problems. This is evident in our society were we can pick up the newspaper and read of a man killing another man for ‘dissing’, or disrespecting, him. Frequently acts of violence are portrayed as rewarding, monetarily or otherwise. When violence is portrayed as emotionally satisfying, important to masculinity, or as an acceptable way of resolving conflicts what message kind of message is that sending? The American Psychological Association estimates an average American child will see 8,000 murders on television before finishing elementary school. Researchers for the UCLA Television Violence Monitoring Report termed the action the most popular children’s show’s (such as Power Ranger’s and X-Men) as "Sinister Combat Violence" because they are obsessed primarily with violence. The whole story line leads to violence, and the main characters are always pre-occupied with using violence to get their ways. How does this affect children? The answer to that question has change over the years. In The Surgeon General’s report released in 1972, it was concluded that for children already predisposed to aggression, there was a casual affect from television violence. In 1982 a report from the National Institute of Mental Health found that TV violence affects all children, not just those predisposed to aggressive behavior. The same report concluded that the evidence that TV violence has a harmful affect on normal viewers of all ages was “overwhelming”. The U.S. Department of Justice report in 1983 concluded that virtually 100% of aggression researchers agree that there is a cause-effect relationship between the consumption of entertainment violence and an increased tendency towards anger and violence in viewers. (Censorship, 1985) The American public is split on their opinion. The poll, “Violence in the media should be regulated”, was conducted May of 1999 by Keating Holland of CNN. When...
