the product often came out of the same set. having different standards was unnecessarily complex.
The tribunal thought the lower end M could be shown after 8.30 pm and the higher end only after 10.30pm. Mr Dickie agreed.
The acting director of the Australian Institute of Criminology, David Biles, said, “”The question is not what people think violence on television does, but what it actually does.”
The first question was easy; the other impossible.
The research question comes down to the ethics of control groups. To prove whether violence on television results in viewers committing acts of violence requires an experiment of unethical dimensions. You randomly select a group of people and randomly divide it. One half is subjected to a battery of violent television. The other is not. The viewers are then monitored to see who commits the most acts of violence and which group they come from.
How do you ethically subject people, especially children, to violence on television? Answer: you don’t; you can’t. Thus there can be no proof, only conjecture.
Mr Biles says, very simply, there is no scientific proof, or even estimate, that violence on television causes more violence in the community.
“”It is the sort of policy area best suited to political conclusions; not scientific ones,” he said. “”We cannot establish beyond doubt that violence on television causes violence in the community.”
However, Mr Biles has a gut feeling, for what it is worth, that Mr Keating and Dr Hewson are right when they express the belief that violence on television should be reduced and kept to later time slots.
The best scientific research is that television violence desensitises the viewer. Control groups exposed to it are less outraged or concerned about violence after exposure than the control groups not exposed to it. Questions to them about feelings and sentencing of perpetrators reveal less concern than those not exposed.
One has to turn to naturalistic research, Biles says. For example, you could plot the rise in sex crime after pornography became more available in Hawaii. it is an uncontrolled experiment; other factors could influence the outcome. Australia was a good place for naturalistic research because it had eight jurisdictions with different laws but similar culture. South Australia had much more lenient marijuana laws that Queensland. Socially undesirable outcomes could be compared. NSW had double the imprisonment rate of Victoria: did that prevent crime? And so on. They were useful, but not as definite as controlled experiments where each group was random and equal. If the groups were selected on the basis of state of residence, other factors might influence outcomes.
It was important but difficult to find out whether television violence caused an increase in real violence. We did the research we could afford and knew how to do and that was safe, but not the reasearch that needed to be done.
“”A lot of research is done on viewing habits and attitudes,” he said. “”Virtually none is done on consequences.”
Research on consequences of viewing a lot of television vs a little or watching violence vs watching none was very expensive.
“”The tough questions are put aside,” he said.
Without proper research, other evidence held sway. Lawyers, clutching at straws, would assert violent videos caused their clients to commit mayhem. Psychiatrists would assert from their known cases that perpetrators of violence had watched violent videos. But this was inconclusive. The sort of people who were driven to violence anyway were probably driven to violent videos and television programs. Moreover, statements by perpetrators that television did it were self-serving excuses for their violent conduct.
Dr Hewson has promised a review of Fightback in its effect on the family. Fightback includes a proposal to abolish the Australian Institute of Criminology, the leader on research into violence in Australia.
The network programmer for the ABC, Bob Donoghue, says the difficult question was to determine what was gratuitous violence and what was integral to the drama. The ABC had two assessors and an experienced drama department to help.
He disagreed, however, with Mr Dickie on the single classification for both television and video and film. He thought video, film and pay television were different from free-to-air television. The former had a significant element of choice. People paid for what they chose. That permitted more liberal classification than television beamed directly into the loungeroom.
Free-to-air services might require cuts and changes to fit a classification, but there should be no cuts with the chosen pay services.