Is societies violence the media's fault? This is the question that has been asked since before television was in every American's house. Of course there are the different types of media today ranging from newspapers, to on-line reports and stories. There have been arguments upon arguments about this issue, and over 3,000 studies conducted. Unfortunately there isn't one single result, there is only an array of supposed answers to this undying question.

CBS president, Howard Stringer is pointing to a different scapegoat for society's violence. "I come from a country ... that puts a lot of American movies on and has more graphic violence within it's live drama on the BBC than anywhere else, and there is a lot less violence in the United Kingdom than there is here. There are 200 million guns in America, and that has a lot to do with violence." He feels it has to do with gun control, which others have suggested. But there are so many violent acts, that one can't focus on the guns, just like one can't focus on the media. David Phillips, one of the men we discuss later put it perfectly, "It's like watching rain fall on a pond and trying to figure out which drop causes whic

So many studies have been done on the affects of media violence on children. Most are concerned with the results, especially parents. If the government, parents or others are so concerned with the effect of their child seeing violence on the television, maybe they should practice what they preach when Christmas rolls around. They should think twice before buying that Mortal combat III for their son. This is where it gets sticky. Parents need to draw the line between appropriate and not appropriate. It would be a nice convenience to have a rating system on the television, but parents should be aware enough of what their children are doing and watching that they are the rating system themselves.

Aristotle was a big supporter of "catharsis." He believed that the audience became psychologically involved with the story on stage, even though they knew it was 100% fiction. He felt when aggression climaxed with the actors, there was a "catharsis" in the audience, which was pleasurable to experience and left the audience "cleansed, uplifted, and less likely to act violently among themselves."

University of Iowa professor of Journalism and Mass Communication Albert Talbott said, "In the '30s, when I was a toddler, one of the things that concerned parents were comic books and the violence in them. As soon as the modern media started to develop, we have all kinds of things on how we are affecting people."

The UCLA study focused on all of the television media, and discovered some interesting facts from their study. Prime Time Series raised the least concern. Theatrical films raised more concern and had a lot more violence. The Saturday morning cartoons had mixed reviews. 23% of the cartoons raised concern, but that was only rating the most popular cartoons: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, X-Men, etc. They termed the action in cartoons as "Sinister Combat Violence" which basically means the whole story line leads to violence.

Sigmund Freud also felt as Aristotle did by saying, "Unless people were allowed to express themselves aggressively, the aggressive energy would be dammed up, pressure would build, and the aggressive energy would seek an outlet, either exploding into acts of extreme violence or manifesting itself as symptoms of mental illness .... But there is no direct evidence for this conclusion (Aronson, 1995, p. 258). President Clinton looks at it in a different light saying, "for people who have never been taught to understand the consequences of their action ... these things can unintentionally set forth a chain reaction of ever more impulsive behavior." Hollywood figures of the 21st century blame factors such as poverty, drugs and alcohol, poor schooling, lax gun control and a general breakdown of families but not screen violence.

There are four major theories of television violence. The "arousal" theory, the "social learning" theory, the "disinhibition hypothesis," and the "catharsis hypothesis." These four hypothesis/theories are old and new conclusions to the question at hand. It is notable to see that some of these theories were stated as early as 1961. Most would have to disagree with these theories just because of the age of their births, but to most people's surprise they still hold in the 21st century.

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