Children and violence on the screen

A growing number of countries are concerned about violence on the screen - on television or in computer games - and a number of meetings have been held on the subject in different parts of the world. In March 1995 a world summit on children and television was held in Melbourne (Australia), and an international conference in Lund (Sweden) in September was totally devoted to violence on the screen and the rights of the child.

At Melbourne more than 500 producers, researchers, media executives and other experts took part in a number of panels. A proposal by Anna Home, Head of BBC Television Children's Programmes, for a "children's television charter" led to a wide-ranging debate. The proposal suggested certain minimum requirements such as balanced programming, broadcasting in regular slots when children are able to watch, a wide diversity of content, and sufficient funds.

After heated discussion, the charter was revised into a new seven-point version which is now considered official. The first point stresses that children have the right to high-quality programmes which are specifically made for them and "which do not exploit them". This is a reference to the fact that children have become a steadily growing consumer group in the expanding world of children's television. This was highlighted by Ellen Wartella, professor of communication at the University of Texas, who pointed out that we have learned that children are a "special" audience, with "special psychological needs and social interests, requiring us to tailor media production to them". There has been "a virtual explosion of research studies on children's reactions to television," she added, "and we know how to make programmes that both entertain and educate children."

Professor Wartella went on to discuss an alarming phenomenon, "the increasing commercialization of children's lives." "The past twenty-five years have seen media industries move their target downwards," she noted, "first to pre-adolescents, then to children in primary school and younger, and the vehicles for this have been television and videos. Today young children all over the world, even pre-schoolers, are increasingly the target of commercial messages. Young children's culture is a culture dominated by television and toys." With the rise of privatized commercial television all over the world, thanks to satellite and cable, a "remarkably commercialized media culture for children" is being created, at a time when public broadcasting is under attack and declining.

At the Lund conference, more than 140 delegates from twenty-five countries took part in or listened to the five panel discussions, ranging from "reports from the research front line" to artistic depictions of violence "From Shakespeare to Stephen King". In one session representatives from the media were confronted with defenders of children's rights; another session focused on the Convention and its implementation, and the final panel asked the question: Where do we go from here?

One panelist, ambassador Thomas Hammarberg (co-chairman of the United Nations Commission which is monitoring the implementation of the Convention), argued strongly for a joint UNESCO-UNICEF commission which would organize a clearing house where research and other information could be collected and distributed, and possibly publish an annual blacklist of the names of the media companies with the worst record of violence on the screen. The Swedish Minister of Culture, Ms Margot Wallstrom, who chaired the summing up panel, supported the idea of a clearing-house and was willing to give financial support at the outset.

UNESCO will be publishing a full report of the Lund Conference later this spring. The ideas that were put forward there are also reflected in the conclusions of an international survey, Violence in Broadcasting Worldwide, prepared for UNESCO by the Broadcasting Standards Council in Britain, which will also be published in the near future.

It was clearly stated in Lund that the answer to the problem of growing violence on the screen is not censorship. This conclusion is repeated in UNESCO's recent far-reaching World Report on Culture and Development. Freedom of expression is a fundamental freedom. The best way to cope with excesses in violence, and even pornography is to use the power of the consumer. In a free market economy, where most media are commercially based, the viewer-consumer actually has the last word, at least theoretically. You can push the button and say "no thank you. We don't buy products which are advertised in too violent a media environment". If there's anything big companies are scared of, it's a bad image.

Ultimately, it's a matter of consciousness raising. Twenty or thirty years ago, most people did not know the word "ecology". Today it's on everybody's lips. Jo Groebel, professor of mass communication at the University of Utrecht (Netherlands), and a world authority on research into violence in the media, has made the following comparison. "In the 1960s and 1970s we thought we had got rid of toxic substances when we dumped them out of sight in rivers and oceans. Later on, we learned the hard way that poisonous waste does not disappear; it reappears just where we never expected it."

Perhaps the time has come to start thinking in terms of "media ecology".

NILS GUNNAR NILSSON, a Swedish publishing and media specialist, is a member of UNESCO'S Executive Board.

COPYRIGHT 1996 UNESCO
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