The Debate Continues

The Free Expression Policy Project's Response to the AAP's Letter

February 15, 2002

Dr. Miriam E. Bar-on
Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine
2160 South First Ave.
Maywood, IL 60153

Re: AAP's New Policy on Media Violence

Dear Dr. Bar-on:

Thank you for responding to our letter of December 5 regarding the AAP's Policy on Media Violence. On behalf of and in collaboration with the signatories, let me both clarify the purpose and content of our December 5 letter, and reply to your contentions.

First, your reply ignores the point of our letter: the AAP Policy's "many misstatements about social-science research on media effects" (including, specifically, the erroneous assertion that "more than 3500 research studies exist") and its "failure to acknowledge many serious questions about the interpretation of media violence studies." As we clearly said, the AAP's views are entitled to respect, but professional opinion should not be confused with scientific evidence. Thus, your "collective experience," which you cite in your letter, is beside the point. If the AAP Policy were limited to expressing your opinion based on collective experience, we would not complain. But the AAP's distortions and misstatements about the scientific research should not go unquestioned.

The closest that your response comes to dealing with the actual content of our letter is your acknowledgment that "a few studies have not been able to demonstrate a connection between media violence and violent behavior." There have been more than "a few," however: a recent survey by Professor Jonathan Freedman -- the only independent scholar, to our knowledge, who has made an
exhaustive review of all the studies -- found that fewer than half of laboratory experiments actually reported a significant relationship between whatever violent content the subjects were exposed to and some form of or proxy for aggression. As Professor Freedman concluded:

The research does not provide either strong or consistent support for the hypothesis that exposure to media violence causes aggression or crime. Rather, the results have been extremely inconsistent and weak. Regardless of the type of research, fewer than half (in some instances far fewer than half) of the studies provide evidence that supports a causal effect, while many find evidence against such an effect. When effects are found, they can be accounted for by plausible alternatives to an explanation in terms of the direct effect of exposure to violence. Moreover, studies outside the laboratory produced very weak results and virtually none found consistent support for a causal effect. This is not a pattern of findings that would ordinarily be considered to support a scientific hypothesis, but rather a pattern that would generally disprove a hypothesis.*

Professor Freedman is not alone in his conclusions. Indeed, Joyce Sprafkin, who formerly believed in scientific proof of adverse effects from media violence, changed her mind after reviewing the literature and conducting studies that indicated more aggressive behavior among young children after exposure to Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. Dorothy and Jerome Singer have also found that programs such as Sesame Street are linked to aggression in children.

Thus, to the extent that laboratory experiments and other quantitative measurements might ever confirm or disprove the psychological hypothesis that "violent" entertainment causes harmful effects, the scientific research does not confirm the hypothesis. Equally troubling, as we noted in our original letter, are the serious questions about methodology: many scholars do not believe that in a field as inherently complex and multi-faceted as human aggression, experiments and other quantitative studies can provide an accurate or adequate description of the process by which some individuals become more aggressive than others.

You say that we appear to have misunderstood your Policy as a call for censorship - but nowhere in our letter is there any such suggestion. (It is true that inevitably, such policy statements are used by politicians who do call for censorship.) Our letter was solely addressed to the problem of distorted and erroneous claims to scientific proof. And it remains true, as we said, that the AAP's continuing focus on "media violence" has crowded out discussion of child abuse, poverty, and family violence which, as you seem to acknowledge, are among the real causes of violence and crime.

Finally, we are disappointed by the hostile tone of your letter. As you say, we are all committed to free expression and to the welfare of youth. The rhetorical charge, for example, that we want to "expose" our children to "violent media" is not only a cheap shot that fails to advance reasoned dialogue about the complex issue of media effects, but - like so many of the exaggerated and false claims that are made about the psychological research - assumes that "violent media," which comes in great variety, from Sophocles to Saving Private Ryan, is easy to identify and has uniformly harmful effects.

As we have said, we would be happy to meet with you or other representative of AAP at any time to review the research and discuss a more careful and scientifically accurate approach to the media violence issue.

Sincerely,

Marjorie Heins

cc: Jib Fowles, Henry Giroux, Jeffrey Goldstein, Robert Horwitz, Henry Jenkins, Vivian Sobchack, Michael Males, Richard Rhodes, Christopher Finan, David Greene, Louis Z. Cooper, Daniel D. Broughton, Susan Buttross, Alberto Gedissman, Kenneth Ginsburg, Rosario Gonzalez, Regina M. Milteer, Michael Rich

*Executive Summary, "Media Violence and Aggression: A Review of the Research," University of Toronto Manuscript (March 2001).