Study says violence still abounds in children's television

By Aaron Barnhart
The Kansas City Star, May 30, 2006

Like the cartoon character Wile E. Coyote, it seems the purveyors of kids' television shows never learn.

Thirty years after researchers found that Saturday morning cartoons were more violent than prime-time TV shows, a study released Thursday argued that little had changed.

The report from the Parents Television Council, called ''Wolves in Sheep's Clothing,'' found that children's shows were still more violent than adult shows — even when ''cartoony'' depictions of violence were factored out.

With Sen. Sam Brownback, R.-Kan., sitting beside him, Parents Television Council executive director L. Brent Bozell dropped an anvil on the children's TV industry Thursday in Washington.

''This disturbing trend signifies that parents can no longer be confident that their children will not have access to dark violence, sexual innuendo or offensive language on entertainment programming targeted toward children,'' Bozell said.

There was no immediate response from the networks to the council's report. Cartoon Network issued a release saying it had not seen the report but it was confident that its children's programming was ''age-appropriate.''

However, the report came under fire from a nonprofit group that works with networks to promote excellence in children's television.

David Kleeman, executive director of the American Center for Children and Media, said the council's researchers did not watch public TV — which is known for its children's programming — and did not take into account whether people on the shows were punished or learned lessons from their bad behaviors.

''They looked at all of these behaviors in isolation,'' Kleeman said. ''That kind of analysis eliminates any opportunity to do comedy, or drama, or even learning.''

To measure violence in the shows, thousands of incidents were documented by Parents Television Council researchers over a three-week marathon last summer of taping and logging children's TV programs.

The researchers, many of them recent college graduates working out of the council's Virginia headquarters, watched more than 430 hours of shows on the eight commercial networks most popular with 5- to 10-year-olds: Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, ABC Family, ABC, WB Kids, Fox, NBC and Disney Channel.

While a large number of shows were judged to be squeaky clean — notably live-action programs like Nickelodeon's ''Hi-Jinks'' and NBC's ''Trading Spaces Boys and Girls'' — others had content that raised red flags for Bozell.

In an episode of Disney Channel's ''Lizzie McGuire,'' for example, a child talks back to his father, who is supposed to discipline him for a misdeed. This scene, according to the Parents Television Council, promoted ''disrespect for parents or authority.''

But the dominant theme in the study was cartoon violence. Among the worst offenders was Cartoon Network's ''Teen Titans,'' the study said. It, along with shows like the WB's ''Xiaolin Showdown'' and Fox's ''Shaman King,'' are bonanzas of ''fantasy violence,'' so named because of the lack of bloodshed and other elements of more realistic depictions.

Scenes of breaking bones, blazing weapons and psychological torture (rats released in a jail cell, ''Fear Factor''-style), were all recorded by Parents Television Council monitors.

Based on this three-week sample, the study said, children can be expected to view the following in an average afternoon or weekend of watching children's TV:

Nearly eight incidents of violence per hour. Even when Wile E. Coyote-era ''cartoony'' violence is extracted, the average dropped to only 6.30 incidents per hour. ''To put this figure in perspective,'' the report stated, ''consider that in 2002 the six broadcast networks combined averaged only 4.71 instances of violence per hour'' during prime time.

Nearly two cases of ''verbal aggression,'' like insults and abusive name-calling, every hour.

At least one ''disruptive, disrespectful or otherwise problematic attitudes and behaviors'' per hour.

Sexual content appeared, on average, 0.62 times per hour, usually in the form of provocative pictures of female characters.

One trend among cartoons that the researchers found disturbing was what might be called the ''SpongeBob'' factor. Animators embed ''adult subtext'' in cartoons aimed at young viewers to encourage grownups to watch along. In fact, the hit series ''SpongeBob SquarePants'' was, for a time, a cult favorite among college-age adults.

Among the shows studied, one that reflected this trend was ''Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends'' on the Cartoon Network. One episode was singled out because it featured a story line patterned on the R-rated movie ''Fatal Attraction.'' The episode in question showed a female monster swinging a huge knife through the air while professing her devotion for a male monster. While her eyes bulge, sinister music plays.

The Parents Television Council has earned a reputation for creating political controversies around TV content. Following the Janet Jackson incident in the Super Bowl in 2004, it generated thousands of complaints through its membership to the Federal Communications Commission. By one estimate, the council was responsible for 95 percent of all indecency complaints filed in 2005.

More recently, Bozell has called for the cable industry to offer ''a la carte'' service that would allow households to pick and choose exactly which channels they want to watch. Although this has been presented as a consumer issue — a new FCC study concluded that a la carte would cost no more than bundled cable TV does now — the Parents Television Council's Web site presents a la carte as a way to punish cable channels that peddle ''filth'' in the form of sexual and adult content.

Under pressure from Brownback and others in Congress, the leading cable operators including Time Warner Cable recently agreed to offer ''family-friendly tiers,'' or blocks of channels that are deemed safe for all ages. The study, though, sees a potential problem with that solution.

Walt Disney Co. probably would offer Disney Channel and ABC Family channels to any family-friendly tier. But the two services are at the opposite ends of the spectrum, from the council's perspective: Disney Channel is almost devoid of violent or other problematic content, while ABC Family was rated the most violent.

Brownback has introduced a bill that would allocate $90 million over five years to measure the effect that television and other media have on children. His interest dates 20 years to his days in Kansas politics, when he met John P. Murray, a professor of developmental psychology at Kansas State University. Today, Murray is on the forefront of scientific efforts to use brain imaging to show the neurological impact of viewing violence.

Murray, who had not seen the report released Thursday, said that violence and its effect on kids occupied most of his colleagues' attention. Young children, said Murray, ''are particularly attuned to what's going on in the world around them. They are asking, 'how do I get along in life? How do I behave?' ''