Richard Rhodes Challenges "The Media Violence Myth"

Demands for censorship of violence in the media are growing. Senator Joseph Lieberman has announced that he will sponsor legislation to punish those who "market" violent media to children. The city of Indianapolis has banned minors from playing violent video games in arcades. The censors have attacked books and magazines as well as electronic media. In 1999, U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, introduced a bill that made it a felony to sell a violent book or other work to a minor. The advocates of censorship insist that there is scientific evidence to prove that fictional violence causes real violence. They claim that there are thousands of studies that establish that this connection is as close as the one between cigarettes and cancer.

Richard Rhodes © Marion Ettlinger

Recently, however, a number of respected writers and scholars have announced their dissent from the purported "consensus" on media violence. Richard Rhodes is one of the most eloquent critics. A Pulitzer Prize-winning author with expertise in science and technology (he won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Making of the Atomic Bomb), Rhodes has taken a close look at the claims of the media violence experts and found them wanting. In an article, "The Media Violence Myth," he concludes "that there's no evidence that mock violence makes people violent, and there's some evidence that it makes them more peaceful." An excerpt of "The Media Violence Myth" was published in Rolling Stone magazine on November 11. ABFFE has published it here in its entirely for the first time. To read and/or download "The Media Violence Myth," click here.

Rhodes' latest book is Why They Kill (Knopf, 1999), a study of the theories of criminologist Dr. Lonnie Athens. (Click here to order through Booksense.com.) In an interview with ABFFE, Rhodes explains that it was Athens' work that provided the evidence for disproving the media violence "hypothesis." "It always seemed to me intuitively wrong that media exposure influenced violent development," he says. "But....Athens....shows causally (not merely correlationally) that serious violent behavior is always the result of having been violently socialized." Rhodes' investigation not only challenges the validity of the media violence research but also raises doubts about the honesty of key researchers. "It was no surprise to discover that they have essentially no evidential support," Rhodes says. "I was surprised, however, to find poorly conceived, scientifically inadequate, biased and sloppy if not actually fraudulent research." To read the Rhodes interview, click here.

ABFFE is deeply concerned by the growing support for censoring violent material. With other book industry groups, it has issued a statement about this danger, "Violence in the Media: A Joint Statement." As a member of the Free Expression Network, ABFFE is circulating an online petition opposing this latest challenge to the First Amendment. To read the petition, click here. ABFFE is also taking orders for Shooting the Messenger: Why Censorship Won't Stop Violence, a report by The Media Coalition. ABFFE, which is a member of Media Coalition, will send a free copy of Shooting the Messenger to anyone who requests it. Click here to place your order through the ABFFE Store.

Media Violence: The Debate Continues as Rhodes Answers Huesmann and Eron

Author Richard Rhodes has replied to criticism by two University of Michigan psychologists whose research on media violence he challenged in "The Media Violence Myth," an article published in full for the first time on the ABFFE Web site. The psychologists, L. Rowell Huesmann and Leonard Eron, accused Rhodes of ignoring the fact that 80 per cent of the researchers who study media violence agree that watching violent images is harmful for children and causes as much as 10 per cent of youth violence. [Click here to read Huesmann and Eron's criticism of "The Media Violence Myth."] In his response, Rhodes says that his views are supported by the work of Dr. Jonathan Freedman of the University of Toronto, who recently surveyed the research in over 200 media violence studies and concluded "either that media violence has no effect on aggression or that if there is an effect, it is vanishingly small." [Click here to read Rhodes's reply to Huesmann and Eron.]

Other Feedback on "The Media Violence Myth"

ABFFE hopes that the publication of "The Media Violence Myth" will contribute to a discussion of the media violence research that many politicians and others cite as justification for censorship. In coming days, ABFFE will publish a response by Dr. Brandon Centerwall, another leading media violence critic who is criticized in the Rhodes article. In addition, ABFFE will be posting editorials, columns and correspondence relating to "The Media Violence Myth." To read reaction to "The Media Violence Myth," visit our Feedback page.