On September 11, the Federal Trade Commission released its report
titled "Marketing Violent Entertainment to Children: A Review
of Self-Regulation and Industry Practices in the Motion Picture,
Music Recording & Electronic Game Industries." The Report
was conducted in response to a request from President Clinton
on June 1, 1999, as well as
similar requests from Members of Congress in
the wake of the school shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton,
Colorado. The full report can be found on the FTC’s Web
site at http://www.ftc.gov/os/2000/09/index.htm#13.
The FTC report’s conclusion that “members of
the motion picture, music recording, and electronic game industries
target children under the age of 17 as the audience for movies,
music, and games that they themselves acknowledge are inappropriate
for children or warrant parental caution due to their level of
violent content” seemingly confirmed suspicions that “the teenagers’
exposure to images of violence in entertainment media” was a cause
of the Columbine tragedy. This conclusion was lent credence by
the flurry of news reports and presidential campaign proclamations
released this week and the Senate Commerce Committee’s hearing
on Wednesday.
The article by Cato
Institute Visiting Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies Ronald
D. Rotunda and these excerpts from the FTC report shed
further light on the ideas offered in the report and beg further
questions to the true reasons behind youth violence and the impact
of advertising.
FTC EXCERPTS
Pages
1-2
“On June
1, 1999, following the horrifying school shooting in Littleton,
Colorado that increased public calls for a national response to
youth violence, President Clinton requested that the Federal Trade
Commission and the Department of Justice conduct a study of whether
the motion picture, music recording, and computer and video game
industries market and advertise violent entertainment material
to children and teenagers…The Columbine High School shooting heightened
the public’s existing concerns about violence committed by children.
Although the rate of violence perpetrated by young people has
declined in the 1990’s, the rate for murders committed by youths
in the United States is still substantially higher than in other
industrialized countries.5 For the past few decades, parents, social scientists,
criminologists, educators, policymakers, health care providers,
journalists, and others have struggled to understand how and why
children turn to violence.6 Following
a plethora of news reports suggesting that the boys involved in
the Columbine killings were immersed in a violent entertainment
subculture,7 many observers focused on the teenagers’ exposure
to images of violence in entertainment media as a cause of the
Columbine murders.”
Endnote 5, which appears, on Page 58 states:
“Still, the
rate of violence perpetrated by young people has actually declined
in the 1990’s and school-associated violent death remains extremely
rare. See Juvenile Offenders, supra, at 31 (reporting and analyzing crime
statistics collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and
the Bureau of Justice Statistics from the Uniform Crime Reports
and the National Crime Victimization Survey). The 1999 report,
which contains statistics collected through 1997, is available
at www.ojjdp.ncjrs.org.
Additional statistics for teen homicide rates through 1998 are
available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bj/homicide/teens.htm. See also
Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention,
Assessing Health Risk Behaviors Among Young
People: Youth Risk Behavior
Surveillance System, At-A-Glance 2000, www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dash/yrbs/yrbsaag.htm
(visited June 26, 2000).”
Page 2:
“While the
entertainment media received a great deal of blame for youth violence
in the past year, most people agree that exposure to media violence
alone does not cause a child to commit a violent act. Although
several major public health organizations recently voiced their
shared conviction that the viewing of entertainment media violence
can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behavior
in children, they also have acknowledged that it is not the sole,
or even necessarily the most important, factor contributing to
youth aggression, anti-social attitudes, and violence. They,
and the researchers and advocates who have studied youth violence,
posit that a range of other factors – such as child abuse and
neglect, victimization, bullying, drug and alcohol abuse, exposure
to violence in the home, neurobiological indicators, and low socioeconomic
status – can interrelate to cause youth violence. Some observers focus on children’s access to handguns
as the cause for the high fatality rates associated with youth
violence in America. Others
look for cultural explanations.” 14
Endnote 14, which appears on Page 60, states:
14. “See Bok, supra note 5, at 7–9; cf. American
Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Communications, Media Violence, 95 Pediatrics 949, 951 (1995). Although most researchers
attribute the lower rates of teen homicide in other countries
to stricter gun control laws, some note that other countries place
more controls on the media than does the United States. Many stable
industrialized democracies, in the absence of a strong constitutional
guarantee of freedom of expression and First Amendment-like safeguards
against censorship, monitor the media and enforce regulations
regarding the advertising and marketing of the media, either directly
or through quasi-governmental bodies. They also employ ratings
systems that contain some similarities to – and some differences
from – those currently used by the media industries in the United
States.”
Pages 11-12
“Significantly,
the motion picture studios, unlike the electronic game industry,
believe that it is appropriate to target advertising for R-rated
films to children under 17 and to target advertising for PG-13-rated
films to children under 13, on the grounds that these ratings
are merely cautionary warnings to parents.70 The industry notes, among other reasons, that, “Many
socially and artistically important films have received PG-13
and R ratings because they contain such depictions [of violence],”
and that those filmmakers have the right to draw as much attention
to their work as possible – “even the attention of persons under
the age of 17, who are entitled to view such films with the permission
and in the company of their parents.”71
Page 15:
“An analysis
of the television campaigns for PG-13 films targeting youngsters
6-11 indicates that many of the television programs popular with
teens and used heavily to promote R-rated movies, also are very
popular with children 6-11. As one marketing plan for a PG-13
movie targeting those 6-11 stated, “Other programs, such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, WWF and WCW Wrestling cross over to Children 6-11 and local television buys
targeted this group as well.” This plan also showed that Xena: Warrior Princess – used in advertising for virtually every R-rated
movie the Commission examined – was as popular with children 6-11
as it was with males 12- 17. MTV is also popular with children
6-11. 90 Thus, although the Commission found little indication
that R-rated films were deliberately being marketed to children
under 12, 91 those young
children nevertheless had substantial exposure to the television
advertising for R-rated films as well.”
Page 48
“Game companies
also use television advertising to target M-rated games to teen
audiences. Marketing documents set out a long list of television
programs popular with teens ages 12 to 17 on which companies planned
to place their advertisements for M-rated games.281 These programs include The Simpsons, WWF Smackdown, That 70’s Show,
King of the Hill, Dawson’s Creek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena:
Warrior Princess, The
Wayans Brothers, Hercules:
The Legendary Journeys, Baywatch, X-Files, V.I.P., Smart Guy, and WCW Wrestling.282”
Percentage
audience 6-17 according to Appendix I:
Simpsons 24.8%
WWF Smackdown
36.5%
X-Files not
available
That ‘70s
Show not available
King Of The
Hill 22.6%
Dawson’s
Creek 34.6%
Buffy the
Vampire Slayer 30.0%
Smart Guy
not available
South Park
21.2%
Simpsons
syndicated not available
WWF Wrestling
not available
WCW Wrestling
not available
Xena: Warrior
Princess 22.6%
The Wayans
Brothers not available
Hercules 22.2%
Baywatch
not available
X-Files syndicated not available
V.I.P. syndicated
not available
Pages 53, 56.
“The motion picture, music recording, and electronic
game industries should stop targeting children under 17 in their
marketing of products with violent content. All three industries
should increase consumer outreach, both to educate parents about
the meaning of the ratings and to alert them to the critical part
the industries assume parents play in mediating their children’s
exposure to these products. Because of First Amendment protections
afforded to these products, industry is in the best position to
provide parents with the information they need. Finally, parents
must become familiar with the ratings and labels, and with the
movies, music, and games their children enjoy, so they can make
informed choices about their children’s exposure to entertainment
with violent content…The empirical inquiry, however, inevitably
suggests certain conclusions about ways in which the present system
of self-regulation could be improved…. Implementation of these
specific suggestions would significantly improve the present regimes
of self-regulation. The Report demonstrates, however, that mere
publication of codes is not sufficient. Self-regulatory programs
can work only if the concerned industry associations actively
monitor compliance and ensure that violations have consequences.
The Commission believes that continuous public oversight also
is required, and that Congress should continue to monitor the
progress of self-regulation is this area.”
