evision screens. Public reaction against brutality and murder has forced sponsors, agencies and networks to crack down hard.” That line was printed in a 1960 issue of TV Guide; proving that the concern of violence is not a new one (Levine, 7). It has also been pointed out that “violence has always been a part of human history, from the Bible to public punishment in Colonial America, to the news stories we see and hear today” (Levine, 26.) The problem that we come to is how can it be deciphered if the public portrays the media, or if the media portrays the public?The following are a few short stories of people that have placed the blame of their children‘s actions on programs from TV. “In 1993, two teenage boys... saw the... film The Program. They later mimicked a daring scene in which an actor lies down on the center line of a highway in the path of an oncoming car. While the actor lived, in real life both boys were run over and died.” And as a result of this incident, the producers of The Program ended up cutting that highway scene (Sherrow, 17). The same year a five-year-old was playing with matches, and his two-year-old sister died from that fire. Their mother claimed that this happened all after the 5 year old watched MTV’s Beavis and Butthead playing with matches, and got the idea from them. As a result of this incident, as well as plenty of other complaints about matches from parents, MTV moved Beavis and Butthead to a later timeslot (Sherrow, 19).According to Madeline Levine, Ph.D. and the author of the book Viewing Violence, “the debate is over. Violence on television and in the movies is damaging to children... children at younger and younger ages are using violence as a first, not a last, resort to conflict” (Levine, 3). According to a study done at Penn State University, “100 pre-school children were observed both before and after watching television. ...
